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.