LOCATION: INDAWYGI LAKE, MYANMAR
TARGET SPECIES: ELD’S DEER, STAR TORTOISE AND OTHERS

Community Conservation works with Friends of Wildlife in Myanmar to involve local communities in the management of 21 protected areas and their surrounding areas throughout Myanmar. 

Our executive director, Dr. Teri Allendorf, has been working with staff at FoW since 1999, when Dr. Chris Wemmer, then director of the Conservation Biology Institute at the Smithsonian Institution, invited Teri to join an interdisciplinary group to conduct trainings for staff at Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary. These collaborations, which Dr. Wemmer began in 1994, provided a model for working and collaborating with local communities and government staff that inspires our current collaboration to this day.

Staff from Chatthin WS went on to create Friends of Wildlife in 2007. They are a passionate group of people, who were part of the original Smithsonian collaboration, committed to wildlife conservation in partnership with local communities. Their first project site was Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary, where FoW’s founder, Myint Aung, had served as the sanctuary warden, and FoW’s current director, Khine Khine Swe, was a local schoolteacher who led the survey team to understand people’s attitudes and relationships with the sanctuary. Chatthin WS is a haven for the endangered Eld’s Deer in the central dry zone of Myanmar.   

Myanmar’s isolationist history and 50 years of military rule have left the country with a nascent and underdeveloped civil society sector, marked by a lack of technical knowledge due to the deterioration of universities and educational institutions. The military coup in early 2021 and changes in laws and regulations indicated a tightening of control over NGOs and CSOs, posing significant barriers to their development. Furthermore, Myanmar is experiencing alarming destruction of valuable and rare species and ecosystems across the country. 

In these difficult circumstances, community involvement is especially crucial to protect biodiversity. Supporting local communities to play an active role in managing ecosystems and initiate conservation-friendly practices is instrumental in promoting inclusive governance. The current political situation represents a significant obstacle to successful project implementation. However, in areas unaffected by civil conflict, it is even more crucial to conduct trainings on nature and biodiversity conservation, engage with local communities, and provide capacity-building programs. These efforts will not only help biodiversity now but will also prepare communities to accelerate environmental and biodiversity conservation activities when the political landscape improves, allowing for more effective ecosystem management. 

FoW operates in multiple areas in collaboration with protected area authorities. These sites are home to endangered and endemic species and are designated as Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), with most being Protected Areas (PAs). Over the past fifteen years, FOW has successfully implemented several projects across Myanmar, including the conservation of gaur, elephants, turtles, fish, gibbons, Eld’s deer, and efforts to mitigate Human-Elephant Conflicts (HEC). 

A flagship activity that CC has supported is FoW’s Biodiversity Heroes Trainings, which bring together community leaders from around the country to build their capacity to organize and create projects to conserve biodiversity. Many of these training sessions have been held at FoW’s training facility near Indawgy Lake in Kachin State. A total of 102 community representatives from 17 local CSOs living in and around the 13 protected areas have participated in these trainings through 4 biodiversity heroes trainings. In addition, 128 committee members from 28 village-level CSOs living near two protected areas have been trained through three additional trainings. See a video about this project here.

One notable training took place in Pansui Sub-township, Naga region, near the Indian border at the request of participants from one of the trainings at Indawgyi. This request grew into a new wetland project.

See more updates on our work in Myanmar: