His next and second clandestine project involved a high-seas expedition into the North Pacific with an all-volunteer crew aboard a small wooden sailboat to expose the Asian driftnet fleets, the largest and most destructive fishery in history.
He has also been engaged in exposing the trade in walrus ivory, the illegal trade in tigers, rhinoceros, bears, primates and other species, securing protection for wilderness habitat (including creation of a national park system in Gabon), halting construction of coal-fired power plants and other major polluting industries in the Midwest U.S., and recent successful efforts at the Montreal Protocol to avoid as much as several hundred gigatonnes of CO2e emissions.
His initial focus at IGSD continued efforts begun in association with EIA (see below) to evolve the Montreal Protocol by securing an amendment to enable a global phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs.
In 2014 LaBudde initiated a parallel effort in concert with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL) to significantly increase energy efficiencies within the global cooling sector as a means of doubling or trebling the quantity of avoided CO2e emissions resulting from an HFC phase-down.
LaBudde acted as a consultant to ValleyWatch from 2002-2008 where he initiated and organized a campaign blocking construction of the world's largest soybean processing plant by ConAgra Foods.
During this time, LaBudde also acted as a consultant and wrote numerous white papers and internal documents for executives/ senior management among Fortune 500 companies and others on social, economic and environmental merits of green building & energy efficiency including BP, Siemens, GE, Shell Oil, Microsoft, U.S. Green Building Council, et al. From 1991 to 2004, he was the founder and executive director of the Endangered Species Project and supervised and financed extensive field investigations throughout Asia, Africa and Americas to document illegal trade in bears, tigers, rhinos, primates and other endangered species.
Provided funding, video cameras and other equipment for domestic and international NGO campaigns on wildlife and wilderness protection, and for human rights investigations in Burma, Indonesia and Tibet.
From 1988 to 1990, he was also a field biologist and campaign coordinator of Earthtrust and organized and led first high seas expedition to document use of pelagic driftnets by Asian fishermen.
Video/documentary footage and personal interviews shown in news broadcasts on ABC, BBC, CBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MTV, NBC, NHK, RAI, TBS, et al. and included in dozens of documentary productions worldwide.
Received ASPCA Founder's Award for Humane Excellence 1989; Friends of Animals Activist of the Year 1990; Goldman Prize for North America, 1991,[1] TIME Magazine Fifty Future World Leaders, 1994.