rory young

It’s the Big Six: Wildlife, People, Conflict, Ivory trafficking, transnational crime and climate change. How do you protect one of the oldest migration routes of one of the rarest elephants and some of the oldest cultures caught in the crosshairs of all this? Meet Rory Young and Chengeta Wildlfe, helping the communities whose history and future is entwined in living with the Desert elephants of Mali, as they make their 3000 mile circular trek around Timbuktu that has existed in an exquisite dance of survival for centuries. The speeded up human world and global pressures has dramatically affected the traditional cultures who live alongside these elephants and these corridors have become a locus for transnational crime, ethnic wars, and political agendas and extremism from all sides in extreme conditions. The evolution of the world has changed, and conservation models must also adapt and evolve, and our worldview evolve, adapt and take action.

As we’ve been discussing over a long period of time, conservation models must change. We’ll be spending several episode highlighting just how this is happening on the ground and the new faces and people that are coming up the ranks, picking up the torch from the old guard and adding the new components, skill sets and tools that are required in a very changed landscape- from climate shifts to shifta, terrorism, and transnational wildlife criminal gangs. My guest today is Nigel Kuhn, who you’ll remember from WildiZe’s Observer Team at CITES CoP17. Nigel brings us an understanding of not only what it’s like to have grown up during some of Zimbabwe’s most troubling times, but what it’s going to take, and the people who are picking up the front lines of Conservation 2.0 World Version update, across the African continent and the world as a global community.