"My earliest memories are of the Tanganyikan bush," recalls Dr Andrew Tilling. "My father was part of the Groundnuts Scheme. We were among hundreds of British expatriates living in the middle of the veld, on the edge of the Maasai Steppe. We were very isolated — more than 300 kilometres from Dar es Salaam."

The Groundnuts Scheme was a plan by the British government to grow peanuts on an industrial scale in Tanganyika Territory (now part of Tanzania). It was one of Britain's biggest development blunders. Over thirty million pounds were poured into the project before it was cancelled.

Tilling was five years old when his family relocated to Kenya. "I spent all of my formative life in Kenya," says Tilling. "I have very happy childhood memories. My father worked for the Colonial Civil Service in Nairobi, which has a national park less than fifteen kilometres from the city centre. I often went there as a child, which really developed my interest in nature and wildlife.

"We also used to go once a year to the coast, and visit the beaches and coral reefs. Even if you just drove to Mombasa by car you would see wild animals. It was a real safari. Africa really gets into your blood: the wide, open spaces, the herds of wild game — it's really magical. In my childhood, it was still very much a frontier."

Tilling spoke English at school, but learnt Swahili from his Kenyan acquaintances. "I used to hang around the local builder's site, and chat to the workmen," he recalls. "Our family also employed a cook with whom I was very friendly. We used to take long walks together around Nairobi, and I just seemed to pick up Swahili by osmosis."

When Tilling was fifteen years old, he was sent to boarding school in England. "That was quite traumatic," he says. "I'd been brought up in the British tradition. I'd learnt all about 'home' in school, and nothing about Kenya or Africa at all. So when I went to England, I thought I was English — but I soon found out that I was a 'wog'."

"I was kind of discriminated against. I was a foreigner. They used to say at my school that: 'Wogs begin at Calais or north of Watford'. They thought that anybody who went to the colonies was a second-rate citizen, and that anyone who crossed the channel was a foreigner. People didn't accept me as English, and I didn't really feel English either. So I never really thought I'd stay there."

Despite his misgivings, Tilling remained in England until he'd completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Sheffield. "I was interested in the environment so I took geography as my major. [But] my father urged me to take something more commercial — so I decided to take economics as well."

By this stage Tilling's parents had relocated to Malawi for contract work. "That really suited me," he remembers. "I used to go over and visit them once a year during the university holidays. So I was able to see a bit of Malawi, and travel around some of central Africa as well."

Tilling's parents returned to Britain at the end of his degree, but his father still couldn't settle back in England. "My father had Africa in his blood," says Tilling. "So he decided that he was going to move the family to the Republic of South Africa. I wasn't very happy about that — because of the politics, of course. But I ended up going with them, and worked for a couple of years at Unilever in Durban."

"The good thing about South Africa was that I met my wife there. But I couldn't possibly think about staying. It was still apartheid and segregation in those days — and I was opposed to that. So we decided to go back to Britain, and then emigrate to New Zealand."

"To our surprise, however, New Zealand wasn't particularly interested in having us," says Tilling wryly. "But luckily the Australians were absolutely crying out for people, so we ended up going there instead. My wife found a teaching job, and I decided to study a master's degree in Town and Country Planning at the University of Sydney. By the time I'd finished my degree we were able to re-emigrate to New Zealand."

Tilling initially worked as a land-use planner in Auckland, but then moved to the Canterbury Regional Planning Authority (now Environment Canterbury) in Christchurch. "I ended up getting involved in all sorts of regional studies to do with forestry, fishing, and farming. At that time (the mid-1980s) there was a lot of debate about the clear-felling of our indigenous forests. It seemed to me that this was a classic development issue."

As a result, Tilling decided to undertake a Ph.D. in Forestry at the University of Canterbury. His thesis was entitled Alternative use of West Coast Indigenous Forests, in which he developed a participatory (social) forestry approach. "This brought together all the threads of my previous education in socio-economics, market research, and the environment — as well as my interest in nature conservation," he says.

Since graduating, Tilling has worked overseas on conservation projects in Nepal, Oceania, China, Vietnam, and Africa. "I'm very interested in participatory management," he explains. "It's the only really practical approach to forest conservation in the third world. The community is empowered to manage the forest themselves."

"From a forest management perspective it's very important to realize that non-timber forest products are often more valuable (in total) than timber. For example: beekeeping and butterfly-farming in the forests of Kenya and Tanzania; medicinal plants, rattan, and mushrooms in Southeast Asia; nuts and other edible plants in the Pacific; and, of course, eco-tourism in many of these places. These products and services are often far more sustainable than timber harvesting — because logging in a tropical rainforest is inordinately difficult without the destruction of a lot of other trees and the ecosystem."

In 2005, Tilling was asked to assist the World Conservation Union on a project in Kenya. "It was an incredible opportunity to go back there," he says. The project involved working with the Maasai people to create a management plan for the Loita-Purko Naimina Enkiyio Forest on the western side of the Rift Valley. The forest is trust-land, originally administered by the Narok County Council. But recent legal disputes had led to the possibility of an alternative approach to administration.

"The Maasai were to get direct control of the forest provided they produced a management plan," explains Tilling. "However the Maasai are pastoralists who have been marginalized in both the colonial and post-colonial periods. They've actually lost most of their best land, and so naturally they're very suspicious of strangers. They live in a remote area which is very poor, neglected, and under-developed."

These pre-existing political tensions meant that Tilling's project faced considerable challenges. "Prior to my arrival there had been a confrontation between rival groups in which one person was shot dead by the police and two injured. Our approach was to have [reconciliation] meetings in the community to explain about the management plan."

Above: A typical Maasai village near the Loita-Purko Naimina Enkiyio forest (photo: Andrew Tilling).

"The discussions were conducted in English, Swahili, and Maa — which gives a lot of scope for misunderstandings," says Tilling. "All the Maasai carry clubs and spears, and sometimes one of the local leaders would shout out: 'These people are coming to steal our forest!' And everybody would stand up and shake their weapons at us. It could be quite intimidating."

"In the end I felt that there needed to be a mass education programme — and so we started an environmental project in [local] schools. We ran an art competition to select a bird as an icon of the forest, and took the winning artist and his school support group to see a 'greening project' in Mombasa. Most of these children had never left the village before, and so we hoped that their experiences would filter into the wider community, and raise awareness of the importance of the forest environment and the need for conservation."

Although Tilling is optimistic, it's obvious that he was frustrated by some aspects of the Naimina Enkiyio project. "It was wonderful to return full-circle to the country of my childhood — but sad that so many opportunities have been lost to political intrigues, corruption, and the lack of leadership."