Earth Protect is on a video-fueled mission.

• Author: Auran, Carli

Pictures flash across the screen: the blue whale, the ocelot, the bald eagle. "Extinct is Forever," posted by Plant It Film Productions, is just one of more than 2,700 videos on EarthProtect.com.

Colorado-based Earth Protect launched its website worldwide in April, focusing on providing an entertaining place where people can stay connected and educated about environmental issues through videos.

Carol Barbeito and her son, founder Grant Barbeito, began Earth Protect in August 2007. Barbeito has a film background and co-founded Plant It Film Productions.

"He was impressed with 'An Inconvenient Truth' and other films," Carol Barbeito says. "Those films reached a lot of people."

Grant Barbeito decided to marry the concepts of film and social networking to create a way to teach people to get involved with helping the environment. The mother-and-son team call it "edutainment"--informing site-visitors in a fresh and exciting way.

By 2012, the site expects to have 42 million users and anticipates providing a huge library of content for the website, as well as growing its partnerships to more than 600.

Earth Protect offers a wide variety of information on 13 categories of environmental concern. They are user-generated and welcome all views and interests.

The first Earth Protect website was opened to the public in September 2008. Barbeito says one of the first steps was getting the Web development team to begin to take the concept into a more visual form.

The company began by constructing an advisory council from a variety of different backgrounds. Companies such as the Colorado Carbon Fund and the Jane Goodall Institute make up the still-growing team of contributors.

The operation is run by four full-time employees as well as board members and other executives. Barbeito says they are still at a stage where they're using primarily contractors.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Former Nike and Coors exec Richard Franklin, founder of Envirobrand, a similar environmentally conscious business, is one of...