Dr Shylock Muyengwa and Dr Brian Child have teamed up from their homes on other sides of the world for years, conducting fieldwork and research with communities to help develop increasingly sophisticated models and practises for wildlife conservation with people at their heart. They explain how the pioneering CAMPFIRE programme worked to devolve rights for the use, management, disposal of and benefit from wildlife resources and how learnings have been built upon to build modern-day CBNRM. They also discuss the legacy of colonial land practises and laws in contemporary conservation and share ideas for overcoming this. Brian and Shylock discuss the social and practical aspects of this approach but also share details of the governance dashboard they developed with villagers to help them create participatory democracies for decision-making.