Listening leads to the right intervention

The hot beautiful Zambia Luanga River Valley has an amazing diversity of wildlife, especially elephants, hippos, crocodiles, zebras, wildebeest and other large animals. It has been so for ages.

But as time goes by and with a growing population the pressures on nature and wildlife increases. The areas became rife with poachers that threatened the natural world more and more. Dale Louis of Wildlife Conservation Society, a passionate blond conservation biologist, tried everything in his power to stop illegal hunting. For many years he and his devoted team of rangers tried to enforce the law by patrolling the enormous area and trying to catch the wicked poachers. But somehow – as if the devil played with it – they almost always came too late.

One day far out in the field, waiting in an ambush, he suddenly realized that so far they had been trying to outsmart the poachers, without any success: “We never got out of our cars to talk to them, question them, who they were and why they poached.” He and his colleagues decided to do just that and entered villages and the small and simple homes of the people. What they found out was that the men were poaching because their families were starving. So Dale and his colleagues decided that to help the animals, they first had to help the people. They started Community Marketing for Conservation to transform poachers into farmers.

Poachers trade guns for new skills, seeds and a guaranteed income from their farming. Now after a few years the elephants, wildebeest, crocodiles and other species are recovering. Communities are not anymore starving but living from farming with the help of the cooperative.

COMACO is a recipient of the 2008 Equator Prize. We retell the story from the perspective of a conservation biologist. The project is described in United Nations Development Programme. 2012. Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), Zambia. Equator Initiative Case Study Series. New York, NY.