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This Conservationist Helps Humans and Wildlife Coexist
Around the world, people destroy animal and human habitats largely because of unmet needs, especially when it comes to growing and preparing food. Ecolife Conservation works on two tracks so people and nature can prosper together: We provide free, highly efficient stoves to indigenous people living near a monarch butterfly reserve in Michoacán, Mexico. And we cultivate and advocate aquaponics, a low-impact agricultural method where fish and plants work symbiotically, that uses 90 percent less water and land. We’ve come to understand that the way to save animals in the wild is by improving agriculture and making better stoves.
The problem I’m trying to solve
Animals are dying all over the planet because of habitat destruction, especially the practice of chopping down trees for use in open-fire cooking at home. These fires are also dangerous for the billions of people forced to cook this way, because they lead to lung diseases that prematurely kill more than 3 million annually. We realized we could help both humans and their animal neighbors by giving people in environmentally sensitive areas efficient vented stoves. And since commercial agriculture also requires huge swaths of land and large amounts of water, encouraging farmers to switch to aquaponics is another important way to save the environment.
The moment that sparked my passion
I’ve always been interested in saving wildlife and was part of the original group that helped recover the majestic condors in California. Like many environmentalists, back then I viewed humans as impediments to flourishing wildlife. But after I returned from years of environmental work in Madagascar, a cyclone devastated the families there, including a little boy who had befriended me.
I wanted to find and assist the boy and those families, but no environmental group would fund it because their money was earmarked only for wildlife. That’s when I realized that people and habitats must be seen as intimately connected. I founded Ecolife Conservation in 2003 to help save the world by aiding humans and animals together.
