2009 Global Vision Awards>
Grassland Foundation wins for Wildlife Tourism
Travel + Leisure recently announced the winners of their 2009 Global Vision Awards. These awards are given each year to the "latest and best efforts at cultural preservation, environmental conservation, and community-building through tourism." The 17 winners of this years awards include efforts both big and small, private and not for profit, and are both global and local in reach.
The Grassland Foundation was given the Wildlife Tourism Award for Northern Great Plains Restoration in the United States, for its work with the Northern Great Plains Program of the World Wildlife Fund in sending conservationists and ranchers from the Northern Great Plains to Namibia to study wildlife and land management practices. Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist at Columbia University, and member of the awards committee, commented that: "The Northern Great Plains project is an impressive example of America learning from best practices abroad."
The Grassland Foundation would like to thank the partners who have made this program a success:
- Dawn Montanye, Manager of Conservation Economics, World Wildlife Fund's Northern Great Plains Program- Bozeman, Montana, USA
- Dr. Chris Weaver, Director, World Wildlife Fund's Namibia Program- Windhoek, Namibia, Africa
- Nils Odendaal, NamibRand Nature Reserve CEO, NamibRand Private Nature Reserve- Namibia, Africa
We are supported by the generosity of people like you. Please make a tax-deductible contribution to help us continue our work. For more information about our work or the award please contact jill@grasslandfoundation.org.
Though it may seem that our continent's largest grassland, the Northern Great Plains, has little in common with the Namibian desert, the areas are, in fact, intrinsically linked. In 2007, when the Nebraska-based Grassland Foundation was searching for a conservation model for the largely unprotected area in the States, it looked to Namibia's successes in harnessing ecotourism for wildlife preservation. The project began sending ranchers and conservationists alike to Africa on study tours: the first step in building a viable tourism infrastructure in the Great Plains. www.grasslandfoundation.org and www.worldwildlife.org. 