CELEBRATING THE GREEN MAMBAS
For International Women’s Day on the 8th of March, we celebrate the Green Mambas and the important role they play in restoring habitat and as leaders in their community. What better day than International Women’s Day to celebrate their new full-time employee status at Wild Tomorrow! It’s a win-win-win for women, women’s empowerment, and for ecosystems. Read more in our latest blog below for #InternationalWomensDay.
11 of the Green Mambas together with our project manager, Tori Gray. Photo by our photographic Ambassador, Charle Chessler.
The Green Mambas are Wild Tomorrow’s amazing all-women ecosystem restoration team. These 14 Zulu women (and one man) can be found hard at work restoring habitat acre by acre every day at Wild Tomorrow’s wildlife reserve in KwaZulu-Natal South Africa. Their work restores ecosystems, contributing to global restoration efforts while simultaneously supporting their livelihoods, their families, and their equitable participation in conservation. It also builds mutual trust, respect, and deeper relationships with our community stakeholders.
Today is International Women’s Day and we’re very happy to note that it’s not an accident that the Green Mambas team is made up of local Zulu women. The planet is facing climate and biodiversity loss crises that impact all of humanity and yet globally women remain underrepresented as part of solutions to these urgent conservation challenges. At a local level in rural South Africa, women are often marginalized and excluded from work while taking on the majority of the care for their families. It’s crucial to provide decent jobs that secure income and empowerment, especially for women, supporting their equitable participation in wildlife conservation. Restoration work is a hard manual job but one that provides for them, their families, and their children’s health and education.
Some heroes sometimes carry spray bottles and machetes.
Last week on March 1st, the full Green Mambas team officially became full-time employees at Wild Tomorrow South Africa. This momentous day was 3.5 years in the making! It was in July 2019 that the Green Mambas group was formed to start ecosystem restoration work at our reserve. Prior to that, we had used chemical control to manage alien plants. It was a difficult tradeoff, exposing the reserve and its ecosystems and wildlife to potentially harmful chemicals. We knew there must be a better solution. Enter the Green Mambas! Their first pilot project was a huge success, using 95% less herbicide than the year before. This success comes at a physical price: it is hard, time-consuming manual work pulling and cutting back the invading plants, then spot spraying, combined with fire management to harness nature’s power to eradicate these tough invaders. But it pays far better dividends: restoration project funds head straight to the women’s salaries and their families, creating meaningful green jobs at the reserve.
“My future is bright now because of Wild Tomorrow Fund. But before it was dark because after graduating high school in 2017 I wasn’t working””
As support increased for the Green Mambas we were able to increase their total months of employment year-by-year culminating in our offer of full-time jobs for all 15 Green Mambas. This is the first full-time job for each of the Green Mambas and is truly life-changing. It means not only stable, reliable income but also additional benefits including sick leave, paid vacation time, access to credit, and a pension plan after one year of service. This was made possible thanks to a commitment of support by Tora Buckworth, together with additional grants from Elephant Cooperation, Zoo Miami, the Leiter Family Foundation, and other generous donors,
Wild Tomorrow’s Reserve Manager, Kevin Jolliffe said, “I feel very happy for the Green Mambas. It must be such a relief to know they now have a reliable income and can support their families. They will now also be able to plan for the future, something that is very difficult when you don’t know if you will have a job next week or month. I am also excited to have a full-time team for land management projects. And there is no shortage of work for them!”
Wild Tomorrow is earnestly working towards a more equitable future that welcomes and promotes women in conservation. The 14 Green Mambas really tipped the scales, so we can now proudly say that we are a majority-women organization, with 60% of our staff women. We have Wendy Hapgood as our co-founder leading the way in NYC, Tori Gray in South Africa leading our project management and volunteers, our 14 Green Mambas in South Africa doing the hard work of restoration, and important oversight carried out by our Board of Directors, of which 46% are women.
Today, one million species are at risk of extinction. Wildlife populations have dropped by 69% since 1970. Nature needs our collective help, and these 14 Zulu women are a force to reckon with! We know they will become Ambassadors for nature in their communities, sharing stories about the incredible biodiversity they are working to protect and restore.
Welcome to Zibuyisile, Philile, Zanele, Nozipho, Babhekile, Mamazile, Nomvula, Thobekile, Nonhlahla, Sizakile, Senzeeleni, Ntokozo, Phumizile and Alfred! They are proud to be Green Mambas with Wild Tomorrow!
REFERENCES
Gender bias and inequity holds women back in their conservation careers. Front. Environ. Sci., 24 January 2023 Sec. Conservation and Restoration Ecology
Volume 10 - 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.1056751
Accessed at www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.1056751/full