Since its founding, Shepherds of Wildlife Society has worked to provide a platform to highlight the stakeholders, or shepherds, of wildlife and their conservation stories across different paradigms, settings, and countries. The upcoming General Assembly of the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC) meeting, scheduled for April 28-30, 2023, in Paris, France, provides another opportunity to share these critical stories. Founder Tom Opre will attend the event and highlight the rural communities that are the boots-on-the-ground stewards doing the conservation work and realizing their most basic human rights to coexist with wildlife.
The theme of the 69th gathering of the CIC focuses on Biodiversity 2030 with the theme 'restore, rewild, and remind.' The event's goal is to build a roadmap to 2030 and use innovative conservation best practices laid upon their roots and foundations. Since 1928 the CIC has worked to advocate for wildlife conservation through the principles of sustainable use. Its membership spans multiple countries and provides a space in which discourse and support for leading wildlife management conversations may occur.
"In today's time of fast-moving media, we can not engage the audience with facts and figures but must speak to their hearts and emotions, which can only be done through films and pictures. We need to learn more from each other across the Atlantic to shift our conservation narrative," stated CIC CEO Sebastian Winkler.
Opre will present the film Killing the Shepherd and moderate a panel discussion on "Biodiversity 2030: A Stakeholder Perspective." Uniquely, the theme parallels the on-the-ground atmosphere Shepherds has currently been working to document in the upcoming film, The Last Keeper, and is also a similar theme found in the film Killing the Shepherd.
"Our films intersect with different aspects of the term "rewild." The stakeholders of the conversation are the community members who experience different impacts, both positive and negative, that "rewilding" may introduce. Our goal is to highlight the success, yet also showcase the importance of the human rights of local communities who steward and nurture their natural resources," commented Opre. "Overall, we've documented and learned humans are generally aligned with sustainable conservation strategies, especially when they personally see a benefit from the activities, and ultimately their needs as these shepherds need to be considered in the larger conservation narrative and decision-making framework."
Shepherds of Wildlife Society is excited to moderate this panel for this critical event and for Killing the Shepherd to be shown amongst the other documentaries demonstrating the different perspectives of on-the-ground conservation.
To learn more about the CIC, please visit: https://www.events.cic-wildlife.org/
To learn more about Shepherds of Wildlife Society, please visit: www.shepherdsofwildlife.org
