Ian J. Saunders
Ian J. Saunders
Ian James Saunders is an ecologist, conservation manager, former member of the British Army, film maker, writer, post-conflict advisor, inspirational speaker and the person behind the Stabilization through Conservation or "StabilCon" approach to developing rural stability in "at risk" rural areas using the natural environment as the primary peacemaking tool.
StabilCon was a result of over thirty years of work across the world in; conflict, post conflict, remote and wild environments observing the aspects and elements of human nature and the potential to enhance the fusion with the natural environment and increase rural stability, leading to the idea and term "Natural Security".
The philosophy and the doctrine have now been formulated into the "StabilCon Brief" which is available in hard and soft copy to be used by conservationists, peacekeepers, developers, investors and governments as a tool to create rural stability with a view to enhancing the area and its inhabitants sustainable growth.
It was Ian's rather unconventional life that led him to explore new ways to both enhance the natural environment and create more robust rural societies through observing and reacting to human need and behavior and the resultant outcomes and threats which we as humans create.
1.Early Life
Ian's parents first home together was in a small caravan on waste land in Slough, the type of caravan that is only just a little longer than a king size bed which doubles up as a dinning table during the day time, outside a toilet and bath with no hot water, Foxborough Farm where the caravans were sited was soon sold to the Greater London Council to build houses in reaction to housing shortages caused by enemy bombing in the Second World War.
They then moved to a tower block on a council estate where Ian spent his formative years before moving into a council house close by, his father was a lorry driver and nightclub bouncer, he was also an active trade unionist whilst his mother worked as a school cleaner then latterly as a barmaid.
Ian was educated at the Foxborough Junior School in Langley and at both Homeward and Langleywood Secondary where he left at a young age at the same time as leaving home, he lived a nomadic and not uneventful life as a young teenager, sometimes homeless and often hungry until he was able to join the British Army.
Ian's childhood despite not being typical to that of his peers today provided him with a very different kind of education which helped give him a human perspective on the dynamics, needs, motivations and perspectives of disenfranchised and desperate human communities around the world, citing "you have to have experienced the fear of poverty and destitution to understand the effect it has on others"
2.Career
The British Army
Ian attended the Guards Depot Pirbright for training and selection into the Household Division after which he joined the 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards.
During his career in the British Army Ian undertook various duties and tasks around the world including several operational tours, public duties (guarding HM Queen Elizabeth) and gaining a plethora of military skills and qualifications.
On returning from an overseas exercise in 1987 Ian broke his neck in a diving accident and was given two days to live after which he was told he would survive but would be paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life. Luckily he was young and extremely fit at the time due to a period of intense “Bergen” training for SAS selection, which contributed to saving his life, he was back running marathons within the year and completed the 70mile Cyprus "Walkabout" (its actually a run) Competition from sea level to the top of Mt Troodos and back down almost twelve months to the day after he was told he was going to die.
When serving in South Armagh, during the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland Ian started to think about stabilization and the potential of influence to engineer positive human change within the community structures of those living in unstable rural settings. It appeared that the IRA were far better at "owning" a situation and were very much in the driving seat in places such as Crossmaglen due to their ability to relate and support the local communities; needs, wants and desires where as the British Army were restrained by socio-political naivety and old fashioned doctrine. This was a situation that Ian was to witness in many countries around the world in the coming years where the potential of the human dimension and the rural environment on which they depended were constantly overlooked as a tool for stability.
Despite the cliché, the British Army did give Ian a fantastic grounding and a “leg up” so taking the experiences and the confidence that the Army gave him and his zest for a different life, on leaving Army he decided to spread his net further and as far away from his old life as he could.
a) Academia
Ian (as a mature student) gained a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Conservation from the University of East London, England, his final paper was on the Habitat Utilization of Cervus elephus (red deer) in relation to climatic conditions on the Quantock Hills in Somerset. During this time he became a Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of London.
Ian continued his Post Graduate study at the African Collage of Wildlife Management, Mweka, Tanzania.
b) Tanzania
On completing his degree Ian returned to Tanzania, the home of his uncle and where he had previously worked briefly as a driver of an overland truck journeying from the town of Arusha in Tanzania to Cape Town in South Africa. Ian later carried out post graduate study at the African Collage of Wildlife Management, Mweka located near the town of Kibosho on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, which he ascended to both Gilmans Point and Uhuru Peak several times.
After his time at the African Collage of Wildlife Management Ian was contracted by the Friedkin Conservation Fund (FCF) to recruit, train and lead what became the largest private anti-poaching operation in Africa at the time (mid-1990s).
Supporting Tanzanian Wildlife Division units across nine remote game reserves in Tanzania Ian designed the operation so that the African ranger force be both mobile and able to operate at long range in remote areas. The operation involved mobile units each consisting of three "cut down" land cruiser 4x4 vehicles with trailers supported by a four tonne 4x4 support truck and a three thousand liter fuel tanker. Each unit would operate independently or in support of each other for up to three months at a time in some of Africa's most remote and challenging areas. In western Tanzania in areas such as Ugalla and Malagarasi-Moyowosi; Tsetse fly, black cotton soil (treacherous for even 4x4 vehicles), both floods and drought in areas devoid of roads or any twentieth century convenience were a perfect hiding place for armed poaching gangs, hired guns and in some instances remnants of those who had committed atrocities in Rwanda and were hiding out in the large refugee camps such as Mpanda.
Timber, fish and bushmeat were the main commodities being harvested illegally from the western reserves for commercial gain, poaching of wildlife such as elephant, lion and leopard were in demand in other areas such as Maswa (southern Serengeti) and Kizigo. A disturbing fact in the remote parts of western Tanzania was that some of the poachers, many originating from the war torn countries outside of Tanzania, men who had only ever killed for a living and worshiped an extreme form of witchcraft (black magic). Human skins were in demand as was human flesh, some of these men even had vicious looking filed down pointed teeth - a scenario that many probably think has been left in the history books but one that Ian found to be very much hidden in the present.
Ian and his African ranger force fought not only the natural elements, logistical challenges and corruption but also some of the most violent men on the African continent, injuries and disease were common place in this hostile environment but the rangers proved that they were as tough if not tougher than the many that they tracked down.
When not on operations the teams were given leave from their base in Arusha but even here they found that because of their ability and reputation as a unified and disciplined force Ian and the FCF Anti-Poaching Unit found itself providing another service to the Government and the people of Tanzania.
In the complete absence of any form of emergency service at the time Ian, members of the FCF anti-poaching unit and a select group of individuals from Arusha were the first responders to a great many of the major accidents and emergencies in northern Tanzania at the time. Due to the terrain and weather in the region coupled with the high level of light aircraft traffic servicing remote locations and the safari industry plane crashes were not infrequent. Ian and his team responded to two high altitude aviation incidents during the mid to late 1990s resulting in 100% loss of life. The first involved a Flying Medical Service aircraft crashing into Monduli mountain in thick fog, two teams started their assent on foot through thick undergrowth to get to the crash site which was amongst the trees high on the mountain, in the mean time Ian and Sam Meena (the FCF units second in command) were dropped from a helicopter during a break in the weather. There was some hand to hand fighting using pangas (bush machetes) with some individuals who had managed to get to the site after seeing the aircraft crash and started looting, Ian and Sam secured the sight unfortunately all three of those on board were dead.
The second was a year later when a Cessna 404 aircraft with twelve people on board crashed into the side of Mt Meru at about 11000ft, once again the Tanzanian authorities requested Ian and the FCF team to assist. Gaining access to the crash site was a challenge, cloud was low so the helicopters ability was limited, it took several days and nights cutting through thick vegetation before the crash site was found, there were no survivors. A route was cut from the base of the mountain where the command post was located, a seven hour walk up the mountain was the only way to access the crash site. The helicopter tried lowering Ian onto the crash site using a winch but the wind became to strong as a storm brewed and Ian was blown into trees whilst hanging from the helicopter. Later the trees were cleared and the helicopter was able to hover and take off the remains. Ian had to return to the site on the mountain with two Maasai trackers some days later as, due to the severity of the impact the distances that the wreckage was dispersed was wide and not all the passengers were accounted for, Ian and his trackers found the last passenger.[1]
c) Tsavo, Kenya and Garamba, Congo
After several years commanding the FCF Anti-Poaching Unit across Tanzania Ian decided to take a different approach to conservation, environmental educational films in African languages.
Ian had grown up in the UK watching Simon Trevor’s wildlife documentaries on the TV show “Survival” in the 1970s and 80s and after they had met and worked together (he filmed Ian and the FCF Unit anti-poaching operations in Tanzania) he asked if Ian would like to put down a gun and pick up a camera. He had just started the African Environmental Film Foundation (AEFF), making environmental educational films about African issues in African languages. Influencing through film rather than just hunting down poachers seemed a far better way to engineer change, and it also introduced Ian to Simon’s daughter, now his wife Tanya and mother of their twin girls.
For three years Ian and his wife Tanya lived in the Tsavo National Park in Kenya in the old thatched house where she was raised amongst the elephants and the other wild animals, filming and writing films with her father Simon. At the same time, Ian worked closely with the Kenya Wildlife Service and became an Honorary Warden. He was able to film operations against Somali bandits and poachers on the front line. This culminated in the film “Wanted Dead or Alive?” about the survival of the African elephant which was premiered at the House of Commons in London hosted by the UK Secretary of State for the Environment and HRH the late Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan. Later (in 2002) Ian, Tanya and Simon presented a version of the film in French at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Santiago, Chile where it persuaded the Francophone African countries to vote with Kenya and disallow the international ivory trade to be reintroduced.
On return from CITES Ian flew in a light aircraft from Kenya to the northern tip of the Congo to film the last few Northern White Rhino in the wild, at the same time he filmed the last in the line of the domesticated African elephants, a project first started during the colonial era. Today there are no longer any of the domesticated elephants of this lineage left and the Northern White rhino has become extinct in the wild.
But the winds of change blew once more. In late 2003 Ian was standing on a mountain of human rubbish close to Mombasa Port talking to and filming teenagers who were living in caves that they had carved out of the rubbish and eating rotten food when he received a call on his satellite phone from a friend, he asked whether, due to Ian's experience with indigenous people in “hostile” environments, he would be interested in flying to Kabul to talk about helping to deliver Afghanistan’s first democratic election. Ian said goodbye to his new found friends and drove the five hours back to Tsavo to give the good news to Tanya!
d) Afghanistan
By 2003 the international community wanted to rebuild Afghanistan after the conflict(s) that had ravaged it for so many years. Via the United Nations, the US Government were footing most of bill. The biggest and most challenging aspect of “repairing” a worn torn country is to ensure that there is an accountable and “democratic” government in place and to do that Afghanistan was going to have to hold its very first democratic elections.
To assist the UN in this, the US government supplied financial support through The Asia Foundation (TAF) - whose controversial origins are a story in its self - to deploy “advisors”, former specialist military and intelligence personnel, through a British private military company to work closely with the UN mission to Afghanistan and the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB).
So it was through this complex situation that Ian found himself living in Kabul safe houses, mosques, remote hillside villages and sometimes traveling on donkeys in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. These operations were described as akin to the “Great Game” of years gone by and it certainly gave Ian one of the most fascinating educational experiences of his life and the beginning of a remarkable three-year relationship with Afghanistan, its people, officials, intelligence agencies and NATO. The culmination of that first year was to create and implement the security and logistics plan for the first Afghan elections in Kabul. The elections were a major success but for Ian what meant more was his success in the development and management of the strategic relationships; the war lords, terrorists, Afghan officials, Afghan military, NATO and the UN, bringing them together and producing enough synergy to engineer change.
e) Tsavo, New York and Washington DC
Afghanistan is a fantastic country despite its challenges and Ian was lucky to see a side of it and its people that not many westerners have seen, but Africa was calling once again. In the years that he had been away, Kenya had changed and once again the African elephant was being massacred for its ivory so he and Tanya decided to return to Tsavo.
They returned to finish building their house, “Kulafumbi” (meaning ‘eat dust’ in Swahili) made from local stone and reclaimed timber on the shores of the Athi River in a remote part of the Tsavo bush, and to make a film with the African Environmental Film Foundation (AEFF), a no nonsense documentary about the realities of elephant poaching from the front line, not as one of the many visiting documentary film crews but from within and with some startling new aspects. The film they made was called “White Gold”. It was narrated by Hillary Clinton and premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sigourney Weaver compered the evening and after the viewing Ian answered questions from the packed auditorium. Later Sigourney and Ian were interviewed on national television to talk about the situation concerning the elephant and its slow demise.[2] Ian was also interviewed on New York’s most listened to African American radio station and asked to show the film and speak at Howard University, America’s first black university. The film was later a finalist at the Sundance film festival, Ian was asked to attend and sit on an expert panel but declined, he had something more pressing back in Tsavo.
f) Tsavo Conservation and StabilCon
To the north of Tsavo East National Park in Kenya is an area known as Tana River. It is a harsh arid expanse populated by the Orma cattle people, a people with very little exposure to the western world; some had not even been to a city or driven in a car, let alone met a white person. The Orma are an Islamic people who feel disenfranchised and marginalized from the rest of Kenya and so were now being targeted by the Islamic extremist organization Al Shabaab from within their own community.
It was into this situation that Ian was asked by the Kenya Wildlife Service to create a community wildlife conservancy to address the elephant poaching problem, bring structure and stability to the area and help secure the northern boundary of the Tsavo National Park. Initially Ian and Tanya co launched a Tsavo based NGO with another conservationists however it became clear that the third party wished to concentrate on other aspects of conservation so Ian and Tanya launched the Tsavo Conservation Group (TsavoCon).
The story of the Tsavo Conservation Group (TsavoCon) and creating the 1.2m acre Malkahalaku Conservancy started with Ian and his African "headman" Makau driving in to this harsh and remote area in an old Land Rover, sleeping under trees out in the open, changing location every night and building key relationships with the Orma chiefs and the committee of elders known as the “Madagega”.
To do this Ian developed an approach, a system that he had first started to think about thirty years before on the streets of Northern Ireland, which had evolved through the years living and/or working in Afghanistan, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, the Congo and the Near East, and reflected on the human dynamics of working class England; it was an approach to conservation that didn’t focus on conservation but on the threats to conservation; it focused on us as humans, the dominant species and it is called Stabilization through Conservation – StabilCon.
StabilCon has now been formalized in the shape of ‘The StabilCon Brief’ publication. The concept was launched in London at a dedicated conference hosted by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and for the first time in history delivered an integrated security/environmental doctrine that had come from Africa to the West rather than the other way around!
Implementing StabilCon across the Malkahalaku Conservancy was an enormous undertaking, requiring a lot of funding and effort. Ian's wife Tanya is an accomplished proposal writer and so spent many hours formulating proposals leaving Ian to find the donors and build those relationships whilst at the same time manage the relationships on the ground with the Orma elders and Kenya's officials. There were however two other things Tanya and Ian had to attend to concurrently: the post-production of the film “White Gold” and its premiere and the birth of their twin girls in New York, who decided to arrive three months early.
This period involved a considerable amount of juggling and a stark move from the African bush to a high-rise apartment on the plush Upper East Side of Manhattan. From New York Ian was able to commute to Washington DC where he developed relationships with private donors and members of the US Congress, culminating in two testimonies at congressional hearings on the crisis involving the African elephant, advisory meetings with congressional committees and the co-writing of a bill that was later adopted into new government legislation. At the same time Tanya was in hospital about to give birth and writing funding proposals to the US Fish and Wildlife Service from her hospital bed!
After much ado, the money was raised, the film was a success and the girls were born! Ian and his family returned to Tsavo and embarked on the creation of Malkahalaku - the result: not one elephant was poached in that huge lawless area for nearly five years, without a single shot being fired, the success was due to a thorough knowledge of how such illegal activities were implemented, who was responsible and what incentives were there for them to stop or the community to ensure they stopped.
The workload and the challenges on the ground were great and not undemanding for Ian and his small team, such activities included organizing and delivering essential disaster relief aid to thousands of semi-nomadic people during periods of drought and flood combined with Ian's international responsibilities that included fund raising and the cross cultural international politics that play such an important part of modern day conservation and rural stabilization. An example of the diversity of Ian's life is that in the same month he finished developing the three point management plan for Malkahalaku, undertook a seven day safari visiting Orma elders and looking at communications logistics and flew to London with with one of Kenya’s senior Islamic officials, the Tana River Governor to introduce him to Princess Ann at a conservation event. Later the Governor accompanied Ian to Washington where Ian was making a statement to a Senate committee.
But yet again life threw Ian another one of those curve balls and this time it was one that all Ian's previous experience could not prepare him for: one of his little girls had been born completely deaf.
There was no way Ian's wife and their girls, Onna and Sala, could continue living in the African bush. The family moved to the UK so that Onna could get the treatment and the support she needed and have a chance to live a normal life, they had no idea of knowing if they would succeed but they were going to try and give her every chance they could. With the girls now in rural England, Ian commutes between the UK and Kenya where he is developing the Tsavo Conservation Groups core teams experience into a not for profit consultancy. Ian is also in the process of developing the StabilCon solution for use through the consultancy in Africa and elsewhere in the world.
This article "Ian J. Saunders" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Ian J. Saunders. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
- ↑ Saunders, Ian (Associated Press). "Ian talking to the Associated Press at the command post". AP. Archived from the original on September 1999. Check date values in:
|date=(help) - ↑ Saunders, Ian. "Jansing & Co. Ivory and Terrorism". MSNBC.
