Why This Initiative?
The Problem
Even though there’s a significant availability of skilled professionals that are able to manage specific technical challenges in conservation (e.g. ecological research, wildlife management, project planning and administration, GIS, or environmental education), there’s a clear scarcity of transdisciplinary professionals with the experience and personality needed to coordinate entire conservation programs in the field. Managing such programs require hiring, inspiring, empowering and coordinating large teams composed of different people with diverse disciplinary origins that tend to have a narrow understanding of conservation challenges. It also includes building constructive relations with a great diversity of groups including local stakeholders, regional and national authorities, economic interest groups, donors, media, other conservationists, and academics. Finally, leading conservation teams in large nature reserves requires a long-term personal commitment to live in areas where “the action is needed” but which tend to lack in comfort and amenities compared to other more prestigious and comfortable positions.
This lack of experienced and effective team leaders is so severe that it often becomes a major bottleneck for some organizations to scale up their conservation actions. There are situations where a conservation program that has secured needed funding can’t work at full pace because the organization hasn’t found the right project leader after months of advertising such position. In parallel, most academic training programs for conservationists are run and taught by professionals with great theoretical knowledge but little experience in the actual management of conservation programs and organizations. Hence, we need to connect potential team leaders with experienced conservation practitioners to promote practice-based learning that will complete their preexisting academic training.
The Opportunity
In view of this problem, we can connect organizations that are achieving outstanding outcomes regarding the conservation and restoration of wild landscapes and that are experiencing significant organizational growth as result of their track record of conservation results. These organizations include Frankfurt Zoological Society, African Parks, Australian Wildlife Conservancy, and Rewilding Argentina. These conservation NGOs are in dire need of effective team leaders as result of their organizational growth, while they also store decades of practical knowledge on how to manage effective conservation programs. In total, they have more than 3.000 people working in the field, and they have direct management or management agreements over 30 million ha of some of the most emblematic wild landscapes in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.
We have the opportunity to connect these NGOs and other outstanding conservation organizations in a training program for conservation team leaders in order to increase their pool of professionals who can manage present and future complex conservation programs. Also, we can promote interinstitutional exchange of practical knowledge among them so they can identify and learn new and unexpected approaches and methods used by organizations that work in very different contexts and organizational cultures.
“This training initiative is crucial for our managers to contextualize their efforts in the field. It will allow them to become aware of the level of commitment required to carry out a long-term project, to be inspired by successful examples, and to strengthen their knowledge, broadening the spectrum of possible strategies when making decisions. This practice-based and on-site school, led by an experienced international conservationist, ensures a practical and comprehensive approach that is difficult for each institution to achieve on its own.”
— Sofía Heinonen
CEO Rewilding Argentina
