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HELPING CHEETAHS PROSPER: Knowles
collaborates with Laurie Marker to support fast
cats.
Courtesy Wildlife Conservation
Network |
as a kid, Charlie Knowles
begged his parents for a dog—and more. He tended
cats, puppies, turtles, gerbils, lizards and at least
one duck. “I grew up watching National Geographic,
wanting to be Jane Goodall,” he says. When he
was 8, he observed a red fox in the woods near his rural
Illinois home. “That fox made a strong impression.”
Knowles came from three generations of engineers—and
he followed in the family footsteps. Two degrees and
several jobs later, he launched a technology company,
built it up to great success, and sold it. “I’d
heard somewhere that people typically have three distinct
careers in life, and I had the chance to step back and
actually ask myself, if I could do anything in the world,
what would it be?” Knowles says.
He thought of Goodall. What if he could use what he’d
gleaned from 10 years in Silicon Valley to help wildlife
conservationists in the bush? He’d do the fund
raising, the grant writing, the marketing and the schmoozing,
and they could focus on their fieldwork.
Knowles co-founded the Wildlife Conservation Network
in 2002. He became a sort of wildlife yenta—introducing
“conservation entrepreneurs” to high-end
donors. “It just seemed like a natural fit. I
could find these incredibly focused, talented, passionate
individuals in the field, and then I could give them
the resources to take things forward.”
His first collaboration was with Laurie Marker, founder
of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which grew from a
shoestring operation run out of a Namibian farmhouse
into one of the world’s biggest single-species
conservation programs. Since then, Wildlife Conservation
Network has supported everything from Sumatran rhinos
to Nepalese snow leopards, elephants to okapi.
Wildlife conservation is difficult and dangerous work.
Three Wildlife Conservation Network specialists died
in a car accident on a Ugandan road, “returning
from a meeting with military leaders to try to secure
a reduction in violence in the area of the Congo where
we work,” Knowles says. “We have four airplanes
and all four of them have crashed within the past year.”
(Three had mechanical problems and the fourth crashed
when a zebra darted across the runway.) The ultra-light
planes that are quiet enough to glide scientists into
the jungle without disturbing animals also are slow
enough to be easy targets for angry poachers.
Still, Knowles eagerly spends about a month in the field
each year. “I’ve sat with Buddhists way
up in the Himalayas. I ate in the middle of the Congo
with a group of Pygmies. I got interrogated by the KGB;
that was exciting!” he says.
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Knowles went to a Nepalese village where herders had
lost 55 livestock to a snow leopard three nights before.
“Through the translator I said, ‘You lost
70 percent of your village’s net worth. Do you
wish that snow leopard was dead?’ And the translation
came back, ‘No. We’re Buddhists.’
Moments like that show there really is hope.”
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