Southern Africa Wildlife Trafficking Hub Lead/ Protected Area Specialist at WWF South Africa

Minimum Requirements

• A degree related to themes such as nature conservation, transboundary governance and law enforcement, public management and/or development, etc.
• Minimum of ten years’ experience in implementing projects addressing wildlife poaching and / or trafficking; and / or mobilizing local, national and regional stakeholders to mitigate environmental crime.
• A passion for environmental and conservation issues, and an understanding of the connection between social issues, economics, development, law, compliance and the environment.
• A keen interest in learning about and experimenting with novel ways to make landscapes safer for wildlife and local people.
• Experience in working across a range of sectors, including government, NGO and private industry.
• Strong negotiation and constituency-building skills in a multicultural setting.
• Experience in mentoring, training or coaching would be advantageous.
• Proven fundraising success would be advantageous.
• Excellent planning and organisational skills.
• Ability to work autonomously, creatively and efficiently.
• Superior knowledge of conservation/wildlife management policies and best-practices, especially as it relate to safeguarding high-value species.
• Superior knowledge of social and human-rights safeguarding processes and tools in context of law enforcement and protected area management.
• Superior writing and verbal skills in English and ideally an African language. This should include superior report writing skills.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills with the ability to communicate, advocate and influence practices amongst diverse conservation practitioners.
• Strong strategic planning, project management and administrative skills.
• Ability to convene and build strong partnerships and interpersonal relationships with all levels of stakeholders from differing contexts and organisations.
• Excellent planning and organisational skills.
• Ability to work under pressure and be flexible in the face of the unexpected.
• Diplomacy and political savvy
• Self-efficacy and ability to work independently.
• Team-player willing to collaborate and regularly interact with other team members.
• A passion for environmental and conservation issues, and an understanding of the connection between social issues, local communities and the environment.
• Ability to undertake extensive travel is essential for this position.
• Valid Driver’s License and Passport.

Duties and Responsibilities

Southern Africa Wildlife Trafficking Hub Lead (50%)

• Support the implementation of national wildlife trafficking policies in key countries and critical landscapes across southern Africa;
• Assist in maintaining relationships with key government agencies in collaboration with country offices
• Promote synergies across the region in wildlife trafficking policies and their implementation
• Increase understanding of the national and regional dynamics of trafficking of high value wildlife products;
• Support research into transboundary, regional, and/or global trade dynamics of illegal wildlife products (for example trade routes and transport methods), to assist law enforcement action, build awareness on illegal wildlife trade (IWT) and support legal and policy developments
• Strengthen capacity to address wildlife trafficking through targeted actions along the value chain from prevention and detection to investigation and prosecution, and share best practices;
• Build technical capacity within our networks and relevant Government agencies for implementation of strategies that address wildlife trafficking and development of technical skills
• Promote learning and implement platforms to share approaches, knowledge, tools and systems and amplify best practice identified in the region
• Identify appropriate new technologies of relevance to addressing wildlife trafficking
• Ensure wildlife trafficking preventative measures and responses are founded upon a holistic community-based approach to addressing the challenge;
• Maintain close relationships with community-based programmes addressing the drivers of wildlife trafficking and practitioners in the landscapes
• Assist in developing technical fundraising proposals in response to opportunities for the region
• Build the capacity of WWF/ TRAFFIC offices to develop fundraising proposals
• Proactively identify and monitor funding opportunities in close collaboration with country offices
• Support external communications and advocacy, as appropriate, in collaboration with country offices
• Arrange annual planning and feedback workshops within the Southern Africa Technical Hub and between the three Africa hub
• Increase understanding of the value of different activities through standardised Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)
• Measure impacts through standardized MEL indicators across the region into network systems
• Collate and analyse annual data and achievements for reporting purposes within the network
• Support learning and information flow across the region, and with other regions, through participation in network and other processes as appropriate. 

Khetha Protected Area Specialist (50%)

• Support the objectives of the Khetha programme (based in White River), a USAID-funded initiative to mitigate the impacts of illegal wildlife trade in the Greater Kruger area of South Africa and in Mozambique.
• Support the implementation of critical wildlife trafficking policy frameworks for South Africa and Mozambique to increase crime prevention, detection, prosecution and collaboration.
• Support landscape-level initiatives to improve protected area management and security for the benefit of conservation partners and local communities.
• Provide technical expertise to efforts to develop an innovative financing & wildlife economy model in the Greater Kruger area.
• Work with a range of state and private sector partners to develop ranger/law enforcement personnel leadership and resilience to corruption in context of wildlife crime.
• Oversee efforts to safeguard rhinos in the Intensive Protection Zone of the Greater Kruger area.
• Assist in the development of strong inter-agency teams across conservation agencies and law enforcement agencies to enhance prosecutions of trafficking perpetrators.
• Support the development and implementation of the annual Khetha work plan.
• Support seconded employees with their Khetha-related work and ensure they are optimally included in Khetha-related projects.
• Participate in the monitoring, evaluation, learning and communication requirements of the Khetha program.
• Assist with program administrative processes.