A cheaper plan to stop poaching: Give them real jobs

Abstract

This article describes Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) initiative in Zambia's Luangwa River Valley to promote conservation by addressing the reasons poachers hunt. COMACO - Community Markets for Conservation - is "a business model approach that gives local residents the opportunity to make a real, legal, living. If farmers agree not to poach and to adopt conservation-friendly methods, they gain "compliance bonuses" and access to the prices offered by COMACO, which normally exceed the local market rate. Extension officers show local villagers the benefits of farming organically, building high-yield log beehives, and growing multiple crops to avoid seasonal food shortages that might drive them to hunt or cut down trees to make charcoal."