EWB seeks to inspire a generation in which wildlife and wild places are secure and communities have the support necessary to live safely and in harmony with wildlife. With understanding, comes tolerance. People have a right to be informed about their country’s diverse wildlife and how valuable it is to the land and to the country itself.
EWB is now managing the Chobe Nature and Culture reserve, which is ideally located along the Chobe River, between the main townships of Kasane and Kazungula in northern Botswana. Across the river lies the conservancies of Namibia and the property is less than 10 kilometers from the borders of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The land stretches along the Chobe River, adjoined to a critically important wildlife corridor linking the river to the Kasane Forest Reserve. Due to its unique locale, Chobe Nature and Culture will have a strong impact reaching a broad, diverse audience of all ages, local, national and regional communities, and International visitors.
The CNC programs are dedicated to environmental education, training in conservation agriculture, simply connecting people to the environment, taking learners out of the classroom to experience nature, and enhancing the declining Botswana culture that traditionally coexisted with and understood the country’s flora and fauna. Our strategy is to enlighten the community’s understanding and perceptions toward wildlife and the natural world by developing inspiring programs with collaborative partners and projects, which are tied directly to harmoniously living with wildlife and the benefits that accrue to the local community.
Foster a Forest
By Fostering Forests, we also foster budding conservationists. Stemming from EWB’s environmental education programs, the initiative is blossoming through the schools and youth programs across Chobe District. The program emphasizes the importance of trees, clean air, climate change, bush fires, types of indigenous trees and the ecosystem functions between trees, elephants and other species. Our goal is to help reforest and restore riparian and wetland habitats on the CNC reserve, while providing students with valuable hands-on experiences to better understand the environment they live in. As students plant and watch their own trees grow, it gives them a connection and ownership over the responsibility to protect their forests.
We are very proud that our initial large tree-planting event was a wonderful success with students, teachers and youth participating from every learning institution across Chobe District. To help inspire us all, we were joined by a dedicated conservationist, HRH, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. Click news here for more info and photos!
Conservation Agriculture
CNC will also serve as regional Conservation Agriculture Training and Demonstration sites, whereas farmers and community can participate in workshops that will enhance their traditional knowledge to expand their economic opportunities in sustainable farming. We plan to build demonstration sites featuring the EleSenses tools and classes on how to use them and another site utilizing sustainable agricultural practices while providing lessons from experts on simple, modern practices such as hydroponics, irrigation systems and environmentally friendly pest-control, all of which are intended to help protect the environment and promote environmental stewardship, while empowering the local farming communities.
Bee Engaged
We have already created an Apiculture site with ten active beehives, working with the Department of Agriculture, as an environmental education project focusing on the importance of pollinators and the concerns of pesticides, to provide apiculture training to those desirous to enhance their fields, or to those curious to learn, and to establish an innovative model of microeconomic enterprise which can be replicated in other parts of the region, thereby contributing to improve social and economic stability in remote rural areas.
