I was in Cape Town on Aug. 29th. While reading the local Cape Times I came across an interesting item on conservation and conservation philosophies (see picture of the feature).

It quotes Dave Varty, a member of a prominent conservation family, which had pioneered various conservation and community based projects not only in South Africa but also in the East of the continent. They also helped pioneer the slogan: ' If it pays it stays'. It is the slogan with which President Mugabe opened the CITES COP in Harare in 1997.

The message was that wilderness and species do not have an intrinsic value and that unless we can find a way to give it to some value as far as man, the dominant species, there is no longer any place for it on this planet.

The subtitle of this item in the Cape Time now states;"Having established the blueprint (IF IT PAYS IT STAYS) for conservation in South Africa, the Vartys now say it is MADNESS.

While I find it frustrating that leading conservationists have pushed agendas and conservation philosophies for two decades and now admit that they have not worked and do not represent a working formula for the future, I find it nevertheless refreshing that there are conservationists going on record stating that they got things wrong and that a totally new approach will be needed.

There are a lot of rare species out there these days but in my opinion the conservationist going for a mea culpa, must clearly be among the rarest of the lot.

Conservation NGO and individuals in my experience move from project to project and region to region working on and peddling conservation projects which lend themselves to easy fund raising. Fund raising also seems to demand that projects are declared a success or at least a partial success whatever the reality on the ground. Anybody advocating independent third party auditing of the effectiveness of such projects is classified as a 'radical extremist'. The end result is that there are thousands of conservation success stories/happy endings/heroes out there on Animal Planet, Discovery, Nat. Geographic and the internet with the planets live support systems collapsing all around us. Something is very wrong.

If there is to be any hope then it will be in policy makers being open minded enough to accept failure and mistakes it is the stories which should make the headlines and turned into documentaries.

Best regards
Karl Ammann
Nanyuki, Kenya