Our story
Sahara Conservation in an international non-profit organisation dedicated to the conservation of the Sahara and Sahel’s unique ecosystems and landscapes.
20
Celebrating this year our 20th anniversary, we have achieved, for the past two decades, significant conservation impact, delivering on our founding goal: to halt and reverse the decline of the wildlife of the Sahel and Sahara
20 years of conservation
Sahara Conservation was formed in response to an extinction crisis unfolding across the region. The scimitar-horned oryx that once occurred in large migratory herds had disappeared from the wild and other species like the addax and dama gazelle were following the same trajectory.
1999
The Sahara had long been overlooked but that began to change at a meeting of the Convention on Migratory Species in Tunisia in 1999 and the signing of the Djerba Declaration on the Conservation and Restoration of Sahelo-Saharan Antelopes. A small number of motivated conservationists involved in the Djerba meeting gathered again a year later and formed the Sahel and Sahara Interest Group (SSIG) which continues as an annual networking forum today.
2004
Collaborations between SSIG members grew and the Sahara Conservation Fund (now Sahara Conservation) was created in 2004 to generate much needed resources and enable conservation activities across the region.
2012
Led by our founding CEO, John Newby, Sahara Conservation rose to the challenge, embarking on missions by air, 4×4 vehicles and camel-back to gather contemporary information about the biodiversity, status of threatened species, and the human needs and impacts of the region to inform conservation strategies. This included important contributions to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the CMS Action Plan for Sahelo-Saharan Mega-Fauna, and perhaps most notably, led to the designation of the Termit and Tin Toumma National Nature Reserve in Niger, which at 100,000 km2 became Africa’s largest terrestrial protected area.
2014
Concurrently, Sahara Conservation got on with the job of saving species, contributing to the return of scimitar-horned oryx and addax to protected areas in Tunisia, and working with community groups in Niger to safeguard the last of the country’s North African ostriches. Meanwhile, events were set in motion to create one of the world’s most ambitious re-wilding initiatives.
2023
A decade later, the reintroduction of the scimitar-horned oryx to the 78,000 km2 Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve in Chad not only succeeded in returning of this iconic species to its natural range after it’s extinction in the wild, but has acted as a catalyst for multi-species conservation action, enhanced protected area management, and delivered positive socio-economic impacts in a part of the world where people are highly reliant on the natural resources.
Today, Sahara Conservation works throughout the region under agreements with statutory agencies responsible for wildlife conservation, protected areas and natural resources but with particular focus on critical conservation landscapes in Niger and Chad. We have registered not-for-profit entities in the US, France, Niger and Chad to generate resources and spend them directly where needed in the field.
Our offices
