28 July 2023

BORN FREE PUBLISHES NEW CONSERVATION REPORT 2022-23

It’s World Nature Conservation Day and, aided by supporters, our conservation team is delivering innovative, holistic and sustainable programmes to protect elephants, lions, tigers and other threatened species around the world.

It’s World Nature Conservation Day and Born Free is delighted to present our 2022-2023 Conservation Report, filled with the impressive and impactful field work our dedicated team has led and supported over the past financial year. In partnership with local communities, we protected iconic species and their habitats, so countless other species could thrive. Read our new report here:

CONSERVATION ANNUAL REPORT 2022-2023

“Born Free is committed to protecting wild animals, their habitats, and their ecosystems,” explains our Head of Conservation Dr Nikki Tagg. “We work hard to secure mutually beneficial co-existence between wild animals and people, and enable wild animals to live their lives free from human exploitation within a functional and viable ecosystem.”

Highlights from the new report include:
•    In our charity’s heartland of Meru, Kenya – where Elsa the lioness was returned to the wild – our team launched a ‘beehive fence’ project. Elephants are afraid of bees and we constructed fences incorporating beehives to protect acres of fields with precious crops from crop-raiding elephants. This helps prevent human-elephant conflict, promotes co-existence and provides an extra source of income from honey. Our team will continue to roll out this remarkable project over the coming year (page 16).
•    Also in Meru, ten Conservation Ambassadors hired from local communities have become integral to our work, acting as the voice of local people to help theme report and resolve any conflict and implement humane conflict mitigation solutions (page 8).
•    In Amboseli, Kenya, 23 predator-proof ‘bomas’ were constructed, benefitting an estimated 300 people by protecting their livestock from overnight predation from carnivores, including lions. These reinforced enclosures in turn protect the lions from retaliatory killings, enabling mutually beneficial co-existence between people and carnivores (page 11).
•    This year our newest conservation programme, the Guardians of Dja, Cameroon, was launched to protect rare chimpanzee and gorilla populations in the Dja landscape. We empower rural-living people to reduce their pressure on natural resources and engage in nature conservation while making a sustainable and reliable living (page 27).
•    In the Satpuda Landscape, Central India, our colleagues in the Satpuda Landscape Tiger Partnership network educated an estimated 10,244 students on the importance of tigers in the ecosystem, and sensitised them to tiger conservation. An estimated 38,612 more community members were reached via various awareness programmes (page 42).

Born Free has always worked and campaigned for a future where animals and people can co-exist and where threatened and endangered species are protected for generations to come. Today, working alongside our partners, Born Free implements and supports field conservation projects (https://www.bornfree.org.uk/field-conservation) in East, Central and West Africa, Southeast Asia and South America.

Through these initiatives, Born Free protects the populations and habitats of wild animals including lions, savannah elephants, giraffes, gorillas, chimpanzees, forest elephants, Ethiopian wolves, orangutans and jaguars. “Thanks to various strategies and funded by our fantastic supporters, Born Free is maximising our conservation impact,” explains Dr Nikki Tagg, “This work includes monitoring threatened populations, mitigating human-wildlife conflict, engaging with local communities through outreach and education programmes, and supporting sustainable supplementary livelihoods.”

Born Free’s conservation mission is more important than ever before – the world’s biodiversity is at significant risk. Global wildlife populations have plummeted a staggering 69% since 1970. Today, one million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction. Action must be taken and Born Free is hard at work to safeguard species, habitats and ecosystems for generations to come.

Ecosystems rely on complex and diverse interactions between species – removing even a single species can lead to ecological collapse, causing the decline and even extinction of many other species who have lived on our planet for millennia. Biodiversity loss will consequently have devastating consequences for us too – for our food security, water availability, energy supply, natural defence against extreme weather, and a host of other ‘ecosystem services’ ecosystems provide daily. Furthermore, biodiversity is our greatest ally in combatting climate change, the single greatest threat to humanity in the 21st century. Equally importantly, we all have a moral duty to protect the natural world without which we would not exist.

Find out more
You can discover more about our field conservation work and the other initiatives Born Free supported over the last year by reading our 2022-23 Annual Conservation Report.

You can help
None of this wonderful work for wild animal conservation could have happened without your ongoing support. Please donate today to help our field teams continue their vital mission to protect threatened species around the world from extinction.

CONSERVATION ANNUAL REPORT 2022-2023

(c) George Logan, georgelogan.co.uk