Collaborative Conservation in Namibia: How Communities are Helping Save Wildlife

World Wildlife Fund is coming to Atlanta!

Despite continued reports of poaching from around the world, there are stories of hope in southern Africa. Spend an evening with Richard Diggle, an expert in community-based natural resource management from WWF-Namibia, and Lisa Steel, an expert in protected area and species management from WWF-US, for an insider’s account of how the communal conservancy movement is linking conservation to poverty alleviation. This is your opportunity to explore the ways that WWF and our partners are helping Namibia use this powerful, sustainable model to conserve nearly half of its land and safeguard iconic species such as elephants, rhinos, lions and giraffes.

*Regretfully, Asser Ndjitezeua's travel plans have changed and he is not able to be in the US for this event as was indicated on your invitation.

Richard Diggle
Richard Diggle is CBNRM community business adviser with WWF- Namibia. He has extensive experience in community-based natural resource management dating from the early 1990s, when he worked in the CAMPFIRE Programme in Zimbabwe. Diggle began his (now 17) years in Namibia working with Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation in the Zambezi (Caprivi) Region, and subsequently joined the WWF- Namibia office to focus on financial and enterprise development support.

Lisa Steel
Lisa Steel is a senior director of wildlife conservation with WWF-US. She is a biologist with 17 years of experience living and working in Africa—in the DRC, Gabon, CAR, and Zambia—managing complex, multi-partner projects. Her technical aptitudes include protected area and species management, landscape planning, transboundary conservation, participatory approaches to community engagement, community-based natural resource management, and wildlife use and trade (subsistence and commercial). Since 2008, Steel has been based at WWF-US in Washington, DC, where she continues to support programs in Africa with a focus on the human-wildlife interface and ways to optimize wildlife, ecological, and human benefits from sustainable natural resource management.