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about 50,000 members, a small headquarters staff here and the 

 majority of our staff is based in Africa. Historically, we have 

 worked in eastern Africa and increasingly in southern Africa. We 

 are not presently active in either central or west Africa. 



There is considerable interest in a segment of the American pub- 

 lic concerning the environment in Africa, particularly focused on 

 wildlife. The remarkable migrations of wildlife in Africa, and the 

 megafauna — the large mammals of Africa — are unmatched any 

 place on the globe. And periodically the attention of the American 

 public focuses on the people of Africa, usually in the form of a crisis 

 or a disaster. These two are often not connected in people's minds. 



The population of Africa, as the previous witness said, will dou- 

 ble in the next century. The density is quite a bit lower than many 

 of the developing parts of the world. But, nevertheless, the fragility 

 of the land and the ecosystems of Africa mean that many of those 

 people, estimated at 150 million, presently live in absolute pov- 

 erty — on less than a dollar a day. 



Many of the rural poor are very dependent on Africa's biological 

 resources. It produces the food they eat, the fuel they use for cook- 

 ing, the medicine for health, and products to generate income. No 

 place on earth are human beings more dependent on the bounty of 

 nature directly for their survival than in Africa. 



The link between human dependence and the Continent's natural 

 resources means that organizations such as the African Wildlife 

 Foundation, although we are focused primarily on wildlife, recog- 

 nize that there is a direct link between the question of poverty alle- 

 viation and human needs and the preservation of wildlife. We also 

 recognize that this is not merely a scientific concern. Addressing 

 these issues will require changes in government policy. It will be 

 critical to strengthen civil society. We need to build institutional 

 capacity and train natural resource staff. And we need to deal with 

 the wide range of general issues of poverty in the rural landscape — 

 poverty that is often characterized by a woman farmer struggling 

 to exist on an arid and very unforgiving landscape. 



Unfortunately, the complexity of addressing the problems of Afri- 

 ca does not always generate the same interest as its wildlife spec- 

 tacle. But there is a changing attitude toward conservation that 

 has taken place in Africa in the last decade that focuses on work- 

 ing with communities to address issues of conservation. 



In my prepared statement, I talked about the role of AID and 

 U.S. foreign assistance, which I believe is critical and has been ex- 

 tremely helpful on the Continent. AID has worked very effectively 

 with non-governmental organizations, both environmental and de- 

 velopmental, and I think it is a partnership that has been ex- 

 tremely successful on the ground — particularly in rural areas. 



I also talk about the importance of national parks as the comer- 

 stone strategies to save Africa's wildlife. Parks are critical to the 

 preservation of wildlife in Africa and, contrary to what many peo- 

 ple believe, the number of parks and protected areas in Africa have 

 grown substantially since the end of the colonial era. This is not 

 an inheritance from the colonial past. This is something to which 

 the governments of Africa have remained strongly committed. 



AWF has spent a lot of effort over the last 35 years training and 

 working with those institutions. We were fundamentally created to 



