Africa’s culture is fascinating, rich and diverse and still accessible to a privileged few.
For those of you looking for adventure and have a pioneer spirit look no further. Fortunately, there are still several areas left in Africa where an authentic experience can be encountered. Sadly, however, they are disappearing at an alarming rate and so the time to experience them is now.
I am often asked about eco-tourism. It is a term that has become very popular, but what does it mean?
I subscribe to the definition of eco-tourism as responsible travel to natural areas, which conserves the environment and improves the welfare of the local people. That is the yardstick by which I measure commitment to the idea of eco-tourism when taking people on safari.
A walk through a rainforest is not eco-tourism unless that particular walk somehow benefits that environment and the people who live there. My policy is to help conserve, protect and improve the places we visit. We travel in the bush to admire the flora and fauna and the scenery, and in doing so, I believe we have a responsibility to ensure that we do not damage or interfere with the natural order of things.
I feel I have an obligation when I take people on safari to avoid or minimize negative impacts on the environment.
I take my guests into the wilderness areas without damaging the environment. I instill in them a sense of awe and privilege at seeing the wonders of the wild. We do so without disturbing the animals.
At the same time, if we can help the local people, then I feel that we will have made a small contribution to the true ethic of eco-tourism.
Simply put, our wildlife cannot and will not survive unless our communities benefit directly from the wildlife.
All the safari camps I visit contribute one way or another towards the well-being of the village communities who reside abreast of the wildlife preserves.
Safari Camps provide employment and establish income-generating projects which empower communities. The children are fed and educated. An infrastructure is created. Schools and skills centers are built, boreholes are drilled, and roads repaired.
The Safari Camps also play an important part in mitigating human-animal conflict and poaching since they contribute financially towards these projects.
This hands-on approach creates an incentive for the communities to actively help protect and preserve the wildlife since the local people now have ownership.
Tourism generates huge sums of foreign currency for these countries. This in turn creates an incentive for these governments to maintain these protected areas. Otherwise protected areas would be redistributed to be utilized in other ways.
If someone told me that lion would be threatened with extinction when I first began guiding 30 years ago I would have probably laughed and thought this statement farfetched.
In fact, Lion have disappeared from 90% of their range over the past 100 years.
They actually have declined by 43% over the past 20 years alone! 100 years ago there were about 200 000 lion; today there are only 20 000 lion! Presently, there are as many lion as there are Rhino, and we all know how endangered Rhino are!
It is not just lion numbers that have plummeted in only 50 years. Africa’s elephant population has nosedived from 1.4 million to only 450 000 elephant today. The giraffe has dropped to only 80,000, the leopard to 50,000, the cheetah to 8,000, painted wolves to only 5,000. One can now see how fast these wild animals could disappear in our own lifetime!
Go on safari AND/OR support a wildlife conservation project. Below are trusted foundations and NGO’s that I can personally vouch for and actively support.
For more information please visit the following sites:
ELEFENCE INT https://www.elefence.org/
AFRICAN BUSH CAMPS FOUNDATION https://www.africanbushcampsfoundation.org/
AFRICAN PARKS https://www.africanparks.org/