Louisa Richmond-Coggan

Educator/Teacher, Environmentalist, Scientist

Dr Louisa Richmond-Coggan is the Dean at the African Leadership University’s School of Wildlife Conservation, an organisation on a mission to grow the next generation of African ethical entrepreneurial conservation leaders. She is a conservation scientist who holds a PhD from Nottingham Trent University and has 20 years of progressive experiences of both in-situ field-based research programmes across East and Southern Africa and ex-situ positions as part of international NGOs such as TRAFFIC International, Birdlife International and UNEP-WCMC. She specialises in large carnivore and human-wildlife conflict research through which robust science, utilising multi-disciplinary approaches and collaborations, generates practical management solutions. Louisa has conducted research in national parks, conservancies and private farmland across Eastern and Southern Africa. After her PhD she was the Head of Ecology at the Cheetah Conservation Fund Namibia where she developed and managed projects covering topics such as community-based natural resource management, socio-economic development, human-wildlife conflict, rangeland management, livestock husbandry, biodiversity monitoring and citizen science initiatives. In 2017 Louisa created LRC Wildlife Conservation and undertook the National Leopard Census Project, Namibia as an independent ecological consultant. The project took a multi-disciplinary approach by combining ecological methodologies and social science to understand the pressures on, and status of, the leopard population across Namibia.

Africa's wildlife, people, communities, culture and its dynamic and dramatic landscapes and ecosystems. To find creative solutions to ensure that people and wildlife can co-exist together for the benefit of all. To help grow our species numbers and conserve their habitats. To do this people must see economic benefits to living with wildlife and the real challenges this brings. As such we must show the economic value of our wildlife and natural resources in order to ensure their survival as well as humanities. I am passionate about sharing this message with our young entrepreneurial leaders and support them to create innovative solutions to the myriad of challenges we face in the conservation sector, as their impact, is my impact, and the more successful business leaders we can create who understand the principles of sustainable development, ecosystem services and many more the greater our chances are of creating a prosperous Africa with intact environmental systems.

The Business of Conservation - ensuring that wildlife and natural resources across Africa are seen by all stakeholders as key economic assets that can be used to sustainably develop communities, countries and the continent. That if we train young leaders as entrepreneurs who understand the value of these assets and support them to generate new start up business we can create both economic prosperity through job creation and conserve and grow Africa's wildlife and natural resource base. People, biodiversity and ecosystems futures are fundamentally linked together, we must maintain our ecosystems services to ensure a healthy planet for future generations. As such Africa's natural wealth is a unique resources that if harnessed and utilised sustainable can create a win win scenario. We need to ensure that wildlife and natural resources are valued correctly to highlight their financial contribution to national GDPs, which is significant but there is still vast room for growth and development within this sector. We need to ensure that national policies and legislation create an enabling environment for all stakeholders to effectively utilise their resources and create diversified income streams.

Conservation Leadership, Conservation Science, Developing Entrepreneurial Leaders, Graduate & Post-Graduation Education, Networking & Collaborations, Stakeholder Engagement, Sustainable Use, Training Programmes

Photography, being creative and wanting to capture the best photograph I can. Finding my way across the African bush without the need for a GPS unit. Integrating into a remote community and making life long friends.