Although William Holden’s illustrious acting career spanned over 40 years, and included nearly 80 films plus a coveted Oscar for STALAG 17, the role in which he took the most pride was as a conservationist and co-founder of the Mount Kenya Game Ranch. His dedicated efforts to preserve the wildlife so precious to all of us soon expanded throughout the world, as he instilled in everyone he touched a reverence for nature’s creatures. In his memory, I founded the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, in cooperation with his former partners, to carry on his important efforts and to meet the ever-increasing demand for alternatives to extinction. The foundation’s education program currently serves over 11,000 students per year. Overhead expenses in the United States are underwritten through the generosity of a single donor, ensuring that virtually 100% of your tax-deductible donation goes directly to our work. We hope you will consider participating in our present and in our future. Stefanie Powers |
The Climate Action Network (CAN) is a worldwide network of over 1300 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in more than 120 countries, working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels.
CAN members work to achieve this goal through information exchange and the coordinated development of NGO strategy on international, regional, and national climate issues. CAN has regional network hubs that coordinate these efforts around the world.
CAN members place a high priority on both a healthy environment and development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland Commission). CAN’s vision is to protect the atmosphere while allowing for sustainable and equitable development worldwide.
Tocara Skin & Body Science is a company that distributes 100% Natural and Organic Skincare and Lifestyle products into South Africa and Namibia. We offer education to retailers and skin care therapists.
Please view our Educational Pages for information on no-no ingredients & why we do not distribute products that contain them.
The need for a grassroots organization that would galvanize communities across Africa to positively contribute towards sustainable management of natural resources was an idea born out of a discussion by a group of environment and natural resource management practitioners gathered in Arusha Tanzania in 2010. The idea was subsequently shared with other like-minded individuals and culminated in the formation and subsequent registration of Africa Nature Organization as Non-Governmental Organization on the World Wetlands Day 2nd February 2012. Our focus has been to promote sustainable environmental and natural resource management best practices among grassroots communities working closely with civil society organizations, private sector actors and Government.
Our Liaison Offices in New York, New Delhi, Tokyo and Vienna continue to serve as contact points for ACUNS members traveling to those locations and interested in making connections to the United Nations based organizations in those cities, and to the local scholarly communities there.
The individual lead Liaison Officers at these locations are ACUNS members, either in the academic or practitioner communities, who have volunteered their services to help support members of our global network.
In some cases, the Liaison Offices also organize functions – lectures, seminars, workshops, and conferences – in cooperation with local UN bodies, other international organizations, NGOs, and academic institutions. The Vienna Liaison Office has been especially active in arranging or participating in such programming, supported by an energetic group of young volunteer interns.
Protecting waterbird populations has been part of Audubon’s mission even before the official establishment of the National Audubon Society. Outrage over the slaughter of millions of waterbirds, particularly egrets and other waders, for the millinery trade led to the foundation, by Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall, of the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1896. By 1898, state-level Audubon Societies had been established in Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Illinois, Maine, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Minnesota, Texas, and California. In 1900, Audubon member Frank M. Chapman launched the first Christmas Bird Count – Audubon’s all-volunteer holiday census of early-winter bird populations – as an alternative to the traditional Christmas “Side Hunt,” in which hunters competed to kill as many birds (and mammals) as possible.
In 1901, state-level Audubon groups joined together in a loose national organization, which helped to establish the first National Wildlife Refuge in the U.S. – Pelican Island, in Florida, in 1903 – and facilitated the hiring of wardens to protect waterbird breeding areas in several states. In 1905, the National Audubon Society was founded, with the protection of gulls, terns, egrets, herons, and other waterbirds high on its conservation priority list.
In 1918, President Wilson signed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), which remains to this day one of the strongest laws protecting wild North American birds. Shortly after the passage of the MBTA, Audubon established its first system of waterbird sanctuaries in seven states along the eastern coast of the U.S., and thus initiated the implementation of large-scale, scientifically-based bird conservation efforts.
The Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda (ECOTRUST) is a non – governmental environmental conservation organization established in 1999. ECOTRUST has developed a valued niche in ‘conservation finance’ and pursued relentlessly a clear vision of ‘a healthy environment with prosperous people’ and a mission, ’to conserve natural resources and enhance social welfare by promoting innovative and sustainable environment management in Uganda.’
ECOTRUST’s core values of ‘accountability and transparency in all our dealings,Creating value for our stakeholders, Pursuit of excellence and continuous improvement, Commitment to personal integrity, creating a culture of teamwork’, remain the jealously protected business principles of the organization, guiding all business decisions and entire management ethics.
Objectives;
• Private Land Management
• Management and control of pollution
• Renewable Energy
• Sustainable Land Use.
• Restoration, Conservation and Management
ECOTRUST works with different communities and stakeholders to conserve natural resources and biodiversity. The key strategies include financial intermediation, capacity building and direct involvement in selected conservation activities. During the year 2016, ECOTRUST commissioned a process of developing a strategic plan for the next 5 years. The goal of the strategy is; To build ECOTRUST as an efficient, socially responsible and sustainable organization in the field of conservation and climate change response.
ECOTRUST will aspire to achieve the above goal under 4 Key Results Area aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their respective outputs as shown below;
- Rural Livelihood and Resilience in high climate risk areas built.
- Private Land Trust management in fragile corridors promoted.
- Integrity and functionality of protected natural capital maintained.
- Institutional re-engineering and capitalization of ECOTRUST for long term sustainability enhanced.
ATE’s research arm, the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, has made many important contributions to elephant research over the years. The knowledge gained from the AERP team has profoundly altered the way we think about, conserve and manage elephant populations. Our research has highlighted the ethical implications of dealing with sentient, long-lived, intelligent and social complex animals and our knowledge base provides powerful and authoritative support to elephant conservation and advocacy campaigns worldwide. For more than four decades AERP’s presence has helped ensure the survival of the elephants as well as the Amboseli ecosystem.
AERP research covers many areas including: social organization, behavior, demography, ecological dynamics, spatial analyses and mapping, communication, genetics, human-elephant interactions and cognition. Our long-term datasets underpin all these research topics.
CORE RESEARCH
Our team of Kenyan research assistants and visiting scientists are in the field at least six days a week. We record all demographic events in the population; births and deaths, musth, oestrus and mating. Our routine daily observations note associations between family units and independent males, geographic location, group size, composition, activity and habitat type. Within families we monitor female affiliation and the dispersal of young males from their family to analyze family dynamics. We have systematically monitored the size and growth of over 600 individuals from 1976 to the present. Since 1999 we have collected dung samples for genetic analyses of population origins, paternity and within- and between-family relatedness. We are constantly maintaining and updating our individual records, and we also carry out basic ecological monitoring through vegetation plots, water table measurements and rainfall.
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH
ATE hosts visiting researchers who contribute to the growing understanding of African elephants in general, and the knowledge base for the sustained future of the Amboseli population in particular.
Researchers interested in collaborating with ATE should address their enquiries to our Director of Science, Prof. Phyllis Lee (phyllis.lee@stir.ac.uk). ATE has always enjoyed a dynamic collaboration network and we welcome the opportunity for new partnerships to continue that tradition. Our collaborations extend across many subject areas:
Communication
Communication is the glue that binds the social network of an intelligent species. Joyce Poole and Petter Granli recorded and analyzed Amboseli elephant vocalizations as part of the work of their NGO ElephantVoices. Their aim is to build our scientific understanding of the intelligence and social complexity of elephants and enhance the toolbox for their conservation and management. At the same time they act as a voice for elephants in a strong advocacy component. You can follow some of their work and activities on the ElephantVoices Facebook page. Other communication studies have focused on elephants’ capacity for individual recognition: Karen McComb pioneered the playback approach and demonstrated that each female elephant recognizes around 100 other females from voice alone.
Elephant Life Histories and Reproduction
Ongoing studies provide vital information on how elephants grow, mature and learn to cope with their physical and social environments. This work, guided by Phyllis Lee asks how longevity and developmental processes contribute to fitness and reproductive success. The four-decade-long Amboseli dataset is now yielding exciting insights into these questions; Phyllis’ work has recently demonstrated that early life experiences have survival and fitness consequences across individual lifetimes. The role of old, experienced females in guiding family decisions has become apparent: families with older matriarchs have improved calf survival and shorter inter-birth intervals for all females in the family. An extreme drought event in 2009 caused the death of many of these important leaders. Vicki Fishlock’s work, supported by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, aims to assess the social and reproductive effects of these losses. As a result of Vicki’s work, we are developing further studies into what leadership and negotiation means for elephant families.
Human-elephant conflict and co-existence
ATE is bringing its specialized knowledge of elephant behavior and society to bear on developing conflict-reduction strategies that are consistent with rural agriculture and Maasai livestock husbandry (see also Community Outreach). Work by Kadzo Kangwana, Christy Browne-Nunez, Patrick Chiyo and Winnie Kiiru has guided and developed our approach to conflict and coexistence.
Genetic analysis
Scientists from Duke University have mapped DNA profiles in order to define family relationships and origins of the Amboseli population. Cross-referenced to behavioral observations, the DNA analysis by Beth Archie examined survival strategies based on relatedness. Beth’s student Patrick Chiyo studied the socio-ecology of crop-raiding elephants using genetic techniques. Patrick’s work expanded to examine male association patterns and the impact of these on high risk activities such a crop-raiding.
Cognition
Dick Byrne and Lucy Bates have examined elephants’ formidable reputation for memory and intelligence by investigating specific cognitive skills designed to probe elephants’ ability to manipulate and respond to their world and each other. Karen McComb and Graeme Shannon have expanded Karen’s early work on elephant communication and vocal recognition into the cognitive sphere by presenting elephants with a series of acoustic “threats” via playback experiments. Their studies show that elephants and discriminate and appropriately respond to varying levels of threats from lions and from humans, and that these abilities are strongest amongst experienced (older) elephants.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
The long-term survival of elephants can only be assured by creating a niche for free-living elephants that is compatible with the needs and aspirations of the surrounding human communities. Elephants and humans have shared the Amboseli landscape for approximately 500 years. With the expansion of settlement, agriculture and livestock numbers inevitably encounters between people and elephants are increasing. ATE’s approach is aimed at maintaining the conservation ethos which has been part of Maasai tradition, but which is increasingly threatened by the pressures of 21st century human society.
Community Relations
Our field staff maintains daily contact with the surrounding Maasai community. This friendly interaction is essential to ensure that landowners maintain a tolerant attitude to the presence and passage of elephants on their group ranch land. We estimate that at any one time 80% of the wildlife in Amboseli is using community lands; without community participation there is simply no future for wildlife. Our approach is to allow a two-way exchange of understanding with communities. Concerns are aired in constructive dialogue, not in retaliatory killing of wildlife. We had proof of the value of this approach in 2012, when a local Maasai man waited for five hours beside an elephant calf trapped in a well. He patiently protected the little calf until he could reach ATE staff via an unreliable mobile phone network, and we then rescued the calf with the help of DSWT staff. Without this man’s care and respect, the calf, who we called Lemoyian, would certainly have died.
Consolation
ATE has an innovative and successful consolation scheme to assist members of the community who lose livestock to elephants. Started in 1997 the program pays an owner of a cow, sheep or goat a set amount when an elephant kills any livestock on community lands. Previously, Maasai custom dictated an elephant had to be speared and killed in retribution for livestock deaths. The number of elephants speared dropped by more than half after the initiation of the consolation scheme. This scheme has since become a model in other areas and for other species.
Maasai Elephant Scouts
ATE operations outside the park include employing fifteen Maasai elephant scouts who patrol the ecosystem on foot, reporting elephant presence and signs, injured elephants and conflicts, as well as signs of poaching and the bushmeat trade. Their work is coordinated with that of the Amboseli-Tsavo Game Scouts Association (ATGSA) and the Big Life Foundation. The ATE scouts support our monitoring work by augmenting our elephant sightings data, especially during the wet season when elephants range widely. Scouts also assist in verification of consolation claims. Support to the scouts contributes to improved community participation and understanding of human-wildlife interaction as well as providing employment in a depressed rural area. We are also beginning a collaboration with the Lion Guardians programme to fund the work of two conflict mitigation scouts, at the request of the Kaputei community.
Terramanzi Group is a leading South African based multi-disciplinary environmental firm. We provide specialised, professional consulting services to clientele across Africa through our dedicated green building and environmental business units and our extensive and accredited network of industry leading experts. We thrive on providing personalised service excellence, bringing a wealth of knowledge and innovation to each customer experience, first time, on time, every time.
With over 500 successful Projects and 15 years of industry experience across both government and private sectors, backed by our industry leading reputation for service excellence, we help to enable your business to thrive with the comfort of knowing that your Project is in trusted hands.
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Digital Tools: Connecting Smallholder Farmers with Smart, Sustainable Solutions
Indigenous Information Network (IIN) works on both Development,Conservation of Our Environment with a focus on several multilateral agreements, rights issues for women children and for pastoralists and forest- dwelling groups in Kenya. It is a non-profit, volunteer-run non-governmentalorganization (NGO) registered in the Republic of Kenya. The organization was founded in 1996 by a group of professionals in response to addressing needs for information through media and other channels about Indigenous Peoples, their livelihoods, and the challenges they face as they struggle to exist. The organization has been involved in dissemination of information, environmental conservation activities, community development, and advocacy activities to support of Indigenous Peoples, women, girl child, youth and other isolated minorities in the region.
IIN works directly with indigenous groups from rural areas to address issues in the following areas:
- Environmental conservation- With a focus on different multilateral agreements, at the local, national, regional and international levels.
- Health issues, including sexual reproductive health,
- Women’s rights and gender mainstreaming
- Education which includes Girlchild education
- Water issues promoting access to clean water by harvesting the rain, Protecting natural source. We strongly believe without clean water no good health for the communities.
- Economic Empowerment which include fundraising, for both the communities we work especially women and the youth.
- Traditional Knowledge, and protection and preservation of our cultural
- Land rights
- Sustainable development with a focus on sustainable development goals (SDGs)
Communication Strategies:
Indigenous Information Network IIN, believes that information is empowering. Un informed community is like someone in darkness. Engaging the communities and keeping them informed on different development around them is crucial. We do this by helping to set recourse centers and conducts person in every community that we work with so that they can help reach out and share any development issues. IIN also engages in networking and information sharing between the indigenous peoples of Africa and worldwide via electronic and print media. IIN continues to use the social media and other forms of communication and information sharing – Nomadic News and other updates and promotes different communities to make use of local radios around them to share information among themselves. Nomadic News and environmental news. Nomadic News focuses on the struggles of Indigenous Peoples in Africa and makes connections between grassroots, national and international politics.
The Center for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE) was established in1992 as an international inter-governmental Organization with diplomatic status.This was in response to the convention adopted by the Council of Arab Ministers Responsible For the Environment (CAMRE) , in 1991 and upon the initiative of the Arab Republic of Egypt, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Arab fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD).
Centre For Research in Environment Kenya
Creek-Kenya has been supporting stakeholders, clients and organizations across East Africa and beyond attain and realize their business goals efficiently, cost-effectively and with the minimum of environmental and social impact.
The Mission of the Association shall be “to be the umbrella association for all Renewable Energy promoters enabling and encouraging the sustainable development of the Nigerian economy through Renewable Energy”.
The Vision of the Association shall be “to promote strategies that will improve the contribution of renewable energy up to forty percent (40%) of the National Energy Mix by 2030”.
Created in 1948, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the world’s largest and most diverse environmental network. As a membership union of government and civil society organizations, IUCN harnesses the experience of its 1,300 member organizations and around 16,000 experts. IUCN provides knowledge, tools, and a neutral forum in which governments, NGOs, scientists, businesses, local communities, indigenous peoples groups, faith-based organizations and others can work together to forge and implement solutions to environmental challenges.
IUCN works with partners to achieve large-scale forest landscape restoration (FLR), or in other words to restore whole landscapes “forward” to meet present and future needs and to offer multiple benefits and land uses over time. IUCN collaborates with FLR partners to gather knowledge, develop and apply tools, and build capacity while supporting policy-makers, practitioners, researchers and landowners around the world. IUCN and WRI developed a proven Restoration Opportunities Methodology Assessment (ROAM) with practical steps for diverse stakeholders to restore landscapes at any scale.
At the invitation of the German Government and IUCN, the Bonn Challenge was established at a ministerial roundtable in September 2011. The Bonn Challenge is a global initiative to restore 150 million hectares of the planet’s deforested and degraded lands by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030. The platform facilitates the implementation of several existing international commitments that call for restoration, including the CBD Aichi Target 15, the UNFCCC REDD+ goal and the Rio+20 land degradation target. AFR100 is a contribution to the Bonn Challenge. IUCN is the Secretariat for the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration, a global network that unites governments, organizations, academic/research institutes, communities and individuals under a common goal: to restore the world’s lost and degraded forests and their surrounding landscapes.
Focus countries within AFR100: Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda
The Northern Rangelands Trust is a community conservancy membership organisation. Our mission is to develop resilient community conservancies, which transform people’s lives, secure peace and conserve natural resources.
We do this by supporting communities to:
- Develop locally-led governance structures that complement traditional systems
- Run peace and security programmes
- Take the lead in natural resources management
- Manage sustainable businesses linked to conservation
We fundraise for our member conservancies, and provide advice and guidance on management. We support a wide range of training, monitor performance, and work as an independent third party in support of conservancy partnerships with county and national government, investors and development partners.
SEI Africa is based in Nairobi, Kenya and is hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre. The centre collaborates with African governments, organizations and networks, acting as a hub for SEI’s engagement across the continent. The centre’s work focuses on four key areas: energy and climate; natural resources and ecosystems; sustainable urbanisation; and health and environment.
From its establishment in August 2008 until June 2013, SEI Africa was based at the Institute of Resource Assessment at the University of Dares Salaam. As of July 2013, it is based in Nairobi, Kenya, hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre. Staff members are active across South, East and West Africa.
Tsavo Trust is a field based, Kenyan not-for-profit conservation organization working towards protecting wildlife and its habitat.Tsavo Trust believes in conserving the vast wilderness of the Tsavo Conservation Area, that encompasses Kenya’s biggest Protected Area, is home to Kenya’s largest elephant population, several iconic Tuskers, numerous high value species and one of the few truly wild places with significant wildlife left in Africa.
This national heritage is under threat and faces multiple challenges including wildlife crime, climate change and habitat loss.
Tsavo Trust works on a unique strategy, in partnership with Kenya Wildlife Service and other partners on direct wildlife conservation projects as well as engaging specific local communities in the stewardship of community conservancies, so as to encourage participation in conservation activities that bring many varying benefits to those marginalised people that border the formal Protected Areas.
The live animal exportation tradebreaks every animal welfare law ever written, but yet is allowed to continue, despite tipping the scale as one of the cruellest activities created by man on planet earth.
There are approximately 20 countries which export live animals for slaughter, with France, Canada and Australia exporting the most cattle. Australia has, over the past 30 years, exported over 2.5 million live sheep. New Zealand ceased live exports in 2003 after ongoing public protests, and a series of horror events ending with a ship carrying 57 000 New Zealand sheep being rejected by Saudi Arabia. Unable to port anywhere, most of the sheep died. Survivors were “gifted” to Eritrea, where they were slaughtered in primitive abattoirs. After this atrocity, New Zealand stopped exports.
The EU developed laws pertaining to travel conditions and care of live export animals, but there is no humane, or “cruelty free” way of loading, then transporting, thousands of animals in ships for weeks on end, and it is preposterous to think of the hours spent by humans writing welfare laws thinking that they could make it so. The global live animal trade is worth billions of US Dollars, but the extreme cruelty is what the public doesn’t see. Animals which could be delivered “on hook” to feed a community, end up dead en route and are tossed overboard, making them worthless to anyone.
In South Africa, 61 000 sheep were recently loaded onto a ship (the Al Shuwaikh) in East London destined for middle eastern destinations including Kuwait, where there are no animal welfare laws at all. The conditions on board were beyond comprehension and again, the South African Animal Protection Act was ignored, while the sheep suffered horrific handling and on board conditions before the ship had even left the dock. The SA Government has ignored welfare’s written reports and welfare concerns. They ignored objections and protests, and signed a contract for 600 000 animals to be exported. And so the cruelty will continue.
ARO condemns live exportation of animals from SA, and joins with other welfare movements in SA to publicise, condemn and, we hope, ban the live exportation of animals from South Africa. The only way to stop it is to confront it. We ask for your support along the way.
Earthlife Africa is a non-profit organisation, founded in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1988, that seeks a better life for all people without exploiting other people or degrading their environment. We want to encourage and support individuals, businesses and industries to reduce pollution, minimise waste and protect our natural resources.
SPANA has worked with ANAW since 2012, delivering humane education through our network of animal welfare clubs.
Last year, 2,050 children took part in the clubs. 41 teachers attended training sessions, with 31 achieving an ICHE qualification.
Partner: University of Nairobi
Project type: Veterinary and education
Location: Nairobi
SPANA is working with the University of Nairobi to:
- provide free veterinary treatment for 300 working oxen
- evaluate owner knowledge and attitudes in order to design effective training
- train 10 animal health professionals
- provide community training for at least 500 people
Solid Green Consulting is a young and energetic company enthusiastic about advancing sustainability in the built environment. With a wealth of experience at our disposal, we offer property developers and building professionals a sophisticated range of consulting services to assist in achieving their green building goals.