Namibia's conservancy policy for communal areas was developed as the basis for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) through devolved management of wildlife without moving people from the land (Nujoma 1998). Communal area residents, as conservancy members, can benefit from, and have management responsibilities over, animal-wildlife. To be registered as a wildlife management institution, a conservancy requires a defined boundary and membership, a representative management committee, tribution of benefits (MET 1995a and b). Like the much publicized CAMPFIRE programme of Zimbabwe – blueprint for USAID-funded CBNRM programmes throughout southern Africa and elsewhere – the assumption informing conservancy policy is that 'conservation and development goals can be achieved by creating strong collective tenure over wildlife resources in communal lands' (Murombedzi 1999: 288). This ‘new’ conservation thus is driven by: acknowledgement of the costs experienced by farmers living alongside wildlife in these areas; a need to counter the alienating effects of past exclusionary conservation policies; realization of the lack of economic incentives for local people to maintain a benign relationship to animal-wildlife; and recognition of the economic development needs of rural populations. The primary 'facilitators' of CBNRM tend to be NGOs. In the Namibian case, a key player has been the NGO IRDNC (Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation) which is considered to have ''a particular onus ... to facilitate conservancy registration and development' (Durbin et al. 1997: 5).