African Wildlife Foundation
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Mission Statement
AWF protects imperiled species—lions, mountain gorillas, rhinos, elephants—through habitat conservation, wildlife protection, leadership training, and wildlife-friendly community-beneficial business development for more than 50 years.
About This Cause
Founded in 1961, the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) is the leading conservation organization focused solely on the African continent. Our programs and strategies are based on sound science and are designed to protect the wild lands and wildlife of Africa and ensure a more sustainable future for Africa’s people. AWF is a non-profit organization with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya and support staff in Washington, DC. AWF is a registered 501(c)(3) in the United States. AWF’s conservation strategy includes the following key elements, or pillars: 1.Landscape Protection Saving wildlife is about saving land. The reason is straightforward: the loss of habitat is the single largest threat to most African wildlife. Like wild animals everywhere, Africa’s wildlife needs vast open landscapes to live, move and propagate. AWF works to acquire wildlife habitat that is at risk of destruction and takes steps to strengthen national parks, forest reserves and other private and communal lands that offer homes to wildlife. We use a variety of creative approaches to land conservation including: •Supporting existing protected areas, from Tanzania's popular Tarangire National Park to Mozambique's Banhine National Park. •Engaging in land-use planning with community groups to protect special sites and dedicate land to conservation efforts like the Cubo Community Nature Reserve or the Leasing Land for Conservation program where nearly 8,000 acres of community lands have already been protected. •Creating private lands trusts like the Kenya and Tanzania Land Conservation Trusts to hold land rights that promote long-term conservation. For example, AWF has acquired 44,000 acres in Tanzania as a vital movement corridor for elephants, lions and other remarkable wildlife. 2.Wildlife Protection Understanding species is critical to saving the lands they depend on. That is why since our founding AWF has supported some of the most important wildlife research work conducted in Africa. We were one of the first organizations to fund Dian Fossey’s field research concerning Rwanda’s mountain gorillas and Cynthia Moss’s research on elephants in Kenya. We are currently conducting research on lions and other carnivores, elephants, rhinos, the Grevy’s zebra and the severely endangered bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee) and mountain gorilla. Support of our field research gives AWF the science-based knowledge to plan and deliver the most effective actions to conserve Africa’s wildlife and its habitat. Our recently founded African Apes Initiative identifies landscapes with the potential to sustain viable African ape populations over the long term and then works with partners on the ground to conserve those ecosystems. 3.Education and Conservation Leadership Training Collaboration and capacity building with Africans has been an emphasis of AWF since our founding in 1961. We have helped train park rangers, teach communities about natural resource management, and through our respected Charlotte Fellows Program, provide funding for African students and professionals to pursue undergraduate and graduate-level studies in conservation science. All told, we’ve made possible the training of hundreds of wildlife managers across the continent, many of whom have gone on to become prominent conservation leaders in Africa. At the local and regional level, AWF also trains park rangers and game scouts through our ranger-based monitoring (RBM) program. In this capacity, AWF recently provided funding to Kenya Wildlife Service to supplement its existing Canine Detection Unit in both training and acquiring new dogs, which now boosts a 90% accuracy rate. 4.Conservation Enterprise AWF has established strategically located offices in each of our landscapes. Staffed with an unparalleled team of African professionals, these offices offer expertise in business planning, law and community development. Overall, AWF specialists assist rural communities who live with wildlife to establish enterprises that benefit conservation and the community. Wildlife then becomes a welcome asset rather than a costly nuisance to local populations. Conservation-related enterprises in Africa are frequently concessions for wildlife safaris, ecotourism lodges, walking safaris and camps. Other enterprises that AWF has fostered include the production of honey, sale of local handicrafts to tourists and the marketing and export of local products. The goal is to protect the large percentage of Africa’s wildlife that live outside the parks and reserves by engaging the communities to share in the benefit and responsibility of maintaining wildlife populations. AWF also builds or helps rebuild schools, develops conservation education curricula, provides supplemental training to teachers, and ensures the schools will last with the support from local businesses and missions. In order to achieve its mission, AWF works in conjunction with many organizations, including: •Communities and Their Institutions – AWF works directly with local communities and their institutions in all of our landscapes. AWF has adopted an asset-building approach that assists communities and groups to better take stock of their financial, environmental, social and human assets and to improve the asset value and cash flow of their community. Thus, AWF enables the communities to address the challenges of managing common property assets (land, pasture, wildlife, water, forestry, fishery, schools, aesthetic resources) in order that the shared asset base contributes effectively to the individual households. AWF acts as an independent broker in conservation business ventures between communities and private sector operators, providing livelihood opportunities whilst leveraging land for conservation at the same time. Through this approach AWF is directly involved in community institution and human capacity building as well as enabling local governance structures to work effectively. Our approach to communities envisions actively organized communities that identify with their surroundings and have the cultural integrity, pride and resources to ensure improved livelihoods in a sustainable way. •Governments – AWF is registered as an NGO in each of the fifteen countries where we operate, and works closely with all national and district government agencies. A key partner in every landscape where we work is the Protected Area Authority i.e., Parks Department, and the relevant Ministries that are charged with the stewardship of natural resources. For instance, AWF is now liaising with the South Sudanese government in helping project a positive path forward for its wildlife and people. •Private Sector – To engage international and local private sector companies in the success of landscape level conservation and local economic development, AWF is committed to working with the private sector. AWF has MOUs with several leading African wildlife tourism groups to work together on community enterprise development, awareness building and other aspects of landscape level conservation. AWF positions itself as an honest broker in facilitating community/private sector partnerships. AWF provides communities with the tools to be fully prepared to negotiate with the private sector, to meet the private investors’ obligations and to ensure the monitoring of the venture. From establishing fish farms to constructing conservation lodges, AWF seeks to secure enterprise development grants in order to improve upon the land equity that communities usually use to bargain. •Larger Civil Society – AWF works with local and national NGOs, research centers, universities, landholder associations, private sector associations and other civil society stakeholders in conservation, often on explicit landscape activities, but also to improve environmental governance related to those landscapes.