Looking at those shots
it's really hard to believe
that this currently thriving area in
South Africa was once
dedicated to cattle and
pineapple farms, with almost
no biodiversity and wildlife.
Phinda was established in collaboration
with the local Zulu tribal
community to rehabilitate the ecosystem,
allowing for the return
of the wildlife that
had once flourished in this area.
Phinda is local Zulu word for 'return'.
Animals were brought in from
other regions of southern Africa to
establish new populations
in the conservancy.
There is a lot of doom-and-gloom stories
about biodiversity.
However, this story is a hopeful one.
Phinda is a modern success
conservation story
so stick around around to learn
how they managed to do it.
I think the key to success for
Phinda is the fact that
they've used this ecotourism model
to benefit not only the reserve itself
but also the local communities
surrounding them.
A lot of work goes into
managing 30,000 hectares:
making sure that animals are healthy,
that they are reproducing,
but not inbreeding,
that herbivores do not
overgraze the land,
that territorial animals have
enough space and do not
compete between each other,
that invasive species
of plants are under control,
that the areas will be protected
by anti-poaching units,
and that is all while still
running lodges and operating tourism
and voluntourism in the area
that brings much needed funding
towards conservation.
With the data collected here
by our volunteers
that go out every day with one of our
Ecological Monitors
that data feeds live
into our data systems,
which we can then analyse.
This helps us to make
our management decisions.
Animal populations in Phinda are thriving
from an initial population
of just 30 white rhinos,
Phinda now has one of the largest
white rhino populations in Africa
and have been relocating
and repopulating rhinos
to other reserves and countries,
due to their success at protecting them.
This is also facilitated what we call
Rhinos Without Borders,
so where our white rhinos
have been translocated to Botswana
to start at the founding population there.
Phinda is the first private game reserve
ever to be a part of the
Black Rhino Range Expansion Project,
so this is a project together with WWF.
The cheetah population here
has grown so successfully
that some individuals were relocated to
other parts of southern Africa
to establish healthy
cheetah populations there.
Cheetah alone, Phinda and the MunYaWana
is currently seen as one of the most important cheetah meta
populations throughout southern Africa.
Phinda has been chosen as a release site for
pangolins that have been confiscated from poachers and
saved from the illegal wildlife trade. The
pangolin is arguably the most trafficked animal
on earth leading to their disappearance in
the world.
So pangolins were reintroduced here in June
2019, before that pangolins have
been completely extinct from the reserve. Over
time, these animals have now established home
ranges, territories, and thankfully have even
had pups. It is also an educational ground -
numerous researches occur here
every year. A lot
of data has been collected and that has resulted
in numerous PhDs, Master's projects, also
suitable protocols being out there on what's
the right way for soft-releasing lions
into new areas. I have been here
a few weeks volunteering with African Conservation Experience and
participating on all the daily tasks needed
for animal management and conservation like monitoring,
data collection, updating ID
profiles of animals, tracking using
some of the most modern technologies, trying to
understand. So what is the reason
of this overwhelming conservation success? Is
it the modern technology and their
ability to use camera traps, telemetry, satellites,
drones, acoustic sensors, a variety of
apps for data collection and analysis?
This project is neat because our cameras are actually tools and what
we're doing is collecting data that's going to help us identify these
individuals in the wild at a later date.
Is it their ability to utilise conservation tourism and
voluntourism to fund these projects? Around
the world, many protected areas are
underfunded. Allowing visitors to
observe exciting and important conservation tasks provides additional
source of funding for necessary
management activities, such as ecosystem monitoring,
anti-poaching patrols, invasive species
eradication, and environmental educational programmes.
Tourism potentially has a big role to
play in education when it comes to conservation. One
of the best things is there's
so many people that care and that's just really lovely
to see. Just spreading the word of, like, the sort of work that's done
here, trying to get more funding and letting people
know how important this is to preserve, is really important.
When people connect with nature during their travels, when
they see first-hand how hard it is
to protect our nature and what goes into it, it can lead
them into being more appreciative and become
more invested in protecting it.
I think the fact we don't know what we're gonna see or discover
each day... it's very exciting, like every day I've done so far has been
really different. And I've had a really unique experience seeing
loads of animals that are endangered. So
I'd say I'm pretty lucky.
Of course, it is all of the above and more. This project truly
exists due to the exceptional management and
the work of numerous passionate people that spend
hours and days in the bush, making sure that the
area is thriving while educating tourists and
visitors, and conducting research that helps other
organisations and reserves to obtain
this success as well.
We mainly focus on movement data and being
able to correlate all of that and expand it over a few
years, and see the movement of different species, how they react
to different weather conditions and habitats and different influences
like that. Seeing their movement data, how long it's taken them
to settle in this reserve, will be useful for other reserves
who want to do the same thing.
Your time and your effort
really help with things like, hands-on things, if we
need help lifting something or moving things, photos
for ID kits, like lots of
different small contributions that add up to larger contributions.
I hope that this success story got you
inspired and serves as a hopeful reminder.
When people start seeing the benefit of having tourism
in the area, they are more inclined
to wanting to keep the area wild and they also
support these new ventures that are
being undertaken.
We want to use tourism to expand,
you know, conservation areas and, not just
expand but to ensure that it sustains itself.