Photo: Thorsten Messing | Unsplash
It’s time to salute the herder conservationists of Africa. Once, the term would have seemed an oxymoron. The people shepherding livestock across the continent’s great open grasslands were seen as the enemies of its charismatic wild mammals — to be fenced out of protected areas and policed by armed rangers. But that image is outdated. Today, in hundreds of community-run “conservancies” established across tens of millions of acres of Africa, herders and their cattle are sharing the unfenced land with elephants, giraffes, wildebeest, and buffalo. Armed only with mobile phones, the herders keep their livestock safe while protecting wildlife — by alerting their fellows to marauding lions and driving off poachers in places that rangers in four-wheel drives rarely venture — and accompany high-rolling tourists who fund their conservation endeavors. “Most of Africa’s biodiversity depends on lands owned and managed by local communities,” says Fred Nelson, a veteran of African conservation and the founder and CEO of Maliasili. “These communities are on the front line, and their conservation practices are key to sustaining and restoring healthy ecosystems.”
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