Friday, October 31, 2008

Conservation corridors

The main reason the Joubert's got into filmmaking was to make a difference in conservation, and all the themes of their films reflect that and a deep appreciation of the beauty of wild Africa:

"It is my firm belief that what we have learnt since Darwin and Wallace is that islands and the wildlife on them are vulnerable. The smaller the island the more likely an extinction in the future. What we have done in African wildlife management is divide up free ranges and make them into islands of safe zones surrounded by wildlife hostile blocks, be they hunting, ranching, farming or civilization.

"If any effort at all is to be put into conservation it has to go towards linking these islands again, joining them up and recreating home ranges and natural migration routes. This can't happen without everyone's help, from governments to local communities to the commercial sector. I don't personally think that major donor help should be necessary although some would help initially, but Africa, wild Africa can have a working revenue model as well as any business.

"However to insist that wildlife and nature pay for their existence is very shortsighted and assumes that they are somehow the opposition, a renter or customer not an integral part of who we are. We are nature, a part of it not apart from it, and as such everything we do either assists nature or harms it, and by default is either good or bad for us. Corridors, linked reserves is the future we believe in."


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