The history of conservation in West Africa is often written as a record of loss: wildlife depleted, institutions stretched thin, and projects undone by conflict or poverty. Less often does it include examples of recovery that endure. When such cases do exist, they tend to rest on compromises that look unorthodox on paper but make sense on the ground.
One of those compromises emerged in southern Burkina Faso in the late 1970s and 1980s, when elephants were scarce and hunting had shifted from subsistence to eradication. The idea was simple and, to many specialists, implausible: allow local communities a controlled right to hunt, in exchange for protecting wildlife and habitat. The approach ran against prevailing conservation doctrine and the expectations of international development experts, many of whom dismissed it outright.
The person who pursued this arrangement despite the skepticism was Clark Lungren, who was raised in what was then Upper Volta and spent most of his life there. When he proposed that villagers should become partners in conservation, he was told the plan would fail. It did not. At Nazinga, a game reserve south of Ouagadougou, wildlife populations rebounded over the following years, including elephants that had all but vanished from the area. Tourism followed, and some of the men employed as wardens and guides were former poachers.
Lungren’s authority did not come from formal credentials. He did not hold a university degree. What he had instead was familiarity: with languages, village politics, and rural life. He became a naturalized citizen of Burkina Faso and remained there through periods of instability that drove many outsiders away. His conviction was that conservation would last only if it aligned with local incentives and governance, a view later reflected in village hunting zones known as ZOVICs, which act as buffers around protected areas.
Beyond Nazinga, Lungren worked as a field biologist, bird specialist, and advisor on community-managed natural areas across several West and Central African countries. He helped train local monitors, contributed to research on human-elephant conflict, and argued consistently for devolving authority over land and wildlife to communities. In the 1990s he established a demonstration farm at Wedbila, outside the capital, to show that breeding and managing wild species could provide livelihoods without exhausting ecosystems.
Recognition came sporadically. In 2007 Burkina Faso awarded him the Order of Merit. He was associated with the Buffett Conservation Leadership Foundation and consulted by governments and NGOs, though his work remained far from conference halls and shaped by practical concerns rather than theory.
Lungren remained active into his seventies, continuing to teach, research, and argue his case. He died in September, at 74. The animals at Nazinga still move through corridors that were once empty, and the arrangements that protect them remain imperfect but intact. In a region where many experiments end quickly, that persistence may be the most telling measure of his work.
A longer version of this piece will be published next week on Mongabay.
