Stephen Moshy

Stephen Bartholomew Moshy, a Conservation Officer with more than 10 years of experience working in natural resources management in Tanzania. He is currently working with Tanzania National Parks, a public parastatal mandated to manage any land designated as national park in Tanzania mainland.

In line of his duties he has worked in different parks executing different conservation duties which ranges from ensuring the park resources are protected to enhancing livelihoods of local communities living adjacent the parks. Through community conservation services, he has been able to participate in provision of conservation education to local communities and ensuring they benefit from conservation. He noted that, working with local communities remains to be an important part of his experience as upon giving them conservation education poaching levels in their areas went down. Simply because they developed a sense of ownership of the natural resources found in the park and made sure no more illegal offtake of resources from their villages. So this sends a very important message that local people are not “poachers” but rather not fully involved in conservation and benefits ripped from conservation are not shared to them in a way that they realize why they should forgo their precious land for conservation.

He strongly believe that the conservation of natural resources here in Africa should be focused on maximization of ecosystem services and optimizing tourism development for human benefits as it is clearly indicated in their organization mission.