Call of the wild

giant muntjac deer, tigers, Asian elephants and great hornbills all roam the Nam Kading National Protected Area (NPA), a 939-square-mile expanse of forest in the Bolikhamxay province of central Laos. But a booming business in wildlife trade and the destruction of habitat was threatening the animal's existence—and the forest they call home.

To preserve the area's biodiversity, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Vientiane, Laos, needed the help of the people living in the area surrounding the reserve. And the group knew the only way to secure that support was by changing their attitudes and boosting their knowledge about the ecosystem.

So WCS teamed up with another non-governmental nature organization, Rare Conservation in Arlington, Virginia, USA, which had developed a proven 10-step methodology that outlines specific project steps with measurable objectives. WCS’ existing experience combined with the new skills from Rare gave the program a more comprehensive approach to conservation education and community outreach.

“The overall results from the WCS-Rare relationship were synergistic in nature as both sides gained equally from the relationship,” says Troy Hansel, assistant director at WCS Laos.

The partnership was prompted by Mr. Hansel, who remembered an article about a project that helped bring the St. Lucia parrot back from the brink of extinction. That project happened to be the first Rare Pride campaign. Since then Rare Conservation has gone on to successfully apply its flagship program in more than 40 countries.

The Lao project was no exception. Before the Rare Pride initiative in the Nam Kading NPA was launched last May, a dismal 11 percent of the local people said they knew the importance of the forest. But by the time the project closed last October, that number had skyrocketed to 79 percent.

Sometimes going outside the project scope is a good thing. At least that was the case when the Rare Pride Laos project took a serendipitous turn midway through.

At a visit to the Tad Vang Fong area in March 2006, Wildlife Conservation Society's Soulisak Vannalath discussed a fish sanctuary project. The topic was of great interest to the many local residents who depend on fishing as their livelihood—and they were inspired to act.

After leaders from nine villages got the OK from the district governor, a two-day meeting was held in June 2006 to discuss how to implement and manage the project. And soon after, the sanctuaries were created.

Establishing sustainable fishing areas wasn't in Mr. Vannalath's original project plan, but was a pleasant surprise and a testament to how the group's conservation education efforts were working.

“This is not just important for local people in terms of providing sources of fish meat, but demonstrates a clear and simple concept of conservation,” he says. “They'll see positive and quick results as fish reproduce very fast. Consequently, they will apply the same approach to manage more complicated initiatives such as wildlife and forest conservation areas for sustainable harvesting for themselves and the next generations.”

“This is significantly important as people might take action to conserve something if it benefits them directly,” says Soulisak Vannalath, the WCS campaign program manager.

Getting to that number, however, would require a lot of hard work for Mr. Vannalath, including dressing up as a great hornbill.

A Structured Approach

First, though, Mr. Vannalath had to be approved by Rare Conservation. The group looks for candidates with not only project management aptitude but with interpersonal and presentation skills as well. So it decided to see how Mr. Vannalath would perform strutting around in a campaign mascot costume at an international conservation conference.

He passed the test.

Mr. Vannalath then attended a 10-week training program at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, where he studied ecology, conservation marketing, and project management theory and techniques. He was also schooled in the Rare Pride campaign's own project methodology that includes a detailed 10-step project map, beginning with a literature review and site analysis and closing with an extensive evaluation and lessons learned session.

“The Rare Pride campaign is very structured, which is useful in isolated communities that we work in,” says Paul Butler, senior vice president for global programs at Rare. “Basic project management is not only for the business world, but for biodiversity issues and the not for-profit world as well.”

Global Preservation

Upon returning from England, Mr. Vannalath was eager to start the project. But first, he needed to conduct an in-depth assessment of the Nam Kading NPA. After poring over scientific surveys, ecological reports and government documents, Mr. Vannalath formed a group of local stakeholders—influential people from the surrounding communities including government officials, village leaders, elders, foresters and representatives from local women's unions.

Their first meeting was held in July 2005 to discuss direct and indirect threats to the protected area and possible solutions. Then they needed to devise a concept model for the program.

“A lot of these people have never all sat in a room together,” Mr. Butler says. “All viewpoints are important, and they know the indirect reasons that lie behind the biological degradation firsthand.”

Surveying the Land

To move forward, Mr. Vannalath also needed to understand his target audience. He surveyed 550 villagers about who they trusted, what TV and radio programs they liked as well as their knowledge and attitudes about local hunting laws and bushmeat trade, certain species in the NPA and the importance of conservation.

In line with the Rare methodology, Mr. Vannalath then called a second stakeholders meeting to revise the concept model and establish project objectives based on the survey responses. The stakeholders also chose the threatened great hornbill, known for its large size and unusual bright yellow “horn” on its bill, as the project's mascot. The idea was for the bird to act as “an ambassador to all the important species in the Bolikhamxay landscape,” Mr. Hansel says.

Using all of the information, Mr. Vannalath and his team completed a 76-page project plan outlining their goals and how to meet them.

“Planning was the vital part of the campaign and helped us understand the real situation,” Mr. Vannalath says. Based on that information, suitable activities were determined to address specific issues effectively and economically.

The plan also helped Mr. Vannalath gain the support and trust of local government officials. It's an important stakeholder group, given that the Rare campaign was part of the larger Integrated Environment and Wildlife Management Project, a partnership between WCS and the Lao government.

Conservation Can Be Fun

With data in hand, it was now time for Mr. Vannalath, Mr. Hansel and other team members to launch the project. They targeted 22 villages surrounding the Nam Kading NPA and visited each of them, putting on two-hour programs filled with singing, a great hornbill costume show and games geared at teaching adults about conservation. In one, participants wore leaf-covered hats that shielded them from the water Mr. Vannalath dumped on them. Then, the villagers took off the hats and Mr. Vannalath dumped water on their heads again, this time leaving them soaked. The simple game served as a powerful demonstration of how healthy forests prevent floods, landslides and increased sedimentation from flowing into local rivers.

Dressing up in a silly bird costume also proved seriously effective, Mr. Vannalath says. Outfitted as a great hornbill, he would talk about the importance of wildlife and the forest and then ask audience members to pledge to conserve biodiversity in the Nam Kading NPA. Having made the commitment in front of other people, villagers are “likely to follow what they promised,” he says.

The project team also ran radio advertisements, visited schools and wrote conservation songs to teach the villagers. Every activity the team designed was pretested in three target villages, each with different ethnic groups.

The only project idea that wasn't pre-tested turned out to be the most problematic. The team had developed a billboard-size educational poster about the great hornbill, but because of its large size, village headsmen didn't know where to put it and the substantial amount of text was too time-consuming for anyone to read in passing. To make it more effective, Mr. Vannalath and his team developed a smaller-scale version with less text and passed it out to households in each village. Follow-up workshops were held to explain the poster's key messages.

Au Naturel

Monthly project reports and two site visits from supervisors at Rare helped keep Mr. Vannalath on track and on time. The $20,000 campaign closed within budget last October.

And the project is already showing a big payoff. According to Mr. Vannalath, great hornbill sightings— an occurrence that hadn't been documented in the previous seven years—have become more frequent.

In a post-project survey, one of the last steps in the campaign's methodology, respondents who had heard of the great hornbill increased from 61 percent to 100 percent. Those who knew it was in danger of extinction jumped from 26 percent to 77 percent, and those who knew it was illegal to hunt rose from 35 percent to 91 percent. The survey also showed that 65 percent of respondents agreed “cutting down the forest” was one of the greatest threats to the bird, up from 17 percent before the project started.

The campaign adopted the great hornbill as its official mascot.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROSEMARY GODFREY, RARE

With thousands of people touched by the project, the good word of conservation continues to spread. And many of Mr. Vannalath's project techniques are being applied to other WCS projects, including a tiger conservation project in northern Laos.

“The campaign helped to increase knowledge and change attitudes toward conserving natural resources for long-term sustainable use, and [the villagers] have started to understand how to stay environmentally friendly,” he says. “Consequently, the environment is protected and the local livelihood is improved.”

Erin Dorr is a business writer based in Chicago, Illinois, USA.