The African Conservation Fund

Many of us feel a passion for Africa and her wildlife and people. And with passion comes a desire to protect. That is why a small group of us—East Africans, Americans, and Britons—founded the African Conservation Fund in 2003, to support the efforts and partners of the African Conservation Centre in Nairobi. The Centre is a 12-year-old East African institution, founded and run by a small team of dedicated Africans who combine sound scientific research with targeted longterm community-based conservation projects.

What We Do

African Conservation Centre and African Conservation Fund assist communities in East Africa in creating economic opportunities that result in improved wildlife management and wealthier, healthier communities - like the Samburu community (three warrior members shown at left) at Il'Ngwesi, who created a community-owned ecotourism lodge in north-central Kenya with the initial assistance of African Conservation Centre.


How We’re Different

African Conservation Fund provides the bridge between community-based conservation efforts in East Africa to capacity-building resources in the U.S. and beyond.

There is no mid-level organization whose sole program is to provide usable resources—grants, loans, training, exchanges, and communications products—directly to and for the benefit of communities, with the end goal being widescale, sustainable, locally based, and independent conservation of important regions and wildlife.

Working closely with African Conservation Centre, we support communities in high-biodiversity regions, assisting those that have the willingness and social-capacity to create new and lasting conservation projects.

The Details: Making a Difference

The challenge is so great, and we’re often asked: How can yet another charity make a difference in the face of threats as daunting as globalization, land subdivision, poverty, and poaching? 

The key is to turn the traditional conservation model—creating more parks and expensive save-the-wildlife campaigns run by large and distant organizations—on its head. How?

It is no coincidence that over 65% of the wildlife occur not in the national parks but in the pastorally managed lands surrounding them.
For millenia pastoralists have co-existed with wildlife. This bio-cultural relationship is inextricable and dynamic, and yet it is beginning to crumble due to external pressures.

African Conservation Fund builds capacity for conservation by:

• Sourcing funds for small grants and micro-loans;

• 
• Providing skills through educational opportunities;

• and creating linkages between communities, regionally & internationally, to facilitate horizontal learning.

(For details, please see our How & Where We Work pages.)

This strategy succeeds because communities build not only the skills but also the confidence necessary to create their own institutions and conservation movements, incorporating their own lifeways and traditions.

The programs we support through the African Conservation Centre succeed in helping to nurture locally created and supported conservation that is saving large landscapes for the great migratory herds, while also improving people’s lives.

We succeed not with fancy offices and a big staff—we succeed by linking people together, creating conservation that has the strength built on our shared passion.

Please see our Partners pages to find out more about how we work with other groups and individuals to leverage widescale conservation.

Who We Are
   
The African Conservation Fund was founded in 2003 by a small group of East Africans, Britons and Americans—people who have lifelong commitments to the conservation of East Africa’s wildlife and cultures.

In late 2005 we hired our first executive director, and we’re now in full program development mode.

Many of the projects we support are carried out by our partner, the 12-year-old Nairobi-based African Conservation Centre, with whom we share at least one board member.

This partnership gives us an important on-the-ground connection to select and work with projects in East Africa, while our board and staff work in the West to create economic, training, and communications resources for these projects.

In the photo, from left: Carolyn Greene (board secretary); Dr. David (Jonah) Western (board member); Roseann Hanson (executive director); Roger Snoble (board chairman); and Dr. John Waithaka (board treasurer). Not pictured: Dr. Norman Myers (board member).

Mr. Roger Snoble
Chairman of the Board
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Roger Snoble is the Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of Los Angeles County (MTA), a position he has held since October 1, 2001. Mr. Snoble s career in public transportation spans over 40 years. Prior to joining MTA, he served as president/executive director of Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) for seven years. Before DART, Snoble served as president and general manager of the San Diego Transit Corporation where he worked 20 years, 15 as President and General manager. Roger's wife, Kit, who also assists African Conservation Fund with administrative tasks, is retired from a successful career in Mortgage Banking. The Snobles have been involved with conservation for many years being members of the San Diego Zoo and the World Wildlife Fund. Roger served on the Board of Directors of the Dallas Zoological Association and now serves on the Board of Directors of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association. After going on their first safari in Kenya in 1990, the Snobles returned in 1995 and 2000 to both Kenya and Tanzania. The visits inspired them to get involved in conserving the resources of East Africa.

Ms. Carolyn Greene
Secretary
Boulder, CO, USA
Ms. Greene is Western Director for the National Wildlife Federation. After college, Carolyn spent four months working in Kenya, where she met a number of conservation and ecotourism leaders, including 
Dr. David Western of the African Conservation Centre; researcher & community conservation pioneer Dr. Shirley Strum; and tour operators Stefano Cheli and Liz Peacock. The experience changed her life: she returned to graduate school to pursue wildlife conservation as a career. Carolyn and her husband, Kelly, are expecting their first child this spring and make their home in Boulder.
 
Dr. Norman Myers
Board Member
Oxford, UK
As a young man, Norman pursued a career in photojournalism and wildlife photography, which took him to Kenya where long days observing wildlife inspired him to return to school to study ecology as well as economics.  He is currently a Fellow at Green College, Oxford University; the Andrew D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University; and an advisor at the World Bank's Global Environment Facility. Dr. Myers has won many awards, including the Volvo Environment Prize and the United Nations’ Sasakawa Prize. He has published more than 250 professional papers, 300 popular articles, and 15 books with sales of one million copies in 11 languages. He is the originator of the biodiversity hot-spot strategy that has generated over $300 million for conservation activities worldwide.


Dr. David Western
Board Member
Nairobi, Kenya/San Diego, CA, USA
Dr. Western is founding executive director of African Conservation Centre.  Raised in Tanzania and now a Kenyan citizen, he has spent over 37 years engaged in research in Kenya studying the interactions between livestock, wildlife, and humans, with the aim of developing conservation strategies applicable at an ecosystem scale. As former director of Kenya Wildlife Service and conservation director for Wildlife Conservation Society, Dr. Western has been active in many areas of conservation, including community-based conservation, international programs, conservation planning, ecotourism, training, directing governmental and non-governmental organizations and public education. He and his wife, Dr. Shirley Strum, spend several months each year in California, where Dr. Strum is professor of anthropology at the University of California at San Diego. Their daughter Carissa is studying at UCSD, and their son, Guy, is currently on gap-year in South America, studying penguins.

Dr. William Yancey
Board Member
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Bill Yancey is currently the Assistant Dean and Director, of UCLA Continuing Dental Education and Alumni Affairs.  He has been the Director of Continuing Education for the past 14 years and took over the duties of Alumni Affairs 3 years ago.  Before that, he ran both the General Practice Residency program and started the Advanced Education in General Dentistry program at UCLA.  Prior to coming to UCLA he started a General Practice Residency Program in Denver, Colo. and had a private practice in Los Angeles.  After dental school he served as a dental officer in the U.S. Air Force for two years in Japan.  It was after his service overseas and before he started a private practice, that he fulfilled a childhood dream—to go to Africa.  He spent 4 months in Kenya and Tanzania.  That experience has never left him.  He and his wife, Eva, have been back 5 times now, and have visited almost all the countries from Kenya to South Africa that still have wildlife. They both are dedicated to conserving these treasures of East Africa. 

Roseann Hanson
Executive Director
Ms. Hanson has 20 years experience working as an environmental communications and non-profit management specialist in community-based conservation, specializing in assisting new and growing organization in building strong programs through careful business planning, innovative communications programs, and diverse development strategies. She is a native of southern Arizona, and has worked throughout the American West, northern Mexico, and East Africa as a naturalist guide, journalist, and conservation program director and executive.  Her introduction to conservation issues in East Africa was through the Two Cowboys Project in 2002, which she participated in as a conservation representative from the American West (she is shown at left discussing ethnobotany with the director of a community-owned lodge in northern Kenya). Since then Roseann and her husband, Jonathan, have become involved in several conservation projects in northern Tanzania and have lead conservation safaris there. She and Jonathan make their home in the Sonoran Desert, an hour more or less southwest of Tucson.

Directors Emeritus

Dr. John Waithaka
Nepean, Ontario, Canada
Dr. Waithaka is former associate director at Kenya Wildlife Service, and now ecological integrity manager for Parks Canada. He is a native Kenyan and accomplished scientist. He and his family make their home now in Ontario, Canada - and are adapting slowly to things like snow.