For the management of wildlife and protected areas, the acceptance and participation of stakeholders is an essential key to long-term success. Where measures are taken against their resistance, there are considerable risks. Actions planned or implemented by managers can be ignored and sabotaged. Above all, the social relations among these actors will be strained and this will make it more difficult to balance interests in the long term.
To avoid these problems, prudent management should consider environmental, economic and social factors. It is important to understand both the initial situation and the possible impact of planned measures on these three dimensions. On such a foundation, management can better plan, communicate, and ultimately implement successfully.
We support managers through studies / plans / analysis on the ecological, economic and social aspects and show possible conflicts of interest as well as opportunities. Once this is clear, we can help by developing communication strategies and actively support with communicating to the interest groups during implementation. Where a broad public is concerned with protected areas or the management of wildlife, we help with public participation.
In some cases the most passionate groups may not always be easy to work with. This has been the case, where the behavior of enthusiastic visitors proves to be a burden in sensitive protected areas, or when wildlife is attracted and brought into proximity to humans, which then causes long-term conflicts. With years of experience and the methodology to effectively promote knowledge transfer to target groups we can offer support to address those issues. Where a change in behaviour of users is required, we can help with research and social marketing approaches.
Where teams work on tasks of wildlife or protected area management, we support by facilitating creative processes, support communication within teams and organizations, provide team training, and capacity building. Where conflicts of interests have developed, we can help with formal mediation and conflict resolution procedures to identify jointly supported solutions.
We provide comprehensive project management only for cross-sectoral or cross-border projects that integrate aspects of nature conservation, biodiversity and sustainable land use. We focus on this area of work to best use our expertise for ambitious undertakings with a reasonable investment.