WWF Alaska
Location: Alaska
In Alaska, there is a growing risk of human-wildlife conflict with polar bears (largely due to climate change and less sea ice) and this is no better illustrated than in January 2023, when a polar bear tragically attacked and fatally mauled two people in Wales, Alaska.
The attack provoked understandable emotions in the community towards polar bears and therefore a renewed need for, and urgent interest in, deterrence training, tools, and patrols in Wales and two other Bering Strait communities: Little Diomede and Shishmaref.
WWF Alaska is collaborating with partners at US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Alaska Nannut Co-Management Council to provide ongoing support to Wales and help Shishmaref and Diomede initiate new programmes.
Funding from Remembering Wildlife will enable the project to purchase equipment and facilitate polar bear deterrence training workshops for patrollers in Wales, Diomede, and Shishmaref, hopefully keeping the community safe and preventing retaliation against local polar bears in the area.
Animals Asia
Location: Vietnam
Donation amount: $20,000/£18,000
The first donation from Remembering Bears went to Animals Asia, founded by the author of the book’s afterword, Jill Robinson, who is widely recognised as the world’s leading authority on the cruel bear bile industry, having campaigned against it since 1993.
The donation is supporting a community outreach programme in Vietnam, called Herbal Heroes, which raises awareness about the plight of bears in the country by working to reduce demand for bear parts and build support for bear conservation.
Remembering Wildlife’s donation has funded a project in Phung Thuong Village in the north, where a disproportionate number of bear farms operate – about 140 bears across 33 households – just under half of all the remaining captive bears.
The outreach programme not only raises awareness of the cruelty of bear bile farming but also offers free traditional medicine clinics, conducted by Vietnam Traditional Medicine Association doctors who prescribe herbal alternatives to bear bile.
The free medicines provided in the clinics come from Herbal Alternative Gardens, which are established and tended locally.
Our funds will help establish four new gardens in 2023 and support the educational programme, covering the costs of materials and associated events to run the project.
Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre
Location: Borneo
Remembering Wildlife’s donation will go towards the release of another captive sun bear, in February 2023.
The donation will cover the cost of all the drugs, the helicopter and a satellite collar to keep track of where the bear goes.
Remembering Wildlife will also be making a contribution towards the repair of chain-link fences around the conservation centre.
Wildlife Conservation Society
Location: Bolivia
Donation amount: $15,000
This donation will enable long-term partner of Remembering Wildlife, The Wildlife Conservation Society, to support the development of an ecotourism operation in Bolivia with the aim of protecting Andean bears.
This iconic species is being protected through a partnership with private landowners at the Acero Marka valley in Bolivia, who are interested in developing ecotourism initiatives to strengthen their commitment to wildlife conservation.
WCS will support local landowner the Bohrt family develop a small, sustainable and green energy ecotourism venture named the Jucumari Lodge (Jucumari is a local Quechua word for the Andean bear).
Hopefully one day, this will be a place that supporters of Remembering Wildlife will be able to visit and see this beautiful bear species for themselves.
WCB Research Foundation
Location: India
Another donation from sales of Remembering Bears has gone to a project to protect sloth bears in in Gujarat state, western India.
The funds will support a multi-pronged approach to enhancing the functionality of ecological ‘sloth bear corridors’ and conservation of sloth bears through human-bear conflict mitigation actions.
These include planting trees to increase food availability in the corridor areas; creating water accumulation points within the forest area to reduce the tendency of bears to seek water in villages; designing, development and distribution of bear safety equipment to local villagers and a campaign to clean up the sloth bear habitat and keep bears away from eating human rubbish items dumped around the forest, which can choke them, be a carcinogenic risk, and lead to unnatural food-conditioning.
WCB Research Foundation says this donation will ‘boost our efforts to promote human-bear coexistence’.
Salviamo L’Orso
Location: Italy
Donation amount: $10,400
Remembering Bears is funding a project to help the Marsican brown bear in Italy’s Abruzzo National Park area.
About 50 Marsican brown bears live in the core area of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park (ALMNP) and Salviamo L’Orso works to mitigate risks to the bears, which include retaliation for occasionally killing livestock and also road traffic accidents.
Remembering Wildlife’s funds will pay for activity over the next five months as the bears wake from hibernation, for everything from chicken coups to help local people protect their livestock; compensation payments when chicken, sheep or lambs are killed by bears; as well as planting 250 apple and pear trees in the area, along with tools to prune and bring back to fruit local abandoned orchards where the bears can safely find food.
We’ll also be paying for a local education drive to help people in the area learn how to safely live alongside the bears and understand just how endangered and precious they are.
High Asia Habitat Fund
Location: Himalayas
The High Asia Habitat Fund’s mission is to protect High Asia’s critical ecosystems through conserving wildlife, restoring wild habitat, and empowering dependent communities toward conservation.
Remembering Wildlife’s donation will be put towards vital work by a bear expert to develop an education campaign for a local community in the Himalayas, encouraging them to use bear-proof methods to avoid bears breaking into houses and to encourage them to live alongside brown bears, not in conflict with them.
Cheetah Conservation Fund
Location: Namibia
Donation amount: £64,000
Remembering Cheetahs' first donation went to the CCF's Livestock Guarding Dog (LGD) Programme, which is proven to reduce livestock losses to predators.
Studies show that farmers with an LGD are less likely to trap or shoot cheetahs.
CCF breeds Anatolian shepherd and Kangal dogs, which have been used to guard livestock for thousands of years in Turkey, to become LGDs. The pups are placed with Namibian farmers and bond with the herd or flock.
As they grow up, their size and loud bark help to scare predators away.
A second donation went to CCF's vital work in anti-cheetah club trafficking in Somaliland.
N/a’an ku se Foundation
Location: Namibia
Since 2008, the N/a'an ku se Rapid Response Unit has been reacting to requests from farmers apprehensive about predators roaming their properties. The RRU acts as quickly as possible, endeavouring to alleviate landowners' concerns, while simultaneously preventing the unnecessary persecution of Namibia's carnivores and allowing the animals to retain their lives and freedom.
Since the RRU's inception, the persecution of carnivores captured on farmland has decreased by 80% and the donation from Remembering Cheetahs will help ensure the work continues.
Zambian Carnivore Programme
Location: Zambia
Donation amount: £7,000
This donation will support the programme's long-term cheetah conservation efforts by funding a motorcycle used for research and anti-snaring activity and also playing for two GPS satellite collars.
ZCP's collaborative anti-snaring work in Zambia has been very successful but requires an intensive year-round effort to keep it going.
Pictured, above, is Remembering Wildlife founder Margot Raggett viewing collected snares in Zambia.
Mara Predator Conservation Project
Location: Kenya
Our donation will go to support the project's annual intensive monitoring surveys of cheetahs in the Maasai Mara.
The purpose of this survey is to research details of cheetah densities and distributions.
To successfully undertake the intensive monitoring surveys, the Mara Predator Conservation Programme relies on taking proper ID photos of individual cheetahs.
All cheetah sightings, and the effort put into finding them, is recorded on a custom application installed on tablet computers.
They also require functioning vehicles to drive around the Mara to find the cheetahs.
The donation will therefore be used to purchase camera equipment, tablet computers and fuel and maintenance for our monitoring vehicles so that they can complete this important task and obtain the vital information that it provides.
We are particularly delighted to be able to support this initiative and provide presence in the Mara at a time when there are so few visitors due to the pandemic.
Margot Raggett with Henry Mwape of the Zambia Carnivore Programme
Remembering Wildlife – Supporting Projects in Africa & Asia
Remembering Wildlife exists to raise awareness of the plight facing wildlife and also funds to protect it.
It is our great honour and pleasure to support hard-working organisations on the ground, ones that are making a real difference. Through sales of Remembering Elephants, Remembering Rhinos, Remembering Great Apes, Remembering Lions and Remembering Cheetahs to date, Remembering Wildlife has donated £947,500 to 58 projects across 24 countries.
Read more about some of those project donations below.
Cheetah Conservation Botswana
Location: Botswana
Donation amount: £16,000
Botswana is one of the last cheetah strongholds, with approximately 28% of the 7,100 left in the wild. However, 80% live outside protected areas, often on agricultural land, which can lead to conflict with communities. Cheetah Conservation Botswana has been working alongside the government since 2003 to help facilitate coexistence between rural communities and carnivore species.
The donation will go towards CCB's research programme, which focuses on monitoring the cheetahs of the Western Kalahari landscape outside of protected areas.
This is a strategically important region for the conservation of the regional cheetah population as it is the heart of their range in Southern Africa. Through track surveys, camera trap surveys and satellite collars, the research programme provides essential information on their behaviours, movements, home ranges, land use preferences, role in human wildlife conflict and conservation needs.
The Serengeti Cheetah Project
Location: Tanzania
Since 1974, SCP field biologists have kept continuous records of individual cheetahs living on the Serengeti plains, using each cheetah's unique spot patterns to track its life's journey from when it is first seen as a young cub. This painstaking, long-term research has provided vital information that underpins the conservation of the species. This research has gone hand-in-hand with training and inspiring Tanzanian scientists to become leaders and role models in cheetah conservation.
Over the last year, due to COVID-19, tourism to Tanzania has fallen by nearly 90%, resulting in a drastic drop in income to support wildlife protection. This donation will ensure that SCP staff are able to continue their work and keep watchover the Serengeti cheetahs at this critical time.
African Parks/Endangered Wildlife Trust
Location: Zambia
Donation amount: £7,000
The Cheetah Introduction Project is a collaboration between African Parks and the Endangered Wildlife Trust to reintroduce seven wild cheetahs into the area of Bangweulu, north-eastern Zambia.
This coalition will be the first in 56 years to roam to Bangweulu Plains and, in order to keep up the ongoing support of the local community, the project has decided to further involve them by employing two local community members to monitor the cheetahs.
This globally significant wetland is home to 50,000 people and serves as a living example for community-based conservation in Africa.
Prior to African Parks' involvement in the project, in 2008, Bangweulu had been subjected to continuous poaching of its larger mammal species, additionally illegal fishing and hunting had been disastrous for fish stocks and game meat, which the local population depends on.
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