The Dilemma of Funding Real Conservation

After many years observing wildlife conservation efforts across Africa, one reality continues to surface: funding remains one of its greatest vulnerabilities.

For decades, conservation across the continent has depended heavily on donor funding, large international NGOs, philanthropy, tourism revenues. Governments' conservation budgets are systematically stretched too thin. In this context, international support has brought important, often vital benefits.

Yet it can also leave conservation efforts exposed. Funding cycles end, donor priorities shift, global crises intervene. This became especially clear during COVID, when tourism halted almost overnight. Donations slowed, conservation programmes that had appeared stable suddenly struggled to cover ranger salaries and maintain field operations. The experience revealed how fragile conservation systems can be when they rely too heavily on external goodwill.

For Africa’s wildlife to have a secure future, stronger local wildlife economies are essential — models rooted in community participation and integrated into national economies. This has become clear long ago: conservation must make sense not only morally, but economically. When local communities see consistent and tangible benefits from wildlife, conservation becomes something valued and protected from within.

Yet the chasm between the reality on the ground and the perception manufactured by the NGO world of well-meaning appeals is widening.

Partnerships and philanthropy remain important, but they cannot be seen as the only lifeline. Africa’s wildlife deserves funding systems that are locally grounded, built for the long term, and the Western world should be aware of what is really happening on the ground. Or should it?

A thoughtful article published on World Wildlife Day reflects on this stark reality in clear terms: 👉 https://www.patrolling.org/its-world-wildlife-day-show-me-the-money/?ref=patrol-newsletter

This photograph was taken in the Hwange National Park area by my son Steve, at Stoffie’s Pan: thanks to Imvelo Safari Lodges, elephants can be observed at eye level from the extraordinary “Look-Up Blind.” But Imvelo also conveys the correct message to visitors, by explaining what happens in and around Hwange, what has happened historically, and what the reality is today. Here there are simply too many elephants.

Zimbabwe has long practised active wildlife management. In the past, this included elephant culling when numbers exceeded ecological limits, with meat distributed to surrounding communities. In recent decades this practice has been phased out because of the global shift in the way environmental concerns are perceived and therefore handled. Today Zimbabwe applies a mix of ecotourism and regulated sustainable use, including quota-based trophy hunting in certain parts of the country.

The debate around consumptive versus non-consumptive use of wildlife has been ongoing for decades in the West , and remains complex and deeply emotional.

However, as funding for wildlife conservation becomes increasingly urgent - in a world where human–wildlife conflict is intensifying under growing demographic pressure - there is also a risk in oversimplifying the narrative.

Complex realities are reduced to emotionally compelling but partial messages; conservation in Africa and elsewhere does not exist in abstraction; it unfolds in landscapes where people and wildlife share space and resources.

Communities have the right to self-determination. Rather than prescribing uniform solutions from afar, the task should be to accompany and support them in identifying the most sustainable development models for their own contexts - models capable of ensuring both human dignity and the continued survival of wildlife.

Funds secured through simplified messaging should ultimately serve the more complex realities on the ground. They should also be directed toward community-led, sustainable conservation efforts. These exist, but communicating them more clearly to the wide public would not obtain the same fundraising results. I have seen this dilemma unfold for over 30 years.

#conservation #sustainable #worldwildlifeday

Zimbabwe's sustainable model of conservation developed in the 1980s is also described in @zambezivalleyrhinowarbook