So I have been offline here for the beginning of this year. I am sorry about that a little, but after two years it has been good to take short break and focus my intent and interests. My work with Global Post has continued, and I have also been working with LinkTV.org in the United States, selling some of my stories. Throughout this year there will be some short features of mine appearing on TV in the US on Link's channel on the Direct TV satelite system. The first of these is about Mozambique's remote Mt Mabu:
Readers of this blog may remember my stories from last year about the KAZA, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, being created here in Africa between five nations. It will be the biggest park ever created, larger than the country of Italy. Since my trip through there last year I have been working with my assistant, Emily Coppel from Columbia College in Missouri, to create a longer, fifty-five minute documentary about the creation of this vast protected area. We are headed back into the heart of the Kaza on the 10th of April, this time exploring community-based tourism projects in the Okavango Delta which are a model for the future mixed-use plan of the park. We will be eye-to-eye with crocodiles and hippos, and camping among leopards and all sorts of wild animals, all in the name of bringing this important story to the world.
I will be updating this blog and my twitter account: @JeffreyBarbee as we go along, with updates, and tales of adventure, adversity and conservation. It's clear that if we are going to keep our protected places and expand them in a world with a growing population, they are going to have to include people. To that end I have my latest documentary from Mozambique here on the page. Allan Schwarz's Mezimbite Forest Center has been showing how people can become the custodians of the natural resources, and benefit from them financially by not destroying them.
Have a look at the video below:
So I am putting together some blog entries along our route. When the full documentary comes out on Link TV later this year I hope you all tune in!
