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In 2006, the Rufford Foundation provided a grant of £3,500 to Alasdair Harris, who was undertaking surveys of marine turtles in south-west Madagascar. Our trustees felt that there was something different about Alasdair’s approach and wanted to see what he could do. Up to that point there was very little information on the true scale of the impact of artisanal fishing on the numbers of turtles in Madagascar, but it was thought to be significant. Madagascar has a rapidly expanding human population which puts immense strain on its natural resources. Many people live in poverty and turtles are an important source of food and income for them, even though fishing for turtles is illegal. 

Alasdair realised that conservation was closely tied to the health and wellbeing of local communities. By improving the lives of the people in those communities he knew that there would be a much greater chance of encouraging them to be involved in conservation activities. His vision was to use the communities themselves to gather key information and to use this collaboration to strengthen support for turtle conservation and eventually the establishment of a Marine Protected Area. 

We provided two further fairly modest grants to Alasdair as he developed his programme in 2010 and 2012. Eventually his work became the organisation Blue Ventures, which we continued to support with some much larger grants in subsequent years. 

Blue Ventures has become a global organisation with programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and works with over a hundred partner organisations. They integrate family planning and maternal and child health into their conservation work, impacting tens of thousands of coastal residents, and one of their key tenets is that conservation must make economic sense even – or especially – in the poorest coastal communities. Thus their work is often quite unusual for a conservation organisation. It is a true cross-sectoral approach that has great value given the current issues of an expanding human population and the threats this poses to the world’s ecosystems – not a bad result for an initial investment of £3,500. 

At the Rufford Foundation, we try to support individuals who will make a real difference. It may take many years for them to achieve their goal but to see someone who we supported at a very early stage of their career go on to build a large, international and hugely impactful NGO is immensely satisfying.

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