The end of the tax year approaches, and mass mailings cram my letterbox, many of them urgently seeking write-off dollars to keep Noah's Ark afloat. In next year's calendars, affecting photographs of endangered species clamor for our attention: black rhinos, elephants, blue whales, gorillas, condors, otters, hairy-nosed wombats, western giant elands. And people do the right thing, hauling out their checkbooks, taking their charitable deductions.
But as the big conservation outfits will tell you, the costs of protecting habitats soar up and up. Reportedly, in Africa, they double every year. The great goal of all conservation is sustainability, but charitable conservation by definition is not sustainable. Noah's Ark is sinking faster than the donors can bale.
In 1996, Mike Korchinsky, 34 years old at the time, sat in an eco-tour campsite in Kenya, looked around him and, as he remembers, concluded that "high-end ecotourism clearly wasn't saving the land I was on."
Being an ardent conservationist and also a businessman who'd made a big pile in market consultancy, Bay Area-based Korchinsky started looking at the various models dreamed up in recent decades to save species and environment. Ecotourism means putting guards round a forest or a stretch of savannah, and coaxing rich people to come and take photographs of protected nature. It's low volume and, for the Africans servicing the tourists, it offers low dollar jobs and not many of them. "They're not jobs Africans want," Korchinsky says, "making beds, cleaning toilets. The cost of the tours may go up, but the wages stay the same." In other words, the locals don't have any great stake in the eco-tourism, or in deterring the poachers or the charcoal burners waiting for the tour or the guards to move on.
"Sustainable" is always the buzzword, but most of the models -- marketing Amazon rainforest products, for example -- haven't worked out that way. Similarly, Korchinksy points out that donating 1 percent of one's profits, as many busineses do, means you might need a $250 million-a-year business to support one sanctuary.
Korchinsky kept circling around a few core premises. If you can't depend on the charity of good people and good government, then you have to look at a self-sustaining business model, one that the locals could connect with. "People act in their best interests, whether they're wealthy Americans or poor Africans. Everyone wants a job, a better life for their kids. So how do you connect jobs and education to preserving wildlife and wilderness?"
Korchinsky leased and, in 1999, ultimately bought 80,000 acres in Kenya, about 100 miles northwest of Mombasa, off the highway to Nairobi. It's a stretch of land that connects two national parks. Simultaneously he sat down with the elders of the two tribal groups, some 35,000 in all, who lived on the boundary of his land. He outlined his motive -- a preserve -- and his plan, namely to build a factory, hence provide jobs. "Jobs are great politics. Remember, animals don't vote, but if you offer jobs, the local politicians support you."
Korchinsky's quid pro quo was that the elders agree to protect the land and the wildlife. The elders saw the point. Poaching stopped, and Korchinsky's small ranger force patrolling the preserve is unarmed, unique in Africa. It's not a big factory, but the 56 jobs have a substantial multiplier effect in terms of economic benefit in the area, and Korchinsky has made available 5,000 acres, which locals can buy into, at a dollar an acre.
The factory makes high end T-shirts, which is the other end of Korchinsky's business plan. "Marginal places are where we tolerate wildlife and marginal people. Now we want to connect people here to these marginal places." Korchinsky's T-shirts, under his Wildlife Works logo, form the connection. "Brands in modern times have become increasingly disconnected from place, but we want to make people aware of where our T-shirts are made, to connect them with the wildlife and the place."
Wildlife Works started selling its T-shirts in 2001. "We wanted to say to the consumer, the factory is working, the wildlife is coming back." And, in fact, the moment poaching stopped, animals started moving over the preserve from one park to another with an alacrity that startled Korchinsky, who says it took only two years for the eco-system, previously ravaged by hunting and charcoal burning, to recover. The elephants came back first, these days, 500 of them, then the lions, of which there are now five prides, and beyond them, leopards, giraffes, wild dogs and, in all, 47 species of large mammal, including four endangered species.
"The idea of a green consumer is an oxymoron. Green people don't consume. It's hard to build a business on people who love you and won't buy your product. We're after an audience that's not engaged right now in environmental issues." And how do you persuade the 20-year-old girl in the mall to buy a Wildlife Works T-shirt? Wildlife Works tries to have point-of-sale signage to tell the story, and has persuaded celebrities like Charlize Theron and Paris Hilton to wear their product.
Korchinsky says that the plan called for them to do somewhere between $2.5 and $5 million in sales to support the sanctuary and that he's "encouraged." Now he's trying to get some giant corporations, normally horrified at the idea of reminding consumers where their factories are, to recognize the potential of a positive link between their brand and the place it was made.
"I'm not," he insists, "a person who always thinks the business approach is always the best answer to a problem. In health care or the arts, it's not." Can his success be duplicated? That's hard to say. Korchinsky is a smart man who had the empathy to persuade the elders in the Taita and Duruma tribes that here was someone who could look at conservation with their interests in mind, and not just draw a line in the dirt, put an armed ranger behind it and tell them to Keep Out. That's no way to sustain anything, but it's sad how many people think it's the only solution.
To purchase Wildlife Works' products and support their efforts, please go to http://www.wildlifeworks.com.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
But as the big conservation outfits will tell you, the costs of protecting habitats soar up and up. Reportedly, in Africa, they double every year. The great goal of all conservation is sustainability, but charitable conservation by definition is not sustainable. Noah's Ark is sinking faster than the donors can bale.
In 1996, Mike Korchinsky, 34 years old at the time, sat in an eco-tour campsite in Kenya, looked around him and, as he remembers, concluded that "high-end ecotourism clearly wasn't saving the land I was on."
Being an ardent conservationist and also a businessman who'd made a big pile in market consultancy, Bay Area-based Korchinsky started looking at the various models dreamed up in recent decades to save species and environment. Ecotourism means putting guards round a forest or a stretch of savannah, and coaxing rich people to come and take photographs of protected nature. It's low volume and, for the Africans servicing the tourists, it offers low dollar jobs and not many of them. "They're not jobs Africans want," Korchinsky says, "making beds, cleaning toilets. The cost of the tours may go up, but the wages stay the same." In other words, the locals don't have any great stake in the eco-tourism, or in deterring the poachers or the charcoal burners waiting for the tour or the guards to move on.
"Sustainable" is always the buzzword, but most of the models -- marketing Amazon rainforest products, for example -- haven't worked out that way. Similarly, Korchinksy points out that donating 1 percent of one's profits, as many busineses do, means you might need a $250 million-a-year business to support one sanctuary.
Korchinsky kept circling around a few core premises. If you can't depend on the charity of good people and good government, then you have to look at a self-sustaining business model, one that the locals could connect with. "People act in their best interests, whether they're wealthy Americans or poor Africans. Everyone wants a job, a better life for their kids. So how do you connect jobs and education to preserving wildlife and wilderness?"
Korchinsky leased and, in 1999, ultimately bought 80,000 acres in Kenya, about 100 miles northwest of Mombasa, off the highway to Nairobi. It's a stretch of land that connects two national parks. Simultaneously he sat down with the elders of the two tribal groups, some 35,000 in all, who lived on the boundary of his land. He outlined his motive -- a preserve -- and his plan, namely to build a factory, hence provide jobs. "Jobs are great politics. Remember, animals don't vote, but if you offer jobs, the local politicians support you."
Korchinsky's quid pro quo was that the elders agree to protect the land and the wildlife. The elders saw the point. Poaching stopped, and Korchinsky's small ranger force patrolling the preserve is unarmed, unique in Africa. It's not a big factory, but the 56 jobs have a substantial multiplier effect in terms of economic benefit in the area, and Korchinsky has made available 5,000 acres, which locals can buy into, at a dollar an acre.
The factory makes high end T-shirts, which is the other end of Korchinsky's business plan. "Marginal places are where we tolerate wildlife and marginal people. Now we want to connect people here to these marginal places." Korchinsky's T-shirts, under his Wildlife Works logo, form the connection. "Brands in modern times have become increasingly disconnected from place, but we want to make people aware of where our T-shirts are made, to connect them with the wildlife and the place."
Wildlife Works started selling its T-shirts in 2001. "We wanted to say to the consumer, the factory is working, the wildlife is coming back." And, in fact, the moment poaching stopped, animals started moving over the preserve from one park to another with an alacrity that startled Korchinsky, who says it took only two years for the eco-system, previously ravaged by hunting and charcoal burning, to recover. The elephants came back first, these days, 500 of them, then the lions, of which there are now five prides, and beyond them, leopards, giraffes, wild dogs and, in all, 47 species of large mammal, including four endangered species.
"The idea of a green consumer is an oxymoron. Green people don't consume. It's hard to build a business on people who love you and won't buy your product. We're after an audience that's not engaged right now in environmental issues." And how do you persuade the 20-year-old girl in the mall to buy a Wildlife Works T-shirt? Wildlife Works tries to have point-of-sale signage to tell the story, and has persuaded celebrities like Charlize Theron and Paris Hilton to wear their product.
Korchinsky says that the plan called for them to do somewhere between $2.5 and $5 million in sales to support the sanctuary and that he's "encouraged." Now he's trying to get some giant corporations, normally horrified at the idea of reminding consumers where their factories are, to recognize the potential of a positive link between their brand and the place it was made.
"I'm not," he insists, "a person who always thinks the business approach is always the best answer to a problem. In health care or the arts, it's not." Can his success be duplicated? That's hard to say. Korchinsky is a smart man who had the empathy to persuade the elders in the Taita and Duruma tribes that here was someone who could look at conservation with their interests in mind, and not just draw a line in the dirt, put an armed ranger behind it and tell them to Keep Out. That's no way to sustain anything, but it's sad how many people think it's the only solution.
To purchase Wildlife Works' products and support their efforts, please go to http://www.wildlifeworks.com.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.