02 Sep 2018

A South African Non-Governmental organisation, Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) founded 45 years ago, has engaged the corporate sector and communities in South Africa to conserve threatened species and ecosystem.

EWT works with governments and international organisations to foster the systematic change needed to ensure that environments and the services it provides are protected now and for the future generation.

Head of the Trust, Dr Harriet Davies-Mostert, who was the guest speaker at the Kalahari Conservation Society (KCS) Annual Dinner themed ‘Forging Conservation Partnership within Africa’ held at Gaborone Convention Centre said the Trust’s first two projects aimed at addressing the plight of Cheetahs and Vulture species, which are close to the heart of Kalahari Conservation Society.

The Trust that operates at the front line of conservation in Southern and Eastern Africa, she said, has for the past four years undergone several evolutions towards its current strategy. Its three pillars are saving species, saving habitats and benefiting people.

She said EWT is at the forefront of conducting applied research, supporting community conservation and livelihoods, training and building capacity, addressing human–wildlife capacity conflict, monitoring threatened species and establishing safe spaces for wildlife range expansion.

Over the last decade, African vultures have experienced a rapid population decline, leading to the classification of seven of the 11 African vulture species globally endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

“This is a real crisis; vulture-scavengers provide economic and human health benefits by cleaning up carcasses and other wastes in the landscape, reducing the spread of diseases.

A range of human factors has been linked to this decline, from loss or degradation habitat through changes in land use, collisions and electrocutions on electrical infrastructure, deliberate or accidental poisoning from big game hunting and drowning farm dams,” she said.

In recognition of the crisis, Dr Davies-Mostert said the Convention Migratory Species commissioned the development of multi-species action plan to conserve African-Eurasian vultures to halt the decline, reverse population trends and provide management guidelines to all range states.

She elaborated that her colleague at EWT, Andre Botha, who is the acting overarching coordinator undertook targeted work to combat the poisoning of vultures across the continent.

She noted that Botha developed a specialised training course to empower field rangers to manage poisoned incidents to ensure that crime scenes were managed forensically, increase the survival of poisoned vultures and reduce the victims of secondary poisoning of vultures.

In his welcome remarks, Kalahari Conservation Society chairperson, Mr Neo Moroka said Botswana has made tremendous efforts since independence to protect and conserve the rich natural resources it had been blessed with.

Mr Moroka observed it had become quite obvious that the problems faced by Batswana were not unique, noting it had become important to partner with others if the nation was to effectively tackle such problems.

He said at independence, Botswana had just under 70, 000 km of land set aside as nature conservation, noting that despite the growing population of mobility, after 50 years, Botswana prides herself of well over 168, 000 km of conservation areas and about 29 per cent of total land area.

Mr Moroka said there was need for cooperative efforts by all stakeholders including international cooperating partners to address the challenges that face Botswana’s natural environment such as pollution, climate change, desertification and decline in biodiversity and water shortage.

“In line with vision 2036 aspiration, we should all aim for sustainable and optimal use of our natural resources in order to transform Botswana’s economy and uplift the livelihoods of our people.” ENDS