News What's Happening Behind the Scenes at WWF?

[BWV]

Down the road from the crocodile ponds inside Nepal’s renowned Chitwan National Park, in a small clearing shaded by sala trees, sits a jail. Hira Chaudhary went there one summer night with boiled green maize and chicken for her husband, Shikharam, a farmer who had been locked up for two days.

Shikharam was in too much pain to swallow. He crawled toward Hira, his thin body covered in bruises, and told her through sobs that forest rangers were torturing him. “They beat him mercilessly and put saltwater in his nose and mouth,” Hira later told police.

The rangers believed that Shikharam helped his son bury a rhinoceros horn in his backyard. They couldn’t find the horn, but they threw Shikharam in their jail anyway, court documents filed by the prosecution show.

Nine days later, he was dead

...

WWF’s staff on the ground in Nepal leaped into action — not to demand justice, but to lobby for the charges to disappear. When the Nepalese government dropped the case months later, the charity declared it a victory in the fight against poaching. Then WWF Nepal continued to work closely with the rangers and fund the park as if nothing had happened.

As for the rangers who were charged in connection with Shikharam’s death, WWF Nepal later hired one of them to work for the charity. It handed a second a special anti-poaching award. By then he had written a tell-all memoir that described one of his favorite interrogation techniques: waterboarding.

Shikharam’s alleged murder in 2006 was no isolated incident: It was part of a pattern that persists to this day. In national parks across Asia and Africa, the beloved nonprofit with the cuddly panda logo funds, equips, and works directly with paramilitary forces that have been accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people. As recently as 2017, forest rangers at a WWF-funded park in Cameroon tortured an 11-year-old boy in front of his parents

WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tomwarren/wwf-world-wide-fund-nature-parks-torture-death

 

[jedishrfu]

This is a sad commentary on our times. We want to protect our native species but in order to do that we must balance our desires with those of indigenous peoples whose very livelihood depends on these animals.

Our solution infused with money from wealthy nations creates a state of oppression where people are branded as poachers and are punished tortured and killed and others get rewarded for it all in the name of money and not conservation.

 

[jedishrfu]

Additional sources from @BWV

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/how-conservation-became-colonialism-environment-indigenous-people-ecuador

https://assets.survivalinternationa...N_xCSL4NfVmpLybD_YLNBBpDbxVU-0W7kCiPa5Y5FQVzQ

 

[Evo]

Link provided by @BWV

The allegations come at a time of increased scrutiny of international charities and aid organisations, following the Oxfam sex abuse scandal in Haiti, details of which came to light last year.

WWF said it had commissioned law firm Kingsley Napley to look into the claims. In a statement, a WWF spokesman said:

“At the heart of WWF’s work are places and the people who live in them. Respect for human rights is at the core of our mission.

“We take any allegation seriously and are commissioning an independent review to look into the cases raised in the story. We have asked BuzzFeed to share all evidence it has obtained to support these claims, to help inform and strengthen this review.

“WWF’s work relies on deep community support, engagement and inclusion. We have stringent policies designed to ensure both we and our partners are safeguarding the rights and well-being of indigenous people and local communities in the places we work. Any breach of these policies is unacceptable to us and, should the review uncover any, we are committed to taking swift action.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-...ho-allegedly-tortured-killed-scores-of-people

 

[BWV]

Despite WWF’s claims, UK charity Survival International documents in the link above that the organization was well aware of the and human rights violations committed against the Baka people in Cameroon. WWF embraces the model of creating large wildlife preserves by forcibly evicting indigenous people who have lived off the land for millennia. If you read the comments at the end of the OP link, there is predominantly support for the WWF expressed - the opinion being that preserving these species is worth killing innocent humans over. The same sort of ‘green colonialist’ mentality can be seen with organizations such as Greenpeace which has long opposed the introduction of genetically modified crops in Africa, most notoriously Golden Rice which is modified to supply vitamin A which large poplulations suffer a deficiency from with resultant blindness. This thread got blocked a couple of times by the OPs who understandably thought it too incredible, but the reality is worse - it’s true and been known for year and no one really cares

 

[jedishrfu]

I want to thank you for bringing it to our attention. Yes it sounds incredible and we were concerned that it was. This as the first time I’ve heard of this issue although I know that conservation efforts often do bump up against indigenous cultures and with money available bad things will happen.

However, please be aware that we are a neutral science forum not a public place for social and political discussion. You need to realize that we must navigate these waters carefully in order to remain a neutral site where students can come to learn about science, technology and math

We don’t want to make the mistake of the major new organizations who promoted the tecent story of the Indian activist vs the high schooler which as largely based on a single incendiary video which failed to show the bigger picture.