GMFER’s Annual Signature Events Across the Globe

Since 2013, our annual events have raised awareness, lobbied for national and international policy and legislation to protect the lives and homes of iconic wildlife, and amplified the voices of indigenous in the conversation about conservation. Over the years our events have influenced the passage of laws that regulate and ban the trade in ivory and rhino horn, specifically laws in the USA, the UK, and China.

The U.S. Department of State described our global events in this way:

“People in more than 130 cities around the world, including Hong Kong, Nairobi and Washington, participated in October’s Global March for Elephants and Rhinos. According to experts, these marches keep political pressure on leaders to protect the world’s largest land animal.”

In 2016, during CoP17 in Johahttps://archive-share.america.gov/elephant-ivory-prices-plummet/nhttps://archive-share.america.gov/elephant-ivory-prices-plummet/nesburg, GMFER made history by becoming the first grassroots-wildlife-advocacy organization to be credentialed to attend the 17th meeting of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in Johannesburg. On the opening day of the conference, thousands marched from the heart of the city to the entrance of the Sandton Convention Center where CoP17 was kicking off. The passionate and unprecedented event was organized by GMFER in partnership with collaborators from South Africa.

GMFER attended CITES’ CoP19 in Panama in 2022. Collaborating with PWCC (The Panama Wildlife Conservation Charity), GMFER made good trouble on the opening day of CITES in Panama. We staged a Celebration of Wildlife outside the Panama Convention Center. ~200 children, young adults and teachers from surrounding Panamanian Schools joined GMFER, PWCC, our partners and others to celebrate earth’s wild wonder. Under the banner of “Nature not Money”, these young voices called on Management Authorities to place nature over money, to vote for a living earth. In future collaborations, GMFER hopes to work with the PWCC to establish Appendix 1 for Oophaga vicentei, a poison frog facing significant threats throughout Panama. In turn, PWCC will network with the EU, lobbying on behalf of Appendix1 for all African elephants.

Significantly, prior to the moratorium imposed on the live capture and trade of all African elephants, Nkateko Mzimba, a Transfrontier Africa and GMFER representative presented an intervention, addressing the plenary session debating the live capture and trade of African Elephants in the context of Agenda Item 66.4. We thank Iris Ho from the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance for supporting the intervention.

And there’s a lot more! You can read about it here.

Update: GMFER decided against global events in 2021, given the context of COVID. Our next Global event will take place (tentatively) in the spring of 2024.  

Watch this space!

GMFER’s Annual Signature Events Across the Globe BLOG