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 the 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 also facilitated what we call Rhinos Without Borders,
so where our white rhinos have been translocated to Botswana
to start up a 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.
From the get-go 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,
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 utilize 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 programs.
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 organizations 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.