Across forests, wetlands and drylands, women are stepping into leadership roles in community conservation — not as token participants but as organisers, monitors and entrepreneurs whose work is changing the relationship between people and nature. From village lakes in Colombia to conservancies in Namibia and ranger patrols in Indonesia, women are combining local knowledge with new skills to reduce habitat loss, rebuild wildlife populations and steer income back to families who live with wildlife. According to the Namibia Association of CBNRM Support Organisations, women already hold many financial-management roles in community conservancies, even while leadership at the chair level remains lower.
Women’s Knowledge, Leadership and Impact in Conservation
In Kenya’s Amboseli landscape, a program called Sowing Change—run by a CARE–WWF alliance—has placed women’s groups at the centre of landscape restoration and livelihoods. Women trained in beekeeping, goat rearing, and reseeding soil-retaining grasses now lead the restoration of erosion-prone bunds while also selling products that cover school fees and household expenses. “Give a woman seeds and training, and she’ll restore the landscape while building a sustainable business that supports her entire community,” a WWF field report noted after visits in 2025. Project staff highlight stronger local relationships and more resilient incomes as early signs of success. The Sowing Change initiative now connects more than 30 women’s groups with technical support and markets.
On the banks of Lake Tarapoto in Colombia, Indigenous women from 22 communities have organised fisheries monitoring and revived locally negotiated fishing agreements to tackle years of overfishing. They measure, weigh, and record fish catches at the household level, work across generations with elders who hold traditional ecological knowledge, and enforce seasonal closures and gear restrictions. “Our business is the forest,” said Lilia Java, a Cocama leader working on the wetland restoration — a short phrase that captures the cultural as well as ecological stakes of their work. A study and field report on the project show rising local fish counts and renewed stewardship after the agreements were strengthened. According to Mongabay reporting on the Lake Tarapoto work, 2023, these women-led actions helped recover species and reduce harmful fishing practices.
In Aceh, Indonesia, a group of female forest rangers began formal patrols after floods in 2015 made the link between deforestation and disaster painfully clear. The women’s tactics are low-conflict and local: mapping, measuring trees, tagging standing timber to deter cutting, handing out seeds, and talking with farmers. The group’s founder, Sumini, describes the approach as persuasion over confrontation. Their patrols — formalised in 2020 — were later credited with a sharp local reduction in tree loss and have become a model for women-led patrols elsewhere in Indonesia. AP News documented how these patrols combined traditional knowledge with map and GPS training to achieve measurable conservation outcomes, and the ranger teams have since been sharing their methods nationwide.
These are not isolated anecdotes. Across regions, women play complementary roles—as household managers, resource users, and knowledge holders—that shape how communities perceive risk, benefits, and responsibility for wildlife. Their priorities often focus on sustaining food and water, which aligns closely with conservation goals when women are given decision-making power and access to training, markets, and finance. A report by WOCAN and a literature review published in Oryx also found that purposeful engagement of women tends to improve conservation outcomes. However, the studies also emphasised that benefits do not automatically reach women unless projects are intentionally designed for gender equity. According to the report, targeted inclusion is critical to achieving both ecological and social gains.
What the Evidence Says
Longstanding academic research and newer reviews point to a clear pattern: meaningful female participation in community resource institutions changes behaviour and rules in ways that can improve conservation. Work by Bina Agarwal and others has shown that when women are present in numbers that allow them to participate effectively — for example, by speaking, attending meetings and holding office — forest governance rules change and extraction pressures fall. According to Agarwal, higher female representation in local forest governance correlates with stronger conservation rules and lower resource degradation.
At the programme scale, evidence from Namibia’s community conservancies shows both progress and remaining gaps. The NACSO State of Community Conservation report indicates that among reporting conservancies, women comprised about 34% of management committee members, held 49% of treasurer or financial manager positions, and made up 13% of chairpersons — figures that reflect strong engagement in financial governance but underrepresentation in top leadership and field roles such as game guards. The report also notes governance improvements where women are active, while emphasising the need for deliberate training and institutional support, and it found these gendered patterns across 82 reporting conservancies.
Systematic reviews and cross-country studies reinforce these field signals. The Oryx review of hundreds of case studies concluded that women interact with the environment differently than men, and that conservation outcomes improve when their knowledge and needs are included—provided projects avoid simply increasing women’s workloads or reinforcing inequality. It also stressed that inclusion must be meaningful and intersectional to deliver lasting results.
Yet, the literature also issues a caution: empowering women in conservation is not a silver bullet. When inclusion is superficial, conservation gains can coexist with persistent gender inequities or even increase burdens on women. Programs that combine training, legal recognition, and access to markets—such as Sowing Change in Kenya or fisheries agreements in Colombia—tend to produce the strongest and most durable results, because they change incentives and provide alternatives to destructive activities. Evidence from community forestry studies likewise shows that women’s participation must be coupled with decision-making power and resources to be effective. Women’s proportional strength also shapes their ability to participate effectively and influences the rules that emerge.
What Works — and What Can Be Done Next
Programs that intend to harness women’s leadership for both social justice and biodiversity need to combine at least five elements: local legal recognition; training in both traditional and technical skills; climate- and market-smart livelihood alternatives; finance or microgrants; and safe spaces for women’s political participation. When combined, these elements reduce degradation pressures while improving household resilience.
Legal recognition and institutional change are foundational. Where communities have clear rights and women can participate in formal decision-making, conservation rules are easier to enforce and benefits are clearer. In Aceh, a social forestry permit enabled women rangers to formalise patrols and link to support networks; in Namibia, the conservancy legal framework gives communities leverage to negotiate benefit-sharing, and women’s strong presence in treasurer roles shows how finance is a leverage point for influence. These facts are described in program reports and national reviews; for example, NACSO’s 2022 review documents both the legal framework and the gendered outcomes it produces, as reported by Conservation Namibia and AP News.
Another key element is combining traditional ecological knowledge with technical monitoring. Women in the Colombian Amazon married household-level fish monitoring with support from Conservation International and local NGOs to restore fishing agreements; in Kenya, women learned both beekeeping and landscape restoration. Projects that build this fusion—elder wisdom plus GPS, mapping, data collection, and market links—produce credible evidence that communities can use to renegotiate rules. According to Mongabay’s coverage of Lake Tarapoto, the mix of TEK and formal monitoring strengthened enforcement and recovery.
Equally important is creating income pathways that reduce the short-term economic pressures behind habitat loss. Sowing Change’s model in Kenya links restoration to income-generating activities such as honey and goat milk, shifting incentives away from destructive land use. These livelihood pathways are central to why participants report both household improvements and better stewardship.
Leadership pipelines also need deliberate investment. Training women in financial management, patrol methods, and community negotiation—and creating safe, compensated roles for them—moves more women from informal caregiving roles into recognised conservation positions. NACSO’s report highlights how treasurer roles are already an entry point for influence; scaling leadership pipelines requires mentorship, gender-sensitive recruitment, and addressing barriers such as travel, time poverty, and safety.
Finally, measuring both ecological and social outcomes together is essential. Donors and governments should require gender-disaggregated monitoring and publish results. Evidence from multiple studies shows that when monitoring includes women’s perspectives (household food security, time use, and local rule compliance), interventions can be adjusted to avoid unintended harms and amplify benefits. Agarwal’s work underlines that the quantity and quality of women’s participation shape outcomes, so monitoring must capture both. Effective participation—not just presence—matters for governance and conservation.
Actionable Advice for Funders and Practitioners
CreaCreate funded leadership tracks for women that include training, stipends, and childcare; support women’s monitoring efforts (such as household-level data collection and simple digital tools); finance nature-based enterprises led by women; strengthen legal recognition of community rights where it is weak; and require gender-disaggregated impact reporting in every project. In short, invest in people and institutions—not only in one-off trainings.
Conclusion
Women are already making conservation work on the ground — not as an add-on, but as a core strategy for healthier ecosystems and fairer livelihoods. The evidence is clear: when women have the tools, the rights and the space to lead, communities protect wildlife more effectively and equitably. Turning these examples into a global norm will take sustained funding, legal reform, and careful measurement — but the pathway is visible, built on real projects and real people whose voices and actions are changing outcomes for wildlife.
