Travelers' Philanthropy Handbook - Center for Responsible Travel

uckled landscape and high mountains capture and hold a large portion of all the species thatebbed and flowed across the continent over the millennia.To withstand future climatic changes, the rich panoply of plants and animals in the borderlandsmust be able to move up and down the altitudinal gradients and across large open landscapes. Ihave been studying how land fragmentation and climate change could impact wildlife,biodiversity, and rural communities. The outlook is deeply worrying.Two human-induced changes are underway that in tandem threaten the biodiversity of theKenya-Tanzania borderlands. First, land subdivision and settlement is breaking up the openlandscape and the continuity of habitats strung along altitudinal gradients. Second, globalwarming due to carbon dioxide emissions is accelerating climate change. These two forcesthreaten the borderland’s natural buffering system and put at risk species that evolved overmillions of years and accumulated over climatic oscillations.Increasing human populations, spreading settlement, and climate change threaten our premierwildlife areas. The rich wildlife populations in Mara and Amboseli stand out like skyscrapersagainst the low densities elsewhere. A sea of human settlement surrounds the 14 borderlandparks. How can these great wildlife herds withstand encirclement and climate change?The only solution is to create large land associations to buffer wildlife from climate change. Withtheir wealth of wildlife, there is still hope of keeping the borderlands open to the benefit of itscommunities. But it will take collaboration between landowner associations, conservationists,ecotourists and the philanthropist to pull it off. This is not to say governments have no role toplay. They do. Kenya and Tanzania - working together - have a large role to play. My principalmessage here is to identify and open the door to a new an important player, the philanthropictraveler.I hope that the examples I have given will open up discussions on the role of travelers’philanthropy in conservation and community development. I am cautiously optimistic that it canplay a new and vital role, if done thoughtfully. The extra money and support philanthropy bringscould spell the difference between community-based conservation success and failure. But likeso much donor money, it could create dependency rather than self-reliance, if done badly. Thechallenge for travelers’ philanthropy is to be a Good Samaritan.18