NATURE FORUM WORLDWIDE

[Daan Vreugdenhil]

Large conservation organizations such as TNC (The Nature Conservancy of the USA), CI (conservation International) and WWF (World Wildlife Fund) have lots of staff in many developing countries that they pay higher salaries than the governments. But also many local conservation organizations have significant numbers of well-paid professional staff. In order to maintain their expensive staff, such organizations need financing from development agencies, like USAID, the Dutch and German Governments, the World Bank and the United Nations. These conservation organizations benefit more from money flowing to themselves than to the National Park Services of the countries where they work.

In conversations that I held with a variety of conservation organizations, I received the answer that financing more fieldstaff in national parks is not a priority for them and that they consider increasing fieldstaff a responsibility for the governments of those countries.

What in reality happens, is that higher salaries (paid with grants and contracts from development agencies) buy away the best conservationists out of the local national park services, so international conservation organizations may effectively compete with national parks services for the money from development agencies.

One often hears representatives of conservation organizations in developing countries criticize their government (read: their national parks service) for doing too little and to be ineffective. Well, it is not all that surprising that without funding, those national park services remain ineffective having their staff levels typically between 50 and 250 staff members per country. How in the world can you expect a government to effectively manage somewhere from 10 - 100 areas each measuring between 10 000 and 1 000 000 ha with so little staff? Of course they are ineffective! But if the money for the staff of all the offices of local and international conservation organizations in each country would be spent on rangers, they would be many times more effective than they are now. With that money they could often double to quadruple the number of rangers and significantly increase the field presence in each area while improving the working relationship with local communities. For each local professional staff member of a conservation organization in a developing country, you can get about 10 rangers! Per country we easily talk about somewhere between 25 and 100 professionals in different conservation organizations. You do the math.

Large conservation organizations have a vested interest in maintaining this situation, in which they receive both the glory of being the good and effective conservationists as well as the funding to do all sorts of high profile "good things" like carrying out studies, helping local communities and being in the local press as often as they can.

What is often forgotten though, is that yet another study only produces more paper, but a ranger continuously collaborates with local communities and protects animals and forests.

To make a long story short, the large conservation organizations have become a major factor in undermining effective conservation in developing countries.

Adopt A Ranger has been created to change the focus from studies to increasing field staff, particularly rangers. If you want to donate money to conservation, your money might be much more effectively spent with Adopt A Ranger (AAR) than with any of the large conservation organizations as AAR finances fieldstaff to actually manage areas, rather than to carry out studies.