Wilderness Members and Ambassador Supporters sign-up
The job of protecting the natural world is a big one. We believe that seeanimalswild can play a part in this but need lots of help to make it a reality. This website was set up with the vision of creating a wildlife travel marketplace. The idea was that by connecting the world’s places and people who wanted to visit we could support the natural world’s conservation and help edge areas stay protected. Importantly, our aim as a website is not merely to simplify wild travel, but to help change the financial balance or wildlife in areas which are primarily used for other purposes. Many species need to exist outside protected areas. In South Africa as much as 50% of the cheetah population live on farmland of varying kinds – this is because they compete poorly with larger predators like lions and leopards. There are a huge number of people who enjoy seeing wildlife, and would quite happily pay landowners for the privilege. I believe that we should live in a world where it is always more profitable to retain wildlife. We hope for landowners of this type to sign up with us. Precisely what they offer will vary, but the idea is that they give access to their land to watch whatever wildlife lives there, either directly for cash or while eating a meal or camping on some part of the land. In this way the farmer can greatly increase their income, generally with very little outlay of the road – and this extra income gives a financial reason for them to protect the wildlife that lives on their land. There will be a members area which is free to access for anyone listing.
Ambassador Supporters:
Do you share our views, that wild life and wilderness should be preserved, that it should be more profitable to protect wildlife than to kill it. Do you enjoy seeing wildlife when you travel, or want it to still be there for your children and grandchildren. However this is a huge mission. We hope in the next few months and years that this websites contribution will grow naturally, but we are looking for readers to join us in our cause. My big desire is that supporter members will become ambassadors of the site – I cannot visit every wild area on the planet (and even if I could the carbon footprint would be horrendous). With your help I believe the section of our website “in the Shadow of Mankind” can start to grow at a significant speed and do what it was set out to do. In many places farmers operate with little or no spare cash. If we can provide that extra cash and at the same time help landowners conserve wildlife on their properties, everyone wins. The landowner is financially secure, the wildlife survives and visitors get to see the natural world in ways they wouldn’t normally get the chance. Furthermore, there are many species that might end up being easier to see on farms – particularly nocturnal rarely seen species such as Aardvark and Pangolin.
Whether you have come to this through the website or the YouTube channel, you will find discussion forums and ways to support the work of the site. We are also busily growing our list of destinations – each supporter can identify a travel destination each year, for the website to research and help you find some fantastic things to see – and add them to the site – you can also help people who work in wildlife tourism (or who share space with wildlife) to get listed so that they can attract more people to visit – inform them of this site and its mission.
Access to the Ambassador Supporters area will cost £5 and will support the work of this site, and the youtube channel of the same name.
Wilderness Members:
Do you live in close proximity to wildlife? We wish to support all forms of wildlife tourism. Whether you run a lodge/campsite or other destination within a national park or wilderness, or merely live alongside wildlife. Whatever the primary purpose of the land we want to help you benefit from the presence of wilderness around you, and give you the means to allow it to thrive.
This area will be for those who have already got an area, lodge, campsite or other service listed on the website, or are looking into listing on the website. Membership here will be free for all who are listed on the site (though not permanent for those who have not)
As well as giving you a forum to display what you offer, we also want to create a community, for those living in close proximity to wildlife – for mutual support, discussion on avoiding predation and any other issues that arise. We are really keen to list stories from our members who have got pages listing their destinations on this site – we want to end up with a place where our listers get extra visitors because readers have read stories about their reserves or locations. Become a member below, and your ability to submit articles will be simple.
We are also keen to have article submissions. We are inviting submissions from the public. If you wish to write for us, join below (it is free)