Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Cameroon, Simone de Vries, education | Date: May 13 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

The Limbe Wildlife Centre has run a conservation education program for more than 10 years, but in the last months something has changed. It seems like Limbe has woken up, things are moving and people are organizing themselves. It is very exciting to be in the middle of all this. It is LWC’s ambition to be a conservation resource centre for other organisations and more and more we live up to our own expectations.

In February the LWC organized a meeting for all the people who are involved in Conservation Education is this region. The big organisations were there (WWF and WCS), but also small and new initiatives. It was very interesting to hear from each other what we are all doing and it was decided to collaborate more. While often promises like this are merely words, this time it seems to have a real impact.

Last Saturday the African Alliance for Development Action and LWC jointly organized the first workshop for church leaders and pastors. Religion is very important in the South West Region of Cameroon, so church leaders and pastors can play an important role in educating the community in conservation matters. The workshop was very successful and all participants would like to continue organizing more workshops in order to reach more churches and also traditional leaders.

While I am writing this, yet another workshop is in progress in our education building. This time the members of ASPTUG-CAM TRESAT, a new eco-tourism initiative in Limbe, are trained by LWC staff. Spread out over three days, several topics will be discussed, with the aim to provide the eco-guides the skills to communicate a strong conservation message.

We are funding these activities out of a small budget that Givskud Zoo has provided us, on top of the funding for the salary of our full time Education Officer, Glenn Motumba. But when we want to keep up with the current developments we will need more funding. We are grateful for any gift to support this important work.

Best wishes, Simone de Vries