Education as a pathway to biodiversity action: The Wildlife Clubs of Kenya experience

From curiosity to participation

The Wildlife Clubs of Kenya (WCK) began with a simple question from students: how could they learn more about their country's wildlife? That question sparked a movement that expanded into a national network of clubs, reaching generations of young people and inspiring other wildlife clubs and youth conservation initiatives globally. What mattered was not only the knowledge gained, but the opportunity to experience nature directly and participate in its protection.

That transition from curiosity to participation was visible early. In 1973, young members presented an anti-poaching petition carrying thousands of signatures to Kenya’s founding president. In 1977, they mobilised again around concerns about wildlife protection and the sale of animal products. 

In 2005, WCK launched its ‘No Plastic, Use Basket’ campaign, taking its conservation message into public advocacy and drawing attention to the impact of plastic pollution on wildlife and the environment. This work has continued through the Sustainable Management of Waste Plastics programme, a school-based initiative that was voted a UN-Habitat Best Practice in 2020. The four-month programme involved 19 Nairobi schools, engaging more than 22,000 schoolchildren and 62 teachers, with 1,625 kilograms of plastic collected for recycling by March 2020.

These moments showed what can happen when learning creates agency and gives young people opportunities to participate in conservation.

Education does not influence biodiversity outcomes merely by transferring information. Its deeper value lies in what that knowledge enables people to do. When people understand the natural systems around them, experience nature directly and are given opportunities to participate, they can begin to see themselves not simply as observers of environmental problems, but as actors in addressing them.

Education becomes a conservation intervention when it connects knowledge with experience, experience with agency and agency with action.

Education in action

The organisation's early youth network did more than create awareness of wildlife. It gave young people a platform to participate in national conservation debates. The significance lies in the pathway: learning can lead to understanding, understanding can build concern, and concern can create confidence and agency to participate.

In landscapes such as Tsavo, in southeastern Kenya, conservation education is connecting young people and communities directly with the pressures affecting biodiversity, including poaching, charcoal burning, human-wildlife conflict and land-use pressures. 

Through the Young Conservation Heroes project, WCK, in collaboration with the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), is strengthening and scaling conservation education in the Tsavo landscape by using technology and its wildlife club network to reconnect schoolchildren with nature and support them as conservation actors. Schools can become entry points for understanding these challenges, reconnecting people with the landscapes around them and creating opportunities to participate in their protection.

That connection between learning and action also matters for restoration. Through its involvement in Kenya's 15 Billion Trees Initiative, WCK has mobilised its school network to move beyond simply planting trees towards nurturing them. Students adopt and care for trees, creating a direct connection between learning, responsibility and restoration.

The lesson extends well beyond Kenya. For conservation organisations working in very different contexts, the principle is transferable even when the model is not. The specific approach will differ from one landscape to another, but the underlying question is the same: how do we move people from knowing about biodiversity to having the knowledge, connection and agency to act for it?

The value of a relationship that lasts

WCK's experience also demonstrates the long-lasting effects of conservation education. A connection with nature established early in life can continue to shape people's engagement with conservation well into adulthood. Over generations, former members have carried their interest in nature into professions and public life, as policymakers, authors, advocates and leaders.

Prof. Erustus Kanga, now Director General of the Kenya Wildlife Service, began his journey in conservation as a WCK member. His career has included leadership in biodiversity protection, from the recovery of the Mountain Bongo and expansion of rhino ranges to the use of technology in wildlife monitoring. His recent recognition with the Environmental Leadership Excellence Award highlights how an early connection with nature can grow into national conservation leadership.

Stanley Mwangi Kimani, author of Speak for the Earth, is another example of that lasting connection. In his own words, the book is “courtesy of the knowledge and love for nature I acquired as a member of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya.” His work combines his professional experience with environmental advocacy and community initiatives, carrying those values forward into wider society.

These individual journeys sit within a much wider reach. Since launching its Outreach Conservation Education Programme in 1971, WCK reports that, as of January 2026, a total of 13.75 million school youth have been engaged and empowered in biodiversity conservation.

This raises an important question for all of us working in conservation. The conservation return on investment in education may not be visible at the end of a school year or funding cycle. So how do we measure the value of education when some of its most important outcomes may not appear immediately?

The answer lies partly in the choices people make, the communities they influence and the policies they help shape long after their first encounter with nature.

This is particularly important when we think about biodiversity loss as a long-term challenge. Conservation needs not only interventions that protect ecosystems today, but people who will continue to value, defend and restore them tomorrow.

From global commitments to lasting change

As we work to implement the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, we rightly focus on targets, policies, finance and measurable outcomes. But implementation also requires a social foundation.

The Framework recognises that achieving its goals will require more than policies and technical solutions. People need access to knowledge, but they also need the understanding, values and skills to act. Target 21 highlights the importance of making knowledge accessible to decision-makers, practitioners and the public, while Section K places education and awareness at the heart of implementation.

Beyond the Framework, the Convention on Biological Diversity, together with UNESCO and IUCN, is developing a Global Plan of Action for Education on Biodiversity, which seeks to strengthen biodiversity education across formal, non-formal and informal learning and place lifelong learning at the heart of efforts to address biodiversity loss. The IUCN Commission on Education and Communication (CEC) is actively contributing to this work, helping to strengthen the role of education in biodiversity action. 

Behind every target are the people making decisions: farmers, teachers, youth, community leaders, planners, businesses, policymakers, researchers and many others. Their understanding of biodiversity, their relationship with nature and their willingness to participate can determine whether commitments remain on paper or become lasting change.

If biodiversity decline is shaped in part by human decisions, then addressing its drivers requires changing the conditions in which those decisions are made. Education can help create those conditions by building knowledge, values, relationships and the capacity to act.

This does not mean education replaces legislation, protected areas, restoration, enforcement, science or finance. It means education can help make those interventions work.

A protected area still requires people who understand why it matters. Restoration still depends on people who understand what should be restored, how and for whom. Policies still require people who can implement them. And biodiversity targets ultimately depend on millions of decisions made far beyond the rooms where those targets were negotiated.

Behind every biodiversity target is a human decision. The question is whether we are investing enough in the people who will make those decisions.

Making education part of the biodiversity response

The challenge now is to translate this understanding into how biodiversity strategies are designed, implemented and sustained.

Education should not be treated simply as a way of communicating biodiversity messages after conservation strategies have been designed. It should be considered from the outset as part of how conservation outcomes are achieved.

We call on IUCN Members and the wider conservation community to treat education as a long-term investment in conservation, supported by sustained resources and meaningful opportunities for people, especially young people, to participate in protecting nature.

The biodiversity agenda will ultimately be delivered through people. Investing in their knowledge, relationship with nature and capacity to act is therefore an investment in the outcomes we are seeking to achieve.