Signature Initiatives work with key stakeholder groups, fostering collaborative development of innovative solutions to shared conservation problems. The initiatives create diverse, interdisciplinary teams of conservation professionals, community leaders, government officials, and others to address conservation threats at a grassroots level.
Credit: USFWS
MEXICO
Mexico has identified training in conservation as the best hope for managing its natural resources. To meet this goal, in 2009, the Wildlife Without Borders-Mexico program and the Mexican government created three Signature Initiatives.
- Voices for Nature: Assisting Mexican officials to enact and implement sound and sustainable environmental legislation.
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Managing for Excellence: Comprehensively training future natural area managers to improve the management of national parks and reserves.
- Stewards of the Land: Empowering subsistence farmers to conserve biodiversity on lands they own or lease.
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
The Teaming for People and Nature signature initiative provides a framework to provide real-world skills to future conservationists. The program aims to train graduate students in the region in leadership, management, communication, and community engagement while also providing practical on-the-ground training in a team environment
AFRICA
The MENTOR (Mentoring for ENvironmental Training in Outreach and Resource conservation) Program builds teams of emerging African conservation leaders to work collaboratively on conservation goals. Bringing together professionals from a variety of disciplines, this in-depth training builds the capacity of emerging leaders to address conservation problems from all angles. These projects include MENTOR/BEAN and MENTOR-FOREST.
