I’m really proud to announce that over the 2018 Safari Season, I have been allocating USD $5 per person per night on behalf of each of my guests to a fund for conservation projects in the Luangwa Valley. This small per-bed-night contribution generates a sizeable fund at the end of the season!
Firstly, I would like to thank all of you who have travelled with me for supporting my business and therefore helping me to support conservation in the Luangwa; after all, it is superfluous to say that without the wildlife that you all come to see and photograph, I would have no business at all. Furthermore the world would be a poorer place for it.
I have long advocated that community support programmes should be fundamentally based around the protection of natural resources. Supporting schools, building bore-holes, investing in local businesses is fantastic, but if it speeds the degradation of forests, wildlife and virgin land, this is heavily counter-intuitive. For this reason, I have decided to allocate the funds raised in equal shares to Conservation South Luangwa and Biocarbon Partners Zambia.
Conservation South Luangwa are a Zambian-based NGO which provides essential support to the Department for National Parks and Wildlife in protecting the Luangwa ecosystem for future generations. They are heavily Zambian-led with key roles in management held by local people. The organisation holds the firm belief that the future of our natural resources will only be secure if local people understand their value and benefit from them. They operate anti-poaching patrols, intelligence gathering teams and a world-class detection dog unit. But they also offer advice, guidance and support to local people to help them live alongside wildlife in a way that both can thrive. I am proud to be a trustee of this organisation and to allocate 50% of my conservation fund to their work.
I am also very pleased to use the remaining half of the conservation fund to buy carbon offsets from Biocarbon Partners. BCP work with local chiefs and landowners to make the forests on their land valuable to the local people. By protecting them to an internationally certifiable standard, they are able to generate and sell carbon credits and use the funds to protect more forests and to reinvest in local infrastructure projects. Crucially, if local people renege on their agreements to protect forests, the pool of resources available to them is reduced. I fundamentally support the concept of investment in local communities that is tied to the protection of natural resources. The funds raised are more than enough to offset the activities of my guests while they are on safari with me, including all the domestic flights that we book for them. It’s wonderful to know that my safaris are carbon-neutral.
In future years, I would like to increase the contribution that I am able to make to USD $10 per person per night. This increase will allow me to offset the carbon generated when guests fly from their home countries and will also increase the amount that I can contribute to Conservation South Luangwa. In doing so, I hope that Edward Selfe Photo Safaris will be part of the solution to natural resource protection in the South Luangwa National Park.
Thank you, as always, for your support and I hope that knowing your safari is assisting with natural resource protection in the Luangwa will make travelling to Zambia even more rewarding.
You can read more about Buying Offsets With BCP Zambia by following this link, and about CSL’s latest work here.
