On a trip to Malawi this time last year, I was struck at the lengths conservationists based in reserves would go to protect the animals in the landscapes and the environment around them. For instance, the local rangers in Vwaza Marsh would lead patrols around the reserve, often barefoot, at night to ward off poachers. They did this without lights, and without UV torches, without which they couldn't see scorpions and other harmful creatures on the ground.
Visiting a nearby village, we learnt about how children were taught and the jobs local people had in reserves and villages. Interestingly, locals who worked as conservationists and rangers were frowned upon by villagers, as they couldn't understand why it was wrong to kill an elephant, when it would feed the village for a year. Rangers were often beaten and run out of the villages, as they were seen as not having the villages' wellbeing at heart.
This proposes an interesting moral dilemma; if an elephant is killed, and it feeds an entire village for a year, is this morally wrong? I wondered if the thoughts about this would be different if children had been taught about conservation in school- would there still be an emphasis to hunt for the village, or would people reduce their poaching on an environmental basis?
Of course, this is such a difficult situation when the people concerned rely on subsistence farming and the health of crops in the growing season to feed their families. But in other countries, where there is sufficient infrastructure to accommodate curriculums to include conservation and the management of protected species and habitats, would these lessons change the opinions of children being taught to want to conserve habitats?
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