57 



\nd expertise found in some of the international PVOs . These 

 groups provide information, assist governments and communities 

 in project implementation, and frequently help develop plans 

 and po 1 ic les . 



Finally, this also indicates that results mav not come 

 ■luickl y ■ Conservation success will be measured over decades, 

 and eventually over generations. Those funding and 

 implementing conservation programs must not succomb to "quick- 

 fix" approaches, but instead must recognize the need to design 

 sustained efforts over longer durations. Aid programs will 

 have to change current 2-5 year project windows to 8-15 year 

 per lods . 



African participation in conservation must increase at all levels 



This is the greatest challenge, and the only long-term 

 solution, to biological conservation in Africa. 



Currently, local people are only beginning to be given an 

 official voice in managing their natural resources or 

 participating in conservation planning -- and this is taking 

 place only in innovative projects in a small number of 

 countries. Many problems have arisen: governments suspicious 

 of empowering their own citizens, existence of multiple ethnic 

 groups or diverse communities with conflicting interests in a 

 single region, ethnic groups that have no traditional means 

 for decision-making at the scale that conservation often 

 requires. However, progress in some projects is being made, 

 and some national policies on local participation are already 

 chang l ng . 



Local and/or national people using promising natural resource 

 management techniques, whether traditional or not, should be 

 encouraged, and their practices promoted. Indigenous 

 knowledge systems are being lost, yet when carefully conducted 

 many of these activities can produce significant sustainable 

 values from natural systems. The people themselves are the 

 best extension agents for promotion of such practices, and 

 should be given the option and means to do so. 



As mentioned earlier, there are very few trained, skilled 

 African natural resource managers or conservationists. One of 

 '.he most urgent needs, therefore, is to provide technical 

 training in conservation planning and implementation. This 

 need extends from the "barefoot biologists" -- local people 

 who may know the natural systems extremely well but need 

 literacy training or or other technical skills -- to on-site 

 protected area managers and community liaison officers, who 

 e some theoretical background but little idea of how to 

 apply it to field problems-, or make decisions; and on to high- 

 level planners and policy makers, who may have been recruited 



