VISIONARY OR MADMAN? John Wamsley has set up a profit-making company to protect Aus tralia's native wildlife. Is this the road to salvation, or damnation?

International Wildlife, Jan-Feb, 2001 by Tim Thwaites

Last May, ESL listed on the main board of the Australian Stock Exchange at an opening share price of A$2.50. Although saving wildlife is not the kind of activity normally associated with the stock market, ESL is a deadly serious, profit-orientated enterprise. Already the company owns or manages ten sizeable chunks of land. One of them, Scotia, in the far southwest of New South Wales, is 250 square miles. In addition to its real estate holdings, the company also has a valuable supply of what its accountants refer to as "self-generating and regenerating assets": wildlife.

Wamsley is willing to trade in animals, an activity that outrages people such as Tabart. To Wamsley, though, this is a logical outcome of being in the market. "We will sell to anybody who wants wildlife on their land," he says, "but it's got to be authorized by the various government departments. I expect the trade to be of the order of A$1 million within the next couple of years." The proviso of government authorization, however, virtually precludes export at this stage.

Few have invested in ESL to make money, but no one expects to lose money, either. (By October, the company's stock price had moved to A$1.50.) Most shareholders look on their involvement as a practical contribution to saving wildlife and a way of taking a stake in Australia. Several times a year, at each sanctuary, investors gather to check on their assets. These shareholder weekends are an occasion for relaxing and talking with like-minded people, for becoming involved in working bees, for eating and drinking, and for communing with nature and reflecting. "Now what other company can give you that?" says Geoff Thorpe, an investor who spends his life working the stock market. "Every portfolio should include something like Earth Sanctuaries."

Many of ESL's investors regard Wamsley affectionately and look on him as a modern-day hero. But the man is certainly not everybody's pinup. His policies and his combative approach to saving wildlife have made enemies. At Yookamurra, for example, the company is building a second fence outside the original perimeter fence to protect against the constant threat of people who throw feral cats into the sanctuary. Also, during a political battle over land in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney last year, one of Wamsley's cars was torched in his driveway.

Not all of Wamsley's critics are car- burning radicals. Glenn Albrecht from the University of Newcastle, for example, is an environmental philosopher who does not like many of the trends he sees in Australian conservation-Wamsley's efforts included. Albrecht is convinced that the only sure way to protect biodiversity is to conserve whole ecosystems. He doesn't see Wamsley's market methods as achieving that. "In the event of a stock market crash and the need to liquidate assets, one wonders what will happen to 'natural capital' living in the reserves," he says. "The trade and sale of native fauna for large sums of money severs the connection to the conservation of total biodiversity and preservation of habitat, and moves the organization responsible into the realm of biocapitalism." Albrecht also predicts other problems for the ESL reserves. "The vicissitudes of the market are bad enough, but pretending to be an island sanctuary in a sea of impacting threats such as fire, disease, accidents and vandalism is not in the long-term interests of either endangered species or habitat."