Dear Jack,

The last few days have seen a massive leap forward in our long-standing campaign to stop big conservation organizations taking Indigenous peoples’ lands for so-called Protected Areas such as national parks, game reserves and tiger reserves - and violently keeping out the Indigenous owners.

At the weekend the UK’s Mail on Sunday published an investigation by the award-winning journalist Ian Birrell into one of the most notorious such outfits, African Parks.

We’ve been telling them for more than ten years about horrific abuses being committed by their rangers in the Congo, to little apparent effect. Every time our researchers have visited Indigenous Baka communities living around the edge of Odzala-Kokoua National Park, people have told them graphic and disturbing accounts of beatings, torture and rape by African Parks’ guards, when the Baka tried to gather food or medicinal plants inside the park – which had, of course, been created from their lands.

Ian Birrell’s report has sparked a media storm, and outrage around the world, leading to more pressure on African Parks. We know from bitter experience that ONLY this kind of public outcry leads to the changes that make a real difference on the ground.

A big exposé by Buzzfeed some years ago, for instance, into similar abuses by WWF-backed rangers against Baka people in the Messok Dja region – and the ensuing media storm – hugely strengthened our campaign, bringing a big reduction in the rangers’ violence against them, as the Baka there have confirmed to us.

Of course, press coverage in itself is not enough – only concerted pressure on African Parks’ funders will force them to change.

Your role in this is absolutely vital. Please, if you haven’t already, send African Parks and their funders an email - it takes less than a minute, but genuinely makes a huge difference. More than 5,000 of you have done so already – thank you!

And thank you, as always, for your support for our work. It’s at times like these that we can see how much difference it makes.

Best wishes,

Caroline Pearce
Director
Survival International