As competition for land in Africa increases, we work to keep wildlife landscapes safe from damaging development or degradation. Our science and research maps wildlife corridors so they can be safeguarded. We help investors to purchase land to keep it for conservation, and then bring in the ecologically-compatible businesses that maintain that landscape’s biodiversity while creating jobs, buying from local suppliers, and growing national economies.
WHERE DO WE DO THIS?
Angola Botswana GABON KENYA Namibia UGANDA Zambia Zimbabwe
'Conservation' has for some time been misunderstood as an exercise in keeping land wild for animals and not for people. We couldn't disagree more: conservation as we practice it is all about bringing long-term, sustained rewards from looking after environments and their wild animals to people, governments, and the planet. Locally, businesses like solar farms give back to their neighbours. Wilderness ecotourism creates jobs and funds social projects like schools or clinics, while new business buys from nearby suppliers. Nationally, successful enterprise drives growth and pays taxes. Underpinning all our activities is the idea that conservation must bring tangible value.
We work with community land owners, private properties, and protected areas to identify new investors and to direct fresh ways to finance conservation. An example is Loisaba Conservancy, a 56,000-acre refuge for elephants in Kenya’s Laikipia region. With The Nature Conservancy, we helped find finance for a Kenyan community trust to buy the property, and now help that trust manage the conservancy and funnel funding from ecotourism and other business to protecting wildlife and bringing benefits to local people.
Once open, endless landscapes are increasingly being fenced and partitioned as development restricts animals' traditional migration routes. For many species, but for elephants especially, that could be fatal: they must move to survive. We aim for landscapes to be connected and contiguous, but we also work to keep at least some 'corridors' open to sustain migrations for wildlife between their places of sanctuary.