From an idea spanning two continents to classrooms, partnerships and a growing vision for conservation in Zambia — this is what the last 15 months of building Earth FX has really looked like.

Fifteen months ago, much of what Earth FX is building today existed as ideas, conversations and possibilities.

Some of those ideas had actually been waiting much longer.

My connection with conservation in Zambia began almost fifteen years ago, when a journey through the country led me to Munda Wanga Wildlife Park and to a conversation that could have changed the direction of my life. At the time, I thought I might return to help rebuild it.

Life had other plans.

The opportunity disappeared, years passed, careers changed, my children grew up, I became an zoologist and Zambia became one of those unfinished chapters that never completely leaves you.

Then, unexpectedly, the story found its way back.

And over the last 15 months, what began with reconnecting to people and a place from my past has grown into something far bigger than I could have mapped out at the beginning.

Not everything has worked.

Not everything has happened in the order we expected.

Some things have moved remarkably quickly. Others have taken patience, persistence and more conversations than I could count.

But that is probably a much more honest story of conservation.

Progress rarely happens in a straight line.

BEGINNING AGAIN: CONSERVATION IN ZAMBIA

Reconnecting with Zambia wasn’t simply about returning to an old idea.

It meant looking at what exists now, listening to the people already doing the work and asking a much more important question:

Where can Earth FX genuinely contribute?

That question has shaped much of what has followed.

Earth FX International Zambia was established, and a team began taking shape on the ground with Raphael Mutolwa, Maybin Katongo and Zifa Nkhoma helping move the work forward in Zambia.

Each brings different knowledge and experience. More importantly, they bring the local understanding that an international organisation cannot manufacture from a distance.

That matters.

Conservation cannot simply arrive from somewhere else with a predetermined solution.

It has to listen.

It has to adapt.

And it has to be built with the people who understand the places, communities, wildlife and realities involved.

STARTING WITH ONE CLASS

One of the first places we could begin making a practical difference was conservation education.

What started as an idea became a program.

Then a school came.

Then another.

Children began arriving at Munda Wanga to learn about wildlife, ecosystems, conservation, health, wellbeing and the choices people can make to protect their natural future.

And something important became very clear.

Education could not simply be about giving children information.

We wanted students to investigate, question, choose, plan, act, share and reflect.

We wanted them to understand that conservation is not something that belongs only to scientists, wildlife officers or organisations.

It belongs to the generation that will inherit its consequences.

That thinking eventually grew into Kids for Conservation and into learning pathways designed not only for Zambia, but for classrooms internationally.

What began with children in Zambia started creating another possibility: children in different parts of the world learning about conservation while connecting their own actions to something much bigger.

One class cannot solve every conservation challenge.

But one class can change one thing.

And sometimes one thing is where change begins.

FROM ONE PROGRAM TO A BIGGER CONSERVATION VISION

Education was never intended to exist in isolation.

Wildlife welfare connects to habitat.

Habitat connects to communities.

Communities connect to livelihoods and opportunity.

Education connects to future decision-making.

Research helps us understand what needs to change.

Tourism can create economic value around protecting what already exists.

And infrastructure determines whether many of those things can function at all.

Over the last 15 months, that connected thinking has grown into a much larger vision for what Earth FX could help build in Zambia.

There are plans for wildlife rescue and veterinary capacity, research, conservation education, volunteering, improved wildlife facilities, community participation and sustainable tourism.

And then came Vision 2037 — a long-term concept for the future of Munda Wanga Botanical Gardens and Wildlife Park.

It asks a very different question from simply “How do we repair what is here?”

It asks:

What could this place become?

A wildlife park with animal welfare at its centre.

A botanical garden protecting Zambia’s plant heritage.

A national conservation education centre.

A wildlife rescue and veterinary hospital.

Research and innovation.

Volunteer opportunities.

Tourism.

Community participation.

Sustainability.

A place capable of contributing to conservation far beyond its boundaries.

It is ambitious.

It should be.

Because sometimes restoring something isn’t enough.

Sometimes we need to imagine what could exist if we stopped designing only for today’s problems and started building for tomorrow’s possibilities.

BUILDING FROM TWO SIDES OF THE WORLD

None of this has been built by one person, or from one place.

In Zambia, Raphael, Maybin and Zifa have been helping move the work forward on the ground — supporting education, building relationships, working with stakeholders and navigating the everyday realities of developing conservation initiatives locally.

Meanwhile, much of Earth FX International’s development has continued from Australia.

Over those same 15 months, I have continued working full time while developing education programs, conservation strategies, partnership proposals, volunteer frameworks, website resources and the longer-term plans for Zambia.

There have been meetings before work, writing after work and weekends when Earth FX has simply become the other full-time job.

And apparently I decided that still wasn’t enough.

So I have also been building my studio apartment in preparation for the next chapter.

Yes. Physically building it. 😂

There have been days divided between conservation documents and construction materials, evenings spent editing education resources, conversations across time zones, proposals rewritten when circumstances changed, website pages built late at night and plenty of occasions when I have looked at the scale of everything happening simultaneously and wondered whether perhaps one project at a time might have been a sensible life choice.

Apparently not.

Some days have produced enormous steps forward.

Others have produced one email.

Both count.

Because building something from the ground up rarely looks impressive while you are actually doing it.

AND THEN THERE IS THE DOCUMENTARY…

Somewhere amongst all of this, another idea emerged.

Return to Munda Wanga.

A documentary series following a story that began almost fifteen years ago and has unexpectedly come full circle.

There is something unusual about writing a documentary about a journey when you don’t yet know how the journey ends.

We don’t know whether every plan will succeed.

We don’t know which doors will open.

We don’t know which ideas will have to change.

We don’t know what Munda Wanga will look like several years from now.

We are not documenting the story retrospectively after everything has been neatly resolved.

We are still living it.

Perhaps that is what makes it worth documenting.

Conservation isn’t only the finished wildlife hospital, restored habitat, successful education program or transformed wildlife facility.

It is also everything that happens before those things exist.

The meetings.

The setbacks.

The people who say yes.

The people who say no.

The plans that change.

The solutions nobody had thought of yet.

The days when progress feels enormous.

And the days when nothing seems to move at all.

That is part of the story too.

THE PART THAT ISN’T POLISHED

It would be very easy to tell the last 15 months as a sequence of achievements.

But that wouldn’t be entirely honest.

Funding remains one of our greatest challenges.

Good ideas still have to be paid for.

Programs have to be sustainable.

Different people sometimes have different expectations about what should happen next.

Working across countries, organisations and cultures requires patience.

Government processes take time.

Partnerships take time.

And sometimes the thing that looked straightforward on paper becomes considerably more complicated once real people, real budgets and real circumstances enter the equation.

We have had to reconsider plans.

We have had to slow things down.

We have had to ask difficult questions about what can genuinely be sustained rather than simply what we would like to do.

And we will have to keep doing that.

Because conservation cannot be measured by how much activity we can create.

It has to be measured by whether what we build can last.

FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER

When I look back now, an extraordinary amount has changed.

Earth FX Zambia exists.

There is a team working on the ground.

Children have participated in conservation education.

Kids for Conservation has grown from a Zambian program into an international education concept.

Partnership conversations are continuing.

A volunteer program is taking shape.

A long-term conservation vision has been developed.

A documentary series has begun telling the story.

And somewhere in Australia, a little studio apartment is gradually becoming part of the journey too.

But perhaps the most important thing we have built isn’t any one of those things.

It is momentum.

Fifteen months ago, many of these ideas existed separately.

Now they are beginning to connect.

And when I look at everything we ultimately hope to achieve, the last 15 months don’t feel like the story.

They feel like the first chapter.

There are wildlife facilities still to improve.

Programs still to fund.

Partnerships still to build.

A wildlife hospital and research future still to pursue.

More communities to work alongside.

More children to reach.

More lessons to learn.

And an enormous amount we still don’t know.

Perhaps that is why Stories From the Field matters.

We don’t want to wait until everything is finished, polished and successful before telling the story.

We want to share what happens along the way — the progress and setbacks, the people and partnerships, the lessons, the unexpected turns, the ridiculous days, the wonderful moments and the things that remind us why we started.

Because conservation is never a finished story.

And fifteen months in, one thing has become very clear.

Things are only just beginning.

Wildlife. Conservation. Education. People. Possibility.