Conservation in Zambia

[Airy, bright music.]

Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to SparkScience. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraaff, and I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University, and this is our season 6 finale. We made it, folks! Thanks for sticking with us and listening to stories which feature diverse scientists and conservationists around the world.

Our guest for this episode is Luwi Nguluka, who’s a conservationist in Zambia. She’s a cofounder of “Women for Conservation,” Zambia’s first network for women working on wildlife initiatives. Luwi is also involved in the “This Is Not a Game” bushmeat campaign, which tackles illegal bushmeat trade. She also happens to be one of my top go-to pop culture experts!

In this episode, we speak about her path to becoming a wildlife activist, how to share a message that will impact a community, and what conservation media looks like around the world.

[Music picks up before fading off.]

Thank you for coming to talk to me today.

Luwi Nguluka: Thank you for having me. I’m excited!

DeGraaff: When we talk usually, it’s about TV, so to actually, actually talk about conservation and your career, I want to know more. I want to know how it all started. So, let’s start at the beginning!

Nguluka: It really depends on how far back you want to go. I am Zambian. I was born in Zambia, but I moved to Botswana, which is right next door, at 2 years old. So, I did all of my schooling, my education, there. I was very fortunate to grow up in the heart of the Okavango delta. If you know anything about conservation in Africa, the Okavango delta is a very important, protected area. So, I spent a lot of my childhood around there.

Interesting enough, when I went to university, the only thing that I knew that I liked was science, so I decided that I would study medicine. But that dream came to a screeching halt by my first lecture. I think I was pretty certain, “Nope, this is not for me!” But it took me two years to communicate that to everybody else involved.

The one thing that I did like, aside from just general science and what I was learning in pre-Med, was ecology.

So then, I shifted from pre-Med to ecology. I think it just fitted how my mind works. I’m really interested in loads of different things at the same time. Ecology is like plants and animals and people, and how everything is interconnected.

And so, by the time I was graduating from university, I went back to Maun, the town where I grew up most of my life, which is right on the edge of the Okavango delta. I got an internship studying African wild dogs and their behavior.

I think that’s what first got me interested in research. I understood, “Okay, I like research. I like asking scientific questions, and I like getting answers.” But I didn’t think that African wild dogs was the right fit for me. I just didn’t see any longevity for me. I mean, they were really cool, really fascinating, charismatic animals. I was just interested in a lot more than that specific study.

So, I moved back to Zambia. When I moved here, one of the first opportunities that came my way was again research-based, and that I think just confirmed what I already had in my head. Like, “I like this! I like asking questions!”

And that led to me doing another study looking at the

consumption of wild meat, of “bushmeat” as we call it here in Lusaka, where I was now staying. (Lusaka is the capital city of Zambia.) Yeah, trying to understand why people consume wild meat.

So, a bit of background. I think your audience would maybe think of it as venison or maybe bison meat, or something like that. It’s very popular in Zambia and in Lusaka especially. People consume a lot of meat from wild animals.

I think part of it goes back to our history as hunters and gatherers. And also, now being an urbanized population, a lot of people have moved to the cities but before, they lived in villages and they lived off the land, and wild meat was one of their main sources of protein.

So, for many reasons, people consume wild meat. Like I said, that sense of nostalgia, sense of eating something healthier, because now we’re eating a lot more farmed meat and it’s not necessarily healthy for us, and…. I mean, there’s a myriad of reasons. We could talk about that, but anyway–

DeGraaff: Well, I like that you said that! I like that you said my listeners would think about it more like venison or buffalo, because I think a gut reaction for some people in

America would be, “Why would people eat wild meat?”

I’m like, you do that all the time! You have your uncle who hunts venison, or we have Trader Joe’s that sells the buffalo burgers that people are like, “Oh, that’s so great.” So, it’s totally relatable.

Nguluka: Yeah, exactly. It’s the same thing. I mean, maybe packaged a bit differently, but I think the idea or the sentiment behind it is the same.

So, I started studying that, and one of our main findings in our study was that there was just a lack of awareness about the dangers of wild meat because most of it was consumed illegally. Like you said, it might start off with someone having an uncle who has a hunting license, but once there’s so much demand, it turns into people becoming professional poachers, sourcing this meat for people in the city. And people in the city aren’t thinking about where the meat comes from, how it’s processed, and all of that.

So, that led me into a career shift into more awareness raising and thinking about how we can educate Zambians about the dangers of this meat, and launching a campaign called “This Is Not a Game.” (Yes, it’s a shameless pun on game meat.) And talking about bushmeat being illegal,

being dangerous, and carrying diseases. And trying to offset that with legal meat that’s being sourced ethically and isn’t as bad for the environment, or isn’t bad for the environment.

That was an important piece of the puzzle for us, not just saying, “No, don’t do this,” but providing an alternative that works for the population that encourages supporting local businessmen and women in the economy.

[Cheery, transitional music comes and goes.]

So, we need to get more women in conservation interested in conservation issues, but a lot of them don’t have a space to learn. A lot of the conservationists are living in remote areas and national parks, and when they do come to urban aras, they’re so busy trying to buy supplies and stuff.

Even if you are interested in conservation, you don’t know who to talk to. And if you are working in this space, again, everybody is busy with everything else and we don’t often network.

Men are very good at leveraging their relationship. If a guy needs to get something done, he knows 10 other guys he can call in that industry and can help him.

Women have a challenge. One, sometimes you’re the only woman in that space, and I think sometimes we’re also taught to compete with one another rather than collaborate.

So, what we created with these networking events, where we have cultural events and get a prominent woman in conservation in Zambia to come talk about her work, talk about what she does. But also just give a space for women to connect and let them organically meet, and see where they can take it from that.

We started off with just drinks and a talk, and questions and answers after that, to going to protected areas and national parks. What’s been really cool is seeing people take ownership of it as well, and being like, “Oh, we’d like to sponsor the next event. We’d like to host it.”

When we first started it, we thought it’d just be for women already working in the conservation space. But a lot of the young girls and young women who are interested in conservation but never had access to it are now getting interested and thinking, “How can I support this work? I’m a lawyer or a doctor or whatever, and I’m really interested in this. How can I be more supportive?”

[Cheery transitional music.]

DeGraaff: We’re speaking to storyteller and conservation activist Luwi Nguluka about wildlife crime in Zambia.

Nguluka: So that then leads me to the work that I’m doing now, which is awareness raising. I manage a department in my organization, Wildlife Crime Prevention. We’re interested in preventing all sorts of wildlife crime in Zambia.

I think some of our biggest issues in Zambia and across the continent would be the poaching of elephants primarily for their ivry, rhinos for their rhino horn, pangolins for their scales and sometimes their meat. Of course, a lot of that goes to far East Asia, where there’s a huge demand for those products.

But there is also a domestic market that we’re interested in, and in educating the people about how this affects us. I think, more and more, we’re seeing a lot of behavior change campaigns focusing on far East Asia and targeting those audiences, but no one is really thinking about the source market and how people here are affected. So, that’s the work that I do.

One of the things that became very obvious is, there’s a

huge disparity, or there’s a huge gap. Once you start working in conservation in Zambia and in Africa, you don’t see a lot of people who look like me, especially when you go higher up and start looking at management positions.

Of course, you’ll see lots of indigenous Zambians working in government, but when you go into private sector, or into nonprofit, I think it generally attracts a different type of person, and that person isn’t always indigenous, Zambian, or a woman. So, my colleagues and I wanted to start something that would encourage more women to go into conservation.

I’ve talked a bit more about race and why you might not see as many black people in certain parts of conservation, but women as well. A lot of the work is remote and involves living in rural areas or living in the middle of a national park without access to some of the amenities that people are used to.

But also, there’s what I would call “black tax.” It’s an African term, I think. That’s the idea that when you get educated, you still have siblings and a whole family to take care of. So, you often don’t have the privilege of leaving the city (or wherever you grew up) behind, to go live in the bush and just chase animals.

And so, conservation doesn’t always attract women. It rarely attracts young Zambians as well because we’re being raised to become doctors or lawyers or teachers; something tangible, something financially stable that can help you provide for your family and for your community. And so, “Women for Conservation” is a mixture of both of those things.

DeGraaff: So, you’re dedicated to these awareness campaigns. How do you sell your message? It’s really hard to do it effectively and to make sure that people are actually going to take it in and listen, or not be turned away. So, you’ve made some films, you do presentations, you’re involved in creating conferences. But what’s your core goal? How do you do it so that you are being effective? What’s your method?

Nguluka: I think that it helps coming from a research background. Both me and a couple of people on the team as well come from a research background. So, anything that we do is always rooted in data, and collecting as much data as we can.

For example, with our bushmeat campaign, it was very important even when we were doing our research that we ask the right questions. So, we asked not just questions about people’s consumptions of bushmeat (you know,

what are they eating, when are they eating it, how are they eating it), but also just general media questions. How do you access information in general, not even just conservation information? Are you reading newspapers? Are you listening to radio? If so, when, where, how?

And also, trying to get perceptions they had about conservation. What do you think about national parks? What do you think the value of wildlife is? We ask a lot of general questions that help us get a good idea of who our target audience is, what they care about.

And, working with a great production team as well. We’ve been very fortunate. I think we try to understand our strengths. I think something that’s important for us as a team is understanding that, while we have great information about conservation, we are not necessarily expert filmmakers or expert media people.

I think over the years we’ve learned a lot and we do a lot better than we used to do, but we still try our best to partner with the best in the business, to make sure that our message is not just informational, but is attention-grabbing and it engages people.

I gave an example of a radio drama that we did early last year, and that was about conservation, human-wildlife

conflict, engaging communities, and helping them understand the value of conservation. Especially in areas where there’s a lot of human-wildlife conflict, there’s sometimes resentment for wildlife and the way the wildlife seems to be more valued than the people who live in those areas.

So, going back to what I was saying about research, it was very important for us to do research in the community, understand how people perceive wildlife, how they perceive conservationists, how they perceive law enforcement, and then think about the best way to get this message across.

With the resources given, the best way was a radio drama because people in those communities listen to loads of radio. They don’t have television. They’re not on social media a lot. Also, with radio, you have various things that you could do. You could do a chat show.

We decided to go with a drama. And it was very important to us at the beginning that the drama not be very obviously about conservation. It was about a man who falls on hard times. His wife is heavily pregnant. This is his second wife. He has a daughter by his first wife, who passed away. His daughter falls critically ill and needs to be taken to the hospital. And he loses his job.

And so, now he has to figure out how is he going to provide for his family? His brother comes through and says, “Well, I have a job for you. I’m always doing these odd jobs, and someone just offered me loads of money to transport some goods from one place to another.”

And he’s not very specific about what those goods are, but it turns out, round about episode 2 or 3, you realize that the goods are actually ivory, and it involves going into a national park and poaching.

So, you’re slowly teasing up the ideas, but you’re hooking people in, you’re reeling people in.

DeGraaff: People can’t see us; we’re video chatting, so they can’t see the giant smile on my face. I totally want to listen to this drama!

Nguluka: Exactly! I think that’s something that we always try to do. I mention this example because we worked with a really cool creative agency and really cool script writers and voice artists, and making sure that everything was genuine, authentic to the audience, or making sure that the right voices were picked, that the right accents were picked.

I’m sure you’ve watched shows or movies, and the accents are off and you can’t concentrate because the whole time you’re thinking, “That is not how we sound!”

I think one thing that I’ve learned doing this work is that it takes a really good team and it takes the right people, and you ought to invest in getting the right people whenever possible.

DeGraaff: That’s really hard, right? At least for me and this program, there are only a few people, and we don’t have the resources. I’m really happy that you have the resources to do all that and actually build a team. But it’s hard, it’s hard to get that.

Nguluka: I think we’re very fortunate that we have amazing donors and amazing support. But there’s always more that you’d like to do.

But I think what makes a good communicator is reaching people where they are in that moment, rather than trying to force them to come to you and to think like you do. You are engaging them in a way that they understand.

So, there’s loads of skillsets that you need for that, understanding human psychology, human behavior. A lot of our campaigns are behavior-change campaigns, so

understanding what motivates someone to change their behavior, understanding how long that takes. Understanding what are they interested in now, and how can I reach them where they are now? Where are they spending their time? What are they listening to? What’s cool? How are people talking?

I mean, these are some of the concepts that people in just regular marketing use, but I think they apply to science and communication as well.

And that’s how you end up with a lot of brands being tone-deaf. A lot of brands are getting called out for it now because they have no idea what their target audience is interested in, so learning is necessary.

I think, especially as scientists, sometimes we can get very arrogant and treat everybody like lesser human beings for not knowing the information that we know. But I think that most people are very intelligent. They’re just intelligent in different ways. Just because they’re not thinking about science and data all the time does not mean that they don’t have something to share, they don’t have something worth understanding.

So, I think compassion is another thing that I find very necessary in this work. And compassion helps you

become a better learner and a better communicator.

[Cheery transitional music comes and goes.]

DeGraaff: This is SparkScience, and we’re talking with co-founder of “Women for Conservation,” Luwi Nguluka, about who is seen as a conservationist and how compassion is needed for change.

How has your field been basically portrayed in media? Now you are being part of making that media, but let’s go back a little bit. Maybe from when you were growing up, or maybe other media that you see, is there good media that’s showing what you’re doing in awareness, and is there bad media? What would you like to share with my audience that probably isn’t consuming the same media, or engaging with the same media?

Nguluka: I was thinking about this the other day, just thinking about how important representation is on TV. I mean, it’s important everywhere, but TV for a lot of us is what raised us and how we got our view of the world.

I was thinking about whether there were people like me on TV when I was growing up, and I couldn’t think of a single person. I could think of Jane Goodall and David Attenborough, the big conservationists and nature people,

and I grew up watching their, especially David Attenborough’s, documentaries and I love them, but it gave a perception that that is what a conservationist looks like, or that’s what a nature biologist looks like.

And for kids growing up in Africa, that isn’t always the best thing because, if people don’t look like you, then you don’t think that you can do it too.

And so, I think it’s slowly starting to change. One of the things that we’re really interested in is creating content for an African audience. That means that it might not necessarily be relatable to a European audience or to an American audience, but that’s fine because that’s not who we’re trying to reach. You guys have a lot of your own.

DeGraaff: Yeah, we have a lot of stuff. It’s okay. You don’t need to make stuff for us.

Nguluka: Yeah, exactly. I do see things changing. For example, the work that our friend Noel does. Yeah, Noel Kok and his work in South Africa and also just across the continent, changing the stories that are told, but also changing the people that tell the stories because you cannot help but tell stories from your perspective. All of us do.

I think about that myself as well. I come from a place of privilege and I try to acknowledge that I do not have the traditional, stereotypical Zambian upbringing. I have to think about that in my work sometimes. Am I the best person to tell this story, or is there someone else who could do it better?

Going back to TV, do we really need to see a Luwi on TV, or is there someone else on the team who is better off doing that? I think that’s something I try to push as well, to have less of me and more of people who represent the majority of Zambians on TV, on radio, on social media, speaking the right language, using the right tone, and just connecting with the audience in a way that they understand.

DeGraaff: That is something that I think my colleagues at Western could hear too. Here in the US, we were just talking about all the material we have. We have Nova, we have Blue Chip Films. And you’re right, I think the person that we see hosting a lot of those nature films are white guys or white ladies dropped in to countries in Africa, dropped in to Asia.

And you’re right, it’s very hard for them, as well meaning as they are, to not tell their story from their perspective.

Nguluka: Just on that, I think another frustrating thing is, because they just drop in…. So, you have these Blue Chip documentaries with their multi-million dollar budgets that come, shoot a great documentary for NatGeo, CBS, or BBC, and the people in the community never get to see it. So, they’ll never know their own environment or the value of it, and it’s told for a different audience.

Like I said, unfortunately I grew up watching the stuff, and now I look back on it. I’m like, it was great to a point. It would have been really nice to see someone else, a more indigenous person, tell that story because I think it would be more impactful to the audience.

There’s just no money to be made in Africa from filmmaking for young Africans, for nature and environment filmmaking right now, so it doesn’t attract a lot of young Africans. One, we’re trying to create a film industry, period.

DeGraaff: Is there anything I didn’t ask you, that you would like to share with our audience?

Nguluka: If there’s one thing I would encourage people to do, think more about your audience. Think more about who is really watching, and how you can impact them. Think more about people of color as well. I think

they’re relatively ignored in the science space.

Things are changing, but whenever you get the opportunity, give the people whose story it is the opportunity to tell the story. If you can be a conduit for someone else to tell the story, you still get credit for being a producer or whatever it is you do.

I think if anything that we’re seeing in this climate that we’re living in now, which is pretty chaotic, if you don’t respect people, if you don’t respect their stories, or if you don’t respect their dignity, it always comes back and manifests itself in different ways. And I think storytelling and representation is a huge part of that.

DeGraaff: I agree. Thank you for talking to us, Luwi. You’re so awesome!

Nguluka: Thank you!

[Music picks up as the interview ends.]

DeGraaff: I’d like to thank the always-kind and thoughtful Luwi Nguluka for speaking with me about conservation and the work that’s being done to support wildlife in Zambia.

SparkScience is produced in collaboration with KMRE in Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Bellingham, Washington, in my house, on my computer, during the 2020 statewide “Home Stay” order.

Our producers are Suzanne Blais and myself, Regina Barber DeGraaff. Our audio engineer for today is Julia Thorpe.

If you missed any of the show, go to our website, SparkScienceNow.com. If there’s a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at “SparkScienceNow.” Thank you for listening to SparkScience.

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