Biodiversity Stewardship training

Biodiversity stewardship is an approach to securing land in biodiversity priority areas through entering into agreements with private and communal landowners, led by conservation authorities. Currently, conservation agencies responsible for protected area expansion have significant financial and capacity constraints which hinder their ability to meet national and international biodiversity conservation goals and specific provincial protected area expansion targets. There are a number of challenges which impacts the efficient implementation of provincial biodiversity stewardship programmes in South Africa. Some of the challenges include the lack of capacity within the extension officers who operate on the ground and the lack of opportunities to learn from more experienced officers. Conservation Outcomes, together with Samantha de Villiers of Ndlovu de Villiers Attorneys, has provided a number of tailor-made training opportunities for practitioners, focused generally on biodiversity stewardship implementation, training specifically for communal land, as well as providing online training material for future use.