Lindsey Macdonald

The Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi, formed in 1947, has nine branches throughout the country, thousands of individual, corporate and school and community based wildlife club members. I work in the Blantyre branch area, covering the south of the country. WESMs vision is: for all people in Malawi to coexist in harmony with their natural environment. Its mission is: to promote full public participation in wise management of wildlife, natural resources and environment in Malawi.,We carry out environmental education activities. In Blantyre our 352 school/community based wildlife clubs have around 16,000 members. In 2010 they planted around 130,000 tree seedlings they raised in their school/community tree nurseries. We train the leaders of these clubs in how to run their clubs, on interesting and educational activities and specifics such as how to prepare a state of your environment analysis and action plan, on permaculture gardening and tree nursery creation. ,We also do scientific research annual game counts at national parks, research into endangered species and habitat loss. ,We work with communities on environmental preservation eg with Blantyre market traders on waste management, with Rotary and the City Assembly on a long-term solution to cleaning up the River Mudi, with DNPW on repairs and maintenance to the environmental education centre and trails at Michiru, maintaining the student hostels in other national parks in our area. ,The Society of Malawi runs a free public library and maintains an archive of thousands of historic photos and documents as well as rare books on Malawi, which is used by Malawian students and researchers worldwide,