Women who protect the wilderness.

If you did not cry your eyes out watching the motion picture "Gorillas in the Mist" in 1986, you probably wanted to go and save other endangered animals somewhere in a remote and romantic location.

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Dian Fossey became a household name following the movie based on the book she wrote after 15 years of research on the mountain gorilla in Rwanda. Another woman who has won international acclaim for her research work on chimpanzees in Tanzania is Jane Goodall. Her 36 years of detailed research on the great ape is the longest continuous field study of animals ever undertaken.

However, it was not until recently that women's role in the environment has been recognised. Namibia is fortunate to have plenty of Fosseys and Goodalls who have devoted their lives to the environment. Their efforts have not gone unnoticed and many of them have received prestigious awards for their unselfish hard work, making them leaders in the international arena.

In Namibia women have been in the field for more than 20 years. What is encouraging is that a new generation of women is evolving who are just as dedicated and committed to keeping up the good work. All of them are devoting their energy and knowledge to making a lasting change, and they serve as an inspiration for future generations of women.

One Namibian woman who has undoubtedly benefited from following in the footsteps of her female mentors and role models is Patricia Skyer. Under her leadership as the Coordinator of the Namibia Association of Community Based Natural Resource Management Support Organisations, 15 conservancies have been registered by Government, providing them legal status and directly involving more than 33 000 people and more than four million hectares of land. For her work Skyer received the World Wildlife Fund's Women and Conservation award last year, as well as the Conde Nast Traveller Magazine 2002 Environmental Award.

Skyer, who is described as dedicated and enthusiastic, issues-focused and goal-oriented, has been successful in creating strong relationships between diverse community and national groups that have led the way for positive and permanent gains in conservation efforts in the country.

Although she has always enjoyed outdoor activities, such as camping and visiting the farm as a child, she took the beauty of nature for granted, she told Sister Namibia. "I soon realised however that we all had a role to play in conserving our precious heritage for our future generations."

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She mentions Dr Mary Seely, Director of the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia, as one of the women who have been a great inspiration in her professional career. Seely, who was born in northern California in the US, has been director of the Desert Ecological Research Unit based at Gobabeb for more than 25 years. Among her awards she counts an honorary doctorate from the University of Natal and a Gold Medal from the Zoological Society of Southern Africa. She says that what keeps her motivated is the opportunity to work with a variety of people, "particularly young, energetic ones", and to contribute to the understanding and improved management of arid environments, which incidentally encompasses all of Namibia.

Seely says she works in this field because she has always believed in the importance of maintaining a balance between environment and human development. With time her concern has grown to find solutions for negative actions people are taking that destroy their own living space.

This issue of balance is also of great concern to Dr Margaret Jacobsohn, Co-Director of Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) for the past 17 years. "I believe the foundation of all development is our natural resource base," says Jacobsohn, who has won the Knight of the Order of the Golden Ark, Netherlands in 1997, the United Nations Environmental Programme's Global 500 Award in 1994 and the Goldman Foundation's Grassroots Environmental Award for Africa (jointly awarded to Garth Owen-Smith and Jacobsohn) in 1993.

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She feels the so-called "developed world" has built up massive environmental debts by its unsustainable lifestyles. "In Namibia in a small way, through our innovative conservancy programme we have an opportunity to evolve Namibian ways of linking conservation and development which could and should serve as a model for the rest of the world."

Seeing capacity built in rural people, especially women, is what motivates Jacobsohn, who came to conservation via journalism, and archaeology and anthropology. She mentions a young woman, Lina Kaisuma, who told her that when she joined the IRDNC her only skill was cooking. "Five years later she got a standing ovation in Uganda for a paper she gave with a colleague on women and environmental planning."

That is why she works in this field--to give rights to people who use natural resources. "This makes total sense, as the users have the highest incentive to look after resources on which they depend and from which they benefit."

For Janet Matota, one of the first employees of the IRDNC and senior facilitator in the Caprivi region, conservation projects will be successful where women are involved. As the first recipient of the Namibian Nature Foundation (NNF) award in 2000, she enjoys her job because of the involvement of women in Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) and the confidence they gain, as well as the direct benefits for women generated from the selling of crafts.

Skyer fully agrees that the greatest scope for women's involvement in the environment is being realised through CBNRM initiatives. "It links the resource to the primary user and seeks to involve the user in the management of that resource. As at least 50 per cent of rural residents are women, there is a need to involve rural women in sustainable natural resource management practices and to give women greater confidence to voice their needs in meeting their daily livelihood needs."

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It is a known fact that women unite to solve problems, especially when called upon to protect their family, home and community.

"Women are the pivot-points and the kingpins of conservation," says Dr Phoebe Barnard, the driving force behind Namibia's National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan and winner of a Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Conservation Biology. "We are resource users and custodians, managers, monitors, teachers, lecturers, mothers, scientists, policy makers and planners. All of these roles are critical, and all of them are the natural roles of women because we are nurturers, household strategists, educators and decision makers. Women need to take these roles seriously and defend them against bigots of every kind," says Barnard.

For Barnard it is quite simple why she has chosen this career. "The environment is what keeps us all alive. I feel it's the most important and exciting thing for a person to devote their energies to. If we let it degrade, we get poorer, not richer, and sicker, not healthier."

She feels her job is to help people to see that if we continue to be human-centred, and not keep the country in good shape to pass on to the next generations, they will grow up in poverty.

Dr Laurie Marker, co-founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia, says women have a very important role to play. "They are peace makers and mothers. They will care for things--people and nature. Women do many things all at the same time--keeping lots of balls in the air--and not dropping any of them." Among the host of awards bestowed on Marker, also known as "The Cheetah Lady", was being named as one of the Heroes of the Planet by Time Magazine in 2000. In 2001 she was named Humanitarian of the Year by the Marin County Humane Society, and last year she was an Audi Terra Nova Award finalist in South Africa.

Marker, who calls herself the luckiest person in the world to have been able to raise and care for all kinds of animals, says looking into the eyes of a cheetah keeps her motivated. "I see Chewbaaka, our Cheetah Ambassador, whom I raised from three weeks of age and who is now seven years. When I look at him I think 'how in the world could humans ever live on this earth without this amazing creation."

This is exactly what motivated Blythe Loutit, another veteran in the conservation field, to start the Save the Rhino Trust 20 years ago. Her life as an artist and botanical illustrator changed dramatically when she came across three dead rhino dead at the edge of a waterhole, riddled with bullet holes from an automatic weapon, their carcasses mutilated and their noses a mass of bloody tissue where their horns had been hacked off. This sight was the beginning of a life of devotion to the black rhino and desert elephant.

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In 2000 Loutit won the prestigious BBC Animal Award for the Most Outstanding Work in the Conservation of Species. Since the establishment of the Save the Rhino Trust in 1983, poaching has gone down to zero, and the black rhino population has more than doubled.

Phoebe Barnard describes her life as having been wonderful so far, because she has lived in all kinds of amazing places. It is only through the hard work and dedication of these women, and many others (including men) in Namibia that we will be able to keep the country an amazing place with its unique environment.

There is no argument about it, we need the environment, as John Muir, naturalist, writer and conservationist put it: "Thousands of tired, nerveshaken, over-civilised people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wilderness is a necessity..."

The women featured above are only a handful of many more who are making a difference and a positive impact on Namibia's environment. It would be impossible to get a complete list of everybody involved, but the following women are making inroads with their dedication and are taking a lead in environmental matters:

* Sarah Bock--winner of the NNF award in 2001, traditional leader of the Bondelswarts community in the South and monitor of desertification in her region;

* Anna Matros of the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN), and Namibia's project coordinator for the World Summit on Sustainable Development last year;

* Ndina Nashipili--trainee aquatic ecologist with the Department of Water Affairs and member of the Wetlands Working Group;

* Esmerialda Klaassen--botanist and data base manager with the National Botanical Research Institute in Windhoek, who has co-published a booklet on wetland plants;

* Joyce Katjirua--national coordinator of the Southern African Biodiversity Support Programme, a SADC regional networking programme;

* Viviane Hoveka--who runs the Global Water Partnership desk at the DRFN;

* Gillian Maggs-Koeling--head of the National Botanical Research Institute in Windhoek and member of the National Biodiversity Task Force;

* Coleen Mannheimer--head of the National Herbarium;

* Louisa Nakanuku--national coordinator of the Environmental Information Service Unit of the Directorate of Environmental Affairs;

* Dr Martha Kandawa-Schulz--head of the Chemistry Department at UNAM and chairperson of the Namibian Biotechnology Alliance;

* Lina Florry of the Riemvasmaak community--who is manager of Damaraland Camp in the Kunene Region. A programme on her achievement was screened on Carte Blanche last year.