The global covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has had a profound impact on all sectors of society around the world, including wildlife conservation. The nature based tourism sector has collapsed, fieldwork is often impossible, and donors are withdrawing funds. This represents a serious challenge to conservation, which will endure for years to come. At the same time, there may be a glimmer of hope in that the situation could open up new possibilities for transformative change in relations between people and non-human nature.

Bill Adams has written two excellent articles on covid-19 and conservation on this blog in recent weeks – the first considering the broad implications of the pandemic for conservation, and the second describing his personal experience of this year’s ‘silent spring’ in a Cambridgeshire village. Like Bill, each of us is experiencing the pandemic in our own way, with great variation from person to person and place to place. However, like the blindfolded men of the Indian parable who each encounter a different part of an elephant but cannot see the whole, it is difficult for any of us to understand clearly what is happening in the conservation sector around the world.

In an attempt to see more of the elephant, I circulated a short survey about conservation and covid-19 to the current and former students of the Cambridge Masters in Conservation Leadership. The Conservation Leadership Alumni Network (or ‘CLAN’) are a global network of established mid-career conservation leaders from 75 countries. Many work ‘on the ground’, and are well placed to share information about what they see happening, and their ideas for the future. The survey was circulated on Wednesday 15^th April. By Tuesday 5^th of May it had received 31 responses (from a total of 179 alumni) from 6 continents and from 9 different cohorts. The rest of this article is a brief situation report based on the responses. Sharing of the results on this blog has been approved by the alumni cohort representatives. To protect anonymity no specific countries are mentioned. Continue reading →