One Of The Great Success Stories Of African Wildlife Conservation | WWF

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 to learn how they managed to do it.

I think the key to the success for Phinda is

the fact that they've used this ecotourism

model to benefit not

only the reserve itself, but also the

locals 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, the

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.