The overall goal of our wildlife conservation program is to conserve the endangered African wild dog, and use it as a flagship species to protect habitat and promote conservation throughout south-east Zimbabwe. Education is one of the most valuable tools available to conservation biologists working in remote, poor, rural areas where access to resource materials and learning opportunities are negligible. As such, alongside our research and wild dog conservation projects, we have established literacy and environmental education programs in primary schools surrounding key wildlife areas. But we wanted to expand the beneficiaries of our education program to the community as a whole. We therefore plan to establish a mobile education unit for communities around one of Zimbabwe’s key conservation areas, the Savé Valley Conservancy. This unit will have resources suitable for all ages and reading standards, whether toddlers, teenagers or adults; parents, chiefs or teachers. Knowing the value of the visual media from past experience, the unit will be equipped with a DVD projector and small generator and will show wildlife/conservation DVDs every morning and evening in an informal setting, with a take-home message given before each showing. Human-wildlife conflict mitigation measures will also be included in the program, after the necessity of such a program became apparent, particularly as the lion population in the SVC increases.

This mobile education unit will help us to achieve our long term conservation objectives by giving people an understanding of the value of natural resource management and conservation and raising the education standard to give people opportunities to make a living without relying on poaching or illegal harvesting of resources from protected areas. The opportunities presented by the unit comprise very real benefits to the communities which will assist in engendering more positive attitudes towards the protected areas and wildlife resource. Moreover, through the exposure to the national and even global picture through the DVDs and books, a deeper understanding of the aesthetic value of wildlife will be achieved, as well as an increased awareness of the economic, medicinal and quality-of-life value of ecosystems and ecosystem functions.

The presence of the educator in these communities will also be immensely valuable. He/she will be able to listen to people’s concerns, discuss locally-feasible, eco-friendly solutions, and raise awareness of conservation issues through informal conversations. This is an extremely important component of our overall wild dog conservation project.