This is a blog entry from earlier this month from friends at the Responsive Travel Blog
This is the terrific blog of ELEVATE DESTINATIONS, the travel company that makes travel matter–giving you authentic experiences in wildly diverse cultures while making a difference for the communities and habitats you visit.
I had the recent pleasure of meeting the company’s founder and president, Dominique Callimanopulos, when she was in New York–if you think the company is inspirational (and you will think that), try sitting across the desk from Dominique. She is so comfortable in her skin, and knows she is having an impact.
her bio from the website:
Dominique Callimanopulos
Founder and President, Elevate Destinations
Dominique Callimanopulos, Founder of Elevate Destinations, is a lifetime world traveler committed to combining singular journeys with social good.
Dominique grew up witnessing the disparity between tourists and local conditions they visit and created Elevate Destinations to provide unique and enchanted travel for clients, while caring for local people, wildlife and natural resources.
Dominique studied the impact of tourism on social change in the Seychelle Islands for her Anthropology thesis at Wesleyan University and continued to explore global social and human conditions through 25 years of work with social change organizations in the fields of human rights, international development, environmental protection and psychology before founding Elevate Destinations in 2004.
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So read this upsetting blog entry, bookmark and return to http://www.responsivetravel.com, and when you’re ready to head out into new (to you) places and contribute to life where you land, think http://www.elevatedestinations.com
Elevate Destinations is sad and shocked to report that recently a good friend and conservationist, Kuki Gallmann, was attacked and almost killed by poachers on her property in Lakipia, in Northern Kenya. A major land steward at the edge of the Great Rift Valley, the Ol Ari Nyiro Conservancy encompasses 100,000 acres. The conservancy has won many awards for its protection and cultivation of Black Rhino and other species and is also a center for community and cultural projects and host to many visitors to Kenya every year.
Photo Courtesy of Kuki Gallmann
Ms. Gallmann, now recovering, is the author of the best selling book I Dreamed of Africa. She is a dedicated activist and conservationist who has long fought the ivory trade. In Ms. Gallmann’s own words:
“I was attacked in the Conservancy while alone in my car by seven men on a mission to kill, as a revenge for my involvement in anti-poaching efforts and attempts to break into the illegal ivory and rhino horn trade. I was hit several times, first in the neck, and then the left hand I used to shelter my head and it was shattered from blows with poles, fence posts and rocks they threw. Miraculously I at last managed to insert the first gear and with the good hand drove over a mile before losing consciousness; when I came to I raised the alarm and help from my security staff and the wonderful and most efficient Kenya Wildlife Services team stationed on the conservancy came immediately to my rescue.”
Photo Courtesy of Kuki Gallmann
In 1989, Ms. Gallman helped to stage the burning of 12 tons of ivory in Nairobi National Park:
“Kenya had burnt all its ivory back in 1989. We personally helped. It was our old Toyota truck which brought the 12 tons of ivory to be burnt…This bold and brave message, sent to the world, stopped the legal trade on ivory; for 19 years the poaching was enormously easier to control. All ivory was illegal. Ivory is neither food, medicine nor fuel. It is not an essential commodity. It is the tooth of a majestic animal. It is criminal that the great herds are destroyed to just make bad taste trinkets no one needs, but this is what is happening.”
Photo Courtesy of Kuki Gallmann
According to Ms. Gallmann, the fight against the ivory market was hurt last year by a 2008 Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) decision to permit South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe to sell their stockpiled ivory to China, causing a black market revival on “legal” ivory trade.
This latest attack highlights growing ‘Conservation Wars’ that are taking place around the globe. Population pressures and shrinking resources have escalated conflicts between environmental and human interests, and while many conservancies now educate local inhabitants in sustainable land management, opportunistic groups continue to engage in poaching and illegal trade.
Photo Courtesy of National Geographic
In July of 2008, National Geographic News reported a fatal attack on a World Wildlife Fund truck carrying wildlife conservationists and rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The attack killed two, including an 18 year old girl, and injured several others. The attack took place in Virunga National Park, where over the past ten years over 110 rangers have been killed. In Jakarta earlier this year, there was another attack against conservationists reported by MongaBay, this time by a company, Sinar Mas – a logging company with thousands of hectares of holdings throughout Indonesia. The company’s security guards attacked peaceful Greenpeace protesters, kicking and punching them when they chained themselves to the company’s headquarters. Less than a month after that attack, a nature reserve officer was shot in the head in Malta, on one of Bird Life’s conservations sites. Bird Life reports over 20 attacks on rangers in their Malta parks and the government seems to turn a blind eye. Despite these attacks, they do not damper the will of conservationists, but rather inspire them to move forward stronger than before, as is the case with Ms. Gallmann.
These ‘Conservation Wars’ are more of a reason than ever to give back to the places that you travel and to travel responsively.
Awakening the Responsive Traveler Within: Do you know of other incidents that fit into the ‘Conservation War’ category? Are you inspired by Ms. Gallmann’s story, struggle and courage to join the fight for the conservation of our planet? How could travel help pacify the ‘Conservation Wars’?
This is another interview with somebody who has taken on making a huge change in the world while also creating a path for us to do the same. I met Dominique Callimanopulos in a simple desk-side meeting at my office where she had come to tell me a bit about her company, Elevate Destinations. I had been impressed for a while by Elevate’s website (even their tag line gets me in the best way: “Make Travel Matter.”), and even wrote one of my earliest blog postings, which Dominique didn’t know, about the company. I was immediately taken with how easy and comfortable she was in our conversation, and how lit up she was about the work she does. I wish that kind of passion on all of us…
Change by Doing 