[4] The organization receives funds from foundation and government grants, memberships and individual donations for bird recovery programs.
Concerned enthusiasts in the sport of falconry believed that breeding falcons in captivity would be a way to keep the species alive if the wild birds became extinct.
After a second meeting at Cornell University in 1969, the governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico were asked to protect the remaining populations of peregrine falcons.
Ornithology professor Tom Cade founded The Peregrine Fund at Cornell University in 1970 to breed the falcons in captivity and release them to the wild.
In 1974 a second breeding operation was begun in Fort Collins, Colorado, managed by Bill Burnham, who went on to become president of The Peregrine Fund for 23 years.
The Peregrine Fund currently has two recovery projects in the United States: The Aplomado falcon in Texas and the California condor in northern Arizona.
Aplomado falcons were once widespread in the American Southwest but habitat changes, pesticides and human persecution restricted their range to a few areas in Mexico by the 1950s.
Current research and conservation efforts are directed at the critically endangered Ridgway's hawk in the Dominican Republic, the Puerto Rican Sharp-shinned Hawk, the Grenada hook-billed kite confined to the island of Grenada, and the Cuban kite, endemic to Cuba and among the rarest species of raptor in the world.
The Peregrine Fund has biologists and field workers in Madagascar, an island off the east coast of Africa with vast biological diversity.
In 2015, the Fund's Malagasy biologists successfully protected three new areas, a total of more than 190,000 hectares, that have been added to the country's national park system and will be managed by and for local people to benefit many endangered species.
The Peregrine Fund provides student support, training and guidance in the study of the breeding behavior and ecology of the New Guinea harpy eagle.
Peregrine Fund research published in the journal Nature determined that poisoning from the residues of diclofenac in the carcasses of livestock that had been treated with the drug for veterinary purposes was responsible for the catastrophic die-off.