SO WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO PUT YOUR TIME & MONEY?

What wouldn’t YOU do to feed and protect YOUR family??

?Would you chop down the last tree in the forest if it meant you had firewood or charcoal to feed and warm your family?

Would you hunt down the last animal in sight if it meant your family starved or ate a meal?

Would you kill a lion or elephant if it threatened to maul you or eat your crops or even kill you?

?If you had no alternatives, would you do whatever it takes to survive?

This is what Rewilding Africa believes.. that there is no alternative but to create alternative livelihoods for Africa's wilderness communities, if we are to have any chance of rewilding and protecting what’s left of her biodiversity and endangered species.?

Why is this not blatantly obvious and urgent to us all , who have any reason to care??

This remains a total mystery to me and the “corporate CSI/ impact funders/WWF’s/carbon credits/philanthropic wealth/grant funds/ donors/ nature positive/sustainable travel/wild economy” (whichever category you may fit in…) of the conservation world continue to appear to do nothing about it.?

Giving the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it’s because we don’t quite know how to solve this complex problem and hence it’s better to be seen to be doing something rather than nothing or just carry on with what we are familiar with?

Perhaps we should rightfully be saying this is not your problem to solve?

Surely Africa's governments should be responsible for master planning and creating livelihoods for their voters and building a resilient and sustainable conservation economy for the continent,??but are they honestly sufficiently resourced and funded to be able to do so, with their hands already full with unabated urban poverty, crime and chaos?

What I am saying is this IS solvable however it will require a cohesive and well thought through master plan and a significant amount of manpower and funding (which is available, it’s just not working or being spent in the right areas) to be able to solve this crisis and it’s not a quick fix.

?It’s more like if we start now, we will see results in 10-20 years time. If we don’t start now, I just hate to think how big this crisis would have grown by then and what natural world we will leave our children.

I have at least been bold enough to suggest a possible blue print and replicable solution, being that of a multiple land use , multiple revenue stream community conservancy planning , development and management model to surround every national park and reserve in Africa for starters.

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The rationale being , if we have to find a way to create alternative livelihoods at the scale needed, then logically ,we have to build wilderness businesses that employ a lot of people and are financially successful. And in order for big business to thrive in a wilderness sense, they need properly designed and formal land use planning, management procedures and bulk infrastructure in place , which means the vast wilderness community occupied land has to be properly and formally planned and developed first, before scale businesses can be established to create livelihoods!

?By leading the community and stakeholder narrative through the Multiple Land Use, Multiple Revenue Community Conservancy model , we are not only able to then offer these opportunities for big businesses to invest in and operate, we also have the opportunity to plan for vast portions of the Community Conservancy landscapes to then be officially protected, on the basis that circa 10% of the land becomes highly productive and helps pays for circa 90% of it to stay wilderness in the form of wildlife corridors , open forest and grasslands, game farms etc .(and of course funding sources such as carbon/biodiversity credits can then become useful to help subsidise this non consumptive land use)

?This requires BIG thinking, BIG organization, BIG change and BIG funding.

?And for those who may disagree, what is your solution??

?Is it perhaps..

?

• Put your head in the sand and pretend that Africa's population growth that is resulting in ongoing wilderness habitat devastation and encroachment into her national parks is not happening!

• Somehow remove the wilderness communities or incentivise them to move to the cities! (NOT GOING TO HAPPEN- WE ARE STILL FEELING THE EFFECTS OF FORCED REMOVALS TO CREATE THE COLONIAL ERA NATIONAL PARKS THEMSELVES!)
• Pay them to chop down less trees, cook more efficiently and sit at home (laughable, and if only carbon credit funding actually reached the hands of community members..)
• Increase fortress conservation efforts to continue to try and protect the reserves and parks from the encroaching destruction and population expansion, by employing more game guards, helicopters and sniffer dogs, (IT DOESNT AND WONT WORK BY ITSELF!)
• OR… Invest in, educate, partner and empower these wilderness communities, through thorough collaborative formal long term master land use planning, zoning and business development, which creates a sustainable and resilient and investable management plan, which leads to big business and countless conservation livelihoods?

?Haven’t countries like the United Kingdom surely learnt from the errors of the past, where almost no “nature planning” was applied to the UKs rural areas and now there is a frantic and costly effort to try and rewild vast areas of green desert farmland land at enormous cost and try and retrofit wildlife corridors that will be challenging at the very least to get right, after the fact.?

People, please STOP monetising Africa's biodiversity(and the worlds)crisis and PLEASE big business and private wealth, do something about it. Surely you owe it to yourselves and the world to show that nature and profit can co-exist.?

We have the opportunity to fully and comprehensively plan Africa's natural future rather than leave it undesigned, poorly planned??and destined to continue on its path to self destruction.

?SO WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO PUT YOUR TIME & MONEY?

Lets have a conversation...