Renewable energy product that helps wildlife – Award for Cheetah conservationist

Simple solutions can sometimes cascade in to big benefits. This is exactly what happened with a small innovative thinking from Dr. Laurie Marker, Founder and Executive Director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) based in Nambia. Dr Marker has been awarded $50,000 by the Tech Museum of Innovation for her Bushblok program. Tech Awards are given for applying technology to benefit humanity and spark global change.

Bushblok programme uses a high-pressure extrusion process to convert invasive, habitat-destroying bush into a clean-burning fuel. This helps cut down use of firewood, coal, lump charcoal and charcoal briquettes which are costly and result in environmental problems.

Clearing invasive bush helps restore millions of acres of Namibian savannah to revert back to its original state and improve the habitat of both the cheetah and its prey. Namibia has last of the largest remaining wild cheetah population. The global population of cheetah remaining in the wild is around 10,000.
Here is a shining example of innovative thinking coming to the rescue of wildlife. We need more such level headed thinking to solve some of our festering wildlife related problems.

As a spin off of Dr Marker’s Bushblok program Namibia is considering the use of Bushblok as biomass to power electric plants.