Conservation Influencers – Page 5 – IWMC

Washington DC, USA The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) was founded in 1954 by four dissenting members of the American Humane Society (today known as American Humane, which has no links to HSUS). HSUS’s purpose, according to its website, is to end suffering for all animals from puppy mills, factory farms, the fur trade, trophy… Continue reading Humane Society Of The United States

From 1990 until 2015, Franz Weber Foundation (FFW) managed the Fazao-Malfakassa National Park in Togo, which was, according to an in-depth investigation by Duke University, ‘established by forcing the local communities off their land and without taking into consideration their point of view’. That same study cited convincing evidence from reports published in 1990, confirming that competition for land use was already ‘creating conflict between the local communities and park managers’. In 2015 Togo refused to renew FFW’s contract because, the report says, ‘local communities were still excluded from the management of the natural resources of their land’ and FFW had ‘failed to fulfil its contract’. Franz Weber Foundation plays a major role within CITES because it funds and manages from Switzerland the African Elephant Coalition (AEC), which represents 32 African range states, some of which have barely any elephants and others none at all. Contrary to the wishes of the range states in Southern Africa, which manage most of the world’s wild elephant populations, the AEC at CITES’ CoPs repeatedly tables proposals to put all of the world’s elephants in appendix I. And the AEC uses its voting power to keep in place prohibitions on ivory sales and all other trade in elephant-related derivatives, including skins and hair, which Southern African nations wish to legalise.

Belgium, Brussels Eurogroup for Animals is an animal rights federation composed of 70 NGOs, which was cofounded in 1980 by the UK-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and five other NGOs based in EU states. Located in Brussels, the Eurogroup’s secretariat focuses on influencing decisions made by the European Commission, Parliament and Council.… Continue reading Eurogroup for Animals

Kenya Conservation Alliance of Kenya (CAK) was founded in 2015 by a large group of well-resourced NGOs based overseas and a few local groups which they fund. CAK describes itself as an umbrella organization. One half of CAK’s mission is to be the catalyst for exchanging information on wildlife and environmental issues. The other consists… Continue reading Conservation Alliance of Kenya

African Wildlife Foundation’s (AFW) conservation policy maintains that people are not part of the solution. But, in its words, ‘the biggest threat to wildlife in Africa’. In Kenya this misanthropic attitude has brought AFW into conflict with indigenous communities, amidst accusations of intimidation, violence and torture, used on a large-scale to force once free people into densely populated reservations to make ‘room’ for a wildlife park.

USA, Hawaii Earth Trust was established in Hawaii in 1976 by Don White, a founding member of Greenpeace and its former international campaign director. The organization claims to pay no full-time salaries and to be staffed by a network of volunteers. However, according to its website, it pays programme managers and other staff ‘whenever there… Continue reading Earth Trust

Washington D.C, USA The Animal Welfare Institute’s (AWI) was founded in 1951 by Christine Stevens (1918 – 2002), the wife of Roger L Stevens who once held a major stake in the Empire State Building in New York. As the first president of AWI, she was known to her supporters as the mother of the… Continue reading Animal Welfare Institute

Hong Kong, China The charitable organisation ADM Capital Foundation was launched in 2006 by ADM Capital, a Hong Kong-based investment firm established in 1998, which manages assets worth USD1.6 billion. ADM Capital’s co-founder Robert Appleby has an MA in Zoology and a BA in Zoology and Anthropology from Oxford University, England. He spent 13 years at… Continue reading ADM Capital Foundation

Arlington, Virginia, USA Conservation International (CI) was founded in 1987. Its driving force was Peter Seligmann, an ecological scientist, who began his career in 1976 at The Nature Conservancy. Today, CI operates in 70 countries, managed by an office network that it finances and staffs in two dozen countries. According to Seligmann, what differentiates CI from… Continue reading Conservation International

US and UK The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) was founded in 1984 by Dave Currey, Jennifer Lonsdale and Allan Thornton OBE, who set up Greenpeace’s London office in 1976. These three activists came together to form EIA as a consequence of their experience recording minke whale hunts off northern Norway. According to EIA, they realised that on-the-ground documentary… Continue reading Environmental Investigation Agency