About
COMACO

From the onset of COMACO we saw that the traditional models of wildlife conservation weren’t working. Telling people not to poach didn’t address the root causes of poaching and other forms of land degradation. Instead of punishing people for poaching, which only exacerbated issues of hunger and poverty when a family member went to jail, COMACO designed a system that instead rewards people for conserving their natural resources. We ask everyone we work with – poachers and farmers – to take a Conservation Pledge, agreeing to abide by a set of community-agreed principles designed to safeguard the health of their soils, forests, and wildlife. 

In exchange, we offer extensive training in a range of livelihood skills, support the initial seed requirements that allow communities to establish their own seed replication for a local seed bank, and provide market value and increased market opportunities for families to a liveable income through farming. With such efforts now being sustained by the COMACO business, incidents of poaching have dramatically decreased. Instead, villagers are busy tending to their fields, producing high yields of nutritious food crops, which we purchase at premium prices and turn into quality products sold across Zambia under the brand It’s Wild!  Our systems approach is working: incomes are rising, nutrition is improving, and wildlife is returning to the Luangwa Valley.