Christine Mentzel, who has taken on the role of managing the SADC TFCA Wildlife Managers and Rangers Training (WMRT) Programme, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through KfW, and managed under the SADC TFCA Financing Facility by IUCN ESARO.

Christine is no stranger to TFCAs and has worked with SADC TFCAs on and off for the past 12 years, since she joined IUCN in 2012. Christine has previously managed the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Management Programme (BIOPAMA)  across the eastern and southern African region. BIOPAMA has collaborated with the TFCA community since its inception in 2012 and has supported several TFCA initiatives, as well as providing grants for work within TFCAs amongst others.

Christine is a Biologist by training and has worked in the conservation and natural resource sector mostly in eastern and southern Africa for over 20 years, leading a variety of projects from carnivore research in Tanzania, to other species-specific (while at the Endangered Wildlife Trust in South Africa) and protected area conservation projects (mostly through the work with IUCN), including also a few years working with the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FSZ) in Germany and focusing on protected and conserved areas globally. Most recently she managed the BIOPAMA programme, which focussed on support to protected and conserved areas in support of achieving Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).

Christine will be transitioning into the work with the TFCA WMRT over the next months, joining the TFCA FF team, and is currently already overseeing the Training Needs Assessment (TNA) review consultancy, which was presented to yourselves on various platforms.

Please feel free to reach out to Christine at any time in relation to the SADC TFCA WMRT and support the work of the TNA review consultancy as much as possible by making yourselves available for interviews.