Welcome: Alexander Rhodes, Chairman

Alexander Rhodes Chairman, Tusk Trust

Welcome

I write this, my first welcome to you as Tusk's Chairman, with a firm sense of optimism. The world is still deep in Covid-19's terrible grip, and there is a long hard road ahead to understand and address the disease's direct and indirect toll. Yet, it is darkest before the dawn.

With the roll out of vaccines, the global public health response continues to cohere. As the willow warblers cross the length of Africa migrating north for spring, there is a real prospect of the world reopening, and an international recognition that we must "Build Back Better". Tusk's continuing focus is on action, and, now, we invite you to participate in the recovery for Africa's wild places.

Organisations show their true colours in times of crisis. Through the challenge and the grit of the last 12 months, the team at Tusk has proved its value. In 2020, the charity raised £12.7m and granted a record £11.1m across 92 projects in 25 countries, while carrying forward over half a million pounds for distribution as grants in 2021. This speaks to the extraordinary commitment and generosity of our supporters, for which we and our beneficiaries are hugely grateful. The ability effectively to deliver funds on this scale in these circumstances also reflects the unique quality of social capital Tusk has built over 30 years. Every penny has been put to work, in a period where tourism and local economies have collapsed, and pressures on nature have been pushed far into the red.

Tusk is not just an effective fundraising machine. It is preoccupied with its mission of amplifying the impact of progressive conservation initiatives across Africa. Over the last five years, Tusk has developed its own impact focussed online platform for supporting and evaluating its portfolio of projects. Through the pandemic, this unique capability has enabled Tusk to partner with others in a crisis response. Critically, this has included getting ranger salaries into the field, with the double effect of protecting the front line and sustaining local communities.

Tusk's focus on collaboration is a fundamental component in its delivery. Through the toughest of times last year, Tusk convened conservationists from the continent's corners in Zoom 'pod calls' to share knowledge, experience and mutual support. We have learnt from the necessary adoption of new technologies and are leveraging this to continue to extend the charity's reach and impact.

As Fred Nelson's important article (page 31) explains, the pandemic calls for a reappraisal of biodiversity's value and approaches to conserving it. On page 51 the winner of the 2020 Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award, Zimbabwean Amos Gwema, and Nick Maughan set out a new perspective on the illegal wildlife trade. Tusk's approach has always been grounded in the work in which local African communities are engaged. Today, it has the privilege of an established and continent-wide network of field projects to draw on, and plans are afoot for a virtual/physical Conservation Symposium for the whole Tusk community, hosted in Kenya.

We enter 2021 aware of the real and immediate personal threat posed by the proximity of planetary boundaries and global inequality to our lived experience. As Professor Dasgupta observes in his seminal review of the Economics of Biodiversity, published this February: "We are part of Nature, not separate from it". John Scanlon highlights (page 13) the collective opportunity we have to chart a new course at the 2021 biodiversity and climate conferences in Kunming and Glasgow.

We are all interconnected, and, as we look to Build Back Better, I invite you actively to support the most vulnerable of Africa's communities, species and ecosystems in partnership with Tusk this year.