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All Titles by Garth Owen-Smith
Jacobsohn_family_visit_July05_075Garth Owen-Smith

Garth Owen-Smith first worked in the Kaokoveld in north-western Namibia in the 1960s - as the region's agricultural extension officer. He developed a deep affinity with the Himba, Herero and Damara people living in this remote and starkly beautiful land and in 1970 he was transferred out of the area as a ‘security risk’.

After a year in Australia he carried out an ethno-botanical study in the Kaokoveld for the Windhoek Museum and was then appointed to head the first conservation diploma course for black students in South Africa. Because of petty apartheid restrictions he resigned and started an environmental education project aimed at Zulu students and teachers for the Wildlife Society. This was followed by two years cattle ranching in Zimbabwe under the internationally renowned rangeland ecologist, Allan Savory. In 1978 after Namibia’s first multiracial elections he returned to his adopted country to work as a nature conservator in the south and in Etosha National Park.

When he went back to the Kaokoveld in 1982 it was to find that its rich wildlife, including black rhino and desert adapted elephant, had been devastated by illegal hunting. Owen-Smith has spent the last 27 years working to reverse this, starting a non-government organization with his partner, Dr Margaret Jacobsohn, and pioneering one of the most successful community based conservation programmes in Africa. Together they have won some of the world’s major conservation awards including the Goldman Grassroots Environmental Prize for Africa and the United Nations Global 500. Today north-western Namibia is a popular tourism destination and wildlife is once again plentiful. In an African success story, tens of thousands of rural Namibians are directly benefiting from the link that has been forged between development and improved natural resource management.




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