Resources
Here you can access audios and in some cases presentations from our conversations with experienced team leaders and conservation practitioners, along with our conservation manual in multiple languages.
Video Podcasts

Luis Ortiz-Catedral
Coordinator of recovery teams for endangered species in New Zealand and Galapagos
“When you associate with people who actually see an opportunity instead of just blaming… good things happen!”
“If you pretend that there isn’t a problem, you are not going to fool your team or the donor. You are only going to fool yourself. And that’s a recipe for disaster. It’s OK to admit that there’s failure, as long as you are honest about it.”
“Never underestimate the value of good food in the field. Sometimes it’s one of the few comforts you have at the end of a very long day.”
“Ultimately the role of an NGO is to help government offices to fulfil certain duties. Not the other way around.”

Luis Arranz
Park director in several Central African countries
“15 years ago, I thought that we were going to lose everything in Africa: elephants, rhinos, national parks… everything. But since then, many of these things are increasing. The best way to get funding from donors is to work well. If you get good results (regarding biodiversity and human rights) the donors will come to you. (Getting) money is not the main problem for conservation. The main problem is where the money goes.”
“The most important thing for a park manager is to stay in the park as much as possible… Of course, we should take holidays and rest for some days, but the main danger is to spend most of the time traveling and having meetings outside the park.”
“That’s the most important thing: that the people (neighbors) are happy with us. If the people see that to have a national park is a little bit better than not to have one, they are happy and they will support the park”.

Astrid Vargas
Team coordinator for the recovery of the critically endangered black-footed ferret (USA) and Iberian lynx (Spain)
“Create harmony and build trust among people. This included in my case learning facilitation skills. It’s also important to have a good ear and observe. Often there’s no need to speak up, and you just need to listen and observe.”
“One thing that I believe is that everyone has to be their own leader, even if you are in a team. Something that we did in the Iberian lynx ex-situ team was to find out the passion of each team member and, while keeping the focus on their responsibilities, I’d try to facilitate the fulfilment of that personal passion. That would allow them to develop their own little parcel, while we would all stay connected and united in a job that was very stressful with lots of political pressure and stress.”
“How to create accountability and respect from other groups, like researchers? We created a very strong international network of scientists that were advising us and helping us to do a lot of research for free. We gave them access to the animals and that allowed them to publish because it was easy to publish with this species. Our only requirement was that they allowed us to communicate and use the results before they even published them. This is adaptive management.”

Simon Naylor
Park manager in Phinda Reserve (South Africa)
“How to communicate effectively was probably the most important skill that I had to learn. This implies who to communicate with, when, and what to communicate. Dealing with multiple landowners and different entities, and also dealing with different characters with their own personalities, you have to communicate in different ways. It’s about who you are talking to and dealing with.”
“What is really important is to have a shared vision. Every year we would lock us out for two of three days twice a year, and go over our working plans, and all the details. What was most important was to have everyone in the room together. In this way everyone knew what the others were doing and what the plan was.”
“It’s very important to make sure that everybody knew what the plan was and what they had to do within that plan. But I also realized that unless everyone had their own personal goals, we could never achieve that work plan.”