Discover the Wilderness Projects - Botswana

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1 1 Module # 1 Component # 3 Discover the Wilderness Projects - Botswana Introduction Much has been written about Ecotourism, and what travel companies do (or do not do) for the environment and wildlife. It appears that many travel organisations, however remotely involved (if at all), use the eco-tourism concept as a marketing tool. As a result, the term has become just another buzz-word and has lost it s true and potentially noble meaning. Wilderness Safaris take their contribution to sustainable conservation extremely seriously and this Component will detail some of the specific projects that they are proud to be involved with. The conservation ethic in Southern Africa has changed dramatically since it s first Reserve, the Sabi Sands Game Reserve that was proclaimed in Then, the guiding principle was to preserve and conserve the animals and their environment, frequently to the cost of the local communities. Essentially, large areas of land were fenced in, stocked with game and the local communities relocated. This had the very beneficial effect of reaching the core objective of conservation, but the very detrimental effect of displacing the indigenous population (without compensation) and removing any benefit of conservation from them. Species were saved from extinction, but at a tremendous cost. Today the hard lesson learnt is that you must integrate local people into the conservation effort. Wilderness Safaris do just this.

2 2 The Wilderness Trust African safari companies are privileged to be based and work in some of the planet s most pristine, delicate and valuable countryside. We have a moral duty to ensure that our activities protect the land and its fauna and flora to ensure long-term sustainability. We also need to ensure that skills and material benefits accrue to the communities who live adjacent to these reserves to make sure that these people have the incentive to nurture the land. Wilderness are driven to ensure that whatever they do never compromises the integrity of the reserves ~ and that all our actions add value, enhance and protect these wonderful parks. One of our core beliefs is that rural villagers and communities who live in, or border on, wildlife areas have key conservation roles and undeniable rights. These communities in the next fifty years will control the destiny of wild places and wildlife. It is therefore critical that these people are brought into the mainstream of conservation and tourism now, to ensure that the future of their communities and the region s fauna and flora are sustainable. One of the challenges they face is to ensure that their interactions with the local people help instil an ethic of land stewardship and conservation practice for present and future generations. Wherever possible, they have involved the neighbouring communities in: wealth generation through tourism through ownership in training processes through the transfer of skills, and in the decision-making processes. Bringing a potential poacher into the mainstream of tourism s income flow can make him/her the world s best gamekeeper. A win-win situation is attainable when communities are directly involved in the benefits from wildlife and in the protection of their environment. This is where a huge amount of their time and efforts go. Much of this work is tough and unglamorous and does not hit the headlines, especially when compared to the conservation efforts of the "big furry" predators! But this is the critical conservation work that will ensure that all the species in their own habitats have protection for generations to come while communities prosper. Below is a selection of some of the conservation efforts currently in progress at Wilderness Safaris:

3 3 A portion of each guest s fare is allocated to the "Wilderness Safaris Wildlife Trust". Being at the "coalface" of environmental and wildlife needs in many areas, they have found that quick access to funds is essential to solve wildlife dilemmas as they arise. 100% of the funds raised within Wilderness is allocated to the approved projects. No fees are charged by Wilderness Safaris (nor the trustees) for managing the fund. Some of these projects they are involved in are large, expensive and audacious. They do need financial help to keep the projects going or to accelerate the programmes. They have started a website giving more details on these projects at If you would like to know more on these projects and if you are able to assist they would welcome your suggestions and help.

4 4 Wild Dog Research Project Name WILD DOG RESEARCH PROJECT Location Botswana Project Chitabe and Chitabe Trails aids in supporting the Botswana Wild Dog Research Project. The project is based in the same part of the Okavango as the Chitabe camps. Dr. Tico Mcnutt, founder of the Wild dog project, was recently featured in a BBC Natural World/Afriscreen Production entitled, A Wild Dog s Story as well as the May 1999 Edition of National Geographic Magazine.

5 5 Children In The Wilderness Project "CHILDREN IN THE WILDERNESS" Location Botswana In August 2001 Paul Newman visited Botswana and stayed in Wilderness Safaris camps. During his stay, Wilderness and Paul discussed and debated the possibility of setting up a children's programme into southern Africa, similar to the children's projects and camps he already administers in the USA and Ireland. Paul has established a charitable association with worldwide donor support, known as "Hole in the Wall. These camps host terminally ill children and are run by professional staff, with the aim of providing a comprehensive and fun programme to assist the children and their parents in dealing with their illnesses. Within weeks of Paul's Africa visit, the decision to start a similar programme in Botswana was reached, targeted at disadvantaged children living around the fringes of the Okavango. Educators were appointed from the USA and from staff in our Botswana camps; the staff was trained and the children were selected. The aim in this Botswana programme was to bring underprivileged children from the rural areas surrounding the Okavango Delta to our camps and provide them with the opportunity to learn more about the wildlife on their doorstep and also to help teach them new life skills. A diverse week-long programme was set up combining wildlife conservation, environmental awareness, the arts, health and education. The project meant that we had to block off one of our camps for much of December 2001 and January The goal was to host 120 children within the Okavango Delta in the pilot year. The programme was divided into five 7-day groups, each hosting 24 children between 12 and 18 years old. The children were selected from the most disadvantaged schools from the most isolated neighbouring communities and were accompanied by their schoolteachers. All the children were flown in aeroplanes for the first time in their lives to Vumbura Camp. They participated in wildlife activities such as game drives, boating and walking safaris; they attended and participated in many diverse lectures including the wildlife they had seen during the day, environmental management, the geography and geology of the Okavango Delta, and the Okavango's importance to their communities and the country. They learnt local arts and crafts. Many painted for the first time and some exceptional talent was uncovered. There was also theatre as well as writing classes and they all participated in team games. The children were shown wildlife videos in the evenings that were a great novelty as most of the children were unfamiliar with television. If the response to this project was measured in acts of children's celebration, then the project can claim to have been hugely successful. With every spontaneous song, wide-eyed report of a camper's first encounter with the area's wildlife, post sport tournament celebrations and peals of hysteria from the pool, staff were reminded that their efforts were successful. The children arrived sceptical and apprehensive and left with tearful goodbyes and requests for more return visits and one more camp song. Many of the children have been inspired to further their studies. One of the groups came from the Maun orphanage. More than half of those children are now back in school with a renewed perspective on life and desire to succeed.

6 6 Wilderness Safaris believes that by exposing the youth of Southern Africa to their wildlife heritage, combined with a positive learning experience, will help to foster a greater understanding and appreciation of wildlife and the environment around them, while also stimulating their self- esteem. They believe that if enough children go through this programme in the coming years, this should hopefully translate into the long-term preservation of these wildlife reserves. The 2002/2003 intake saw more than 350 children being shown the wonders of the Okavango Delta, the desert landscapes of Namibia, Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe and Liwonde National Park in Malawi. Wilderness Safaris intends increasing the number of visiting children to per annum by the year The company now closes off a number of camps in our summer months when the schools have holidays to host the children. The numbers of participants as well as the closure of the camps to achieve this creates an urgent need of funding assistance as Wilderness can't do this all on its own! Perhaps the best example of how successful the programme can be was the results from the Maun orphanage group. Maun is the small town on the edge of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Of the 15 children from the orphanage who participated on the Children in the Wilderness programme last year, not one was attending school. They had all dropped out and were on the streets during the day, seeking shelter in the orphanage at night. Today, after being on the Children in the Wilderness programme, 8 of the 15 children are now back in school! The programme works. We are currently developing a new conservation and education programme with Ned Twining and the Smithsonian Institution (and British Airways) that will provide the foundation and opportunity to give young adults hands on conservation tuition and experience. Conde Naste Magazine in the USA honoured Wilderness Safaris with an unsolicited award as the most enviro friendly travel company in the world in their June 2001 edition that focused on Preserving Paradise. The Children in the Wilderness initiative is the first of its kind in Africa and maybe in the developing world. By taking the Hole in the Wall concept and modifying it to meet Africa s needs, we have created a model that we hope will grow within our own operation and also be copied by other safari companies in Africa and indeed around the world. The key difference between this programme and the Hole in the Wall is that in America they focus on terminally ill children. In Africa, we believe that poverty is equally a disease and we need to fight it with every means that we have at our disposal. By encouraging children to continue with their schooling and to strive for higher things in life, we believe that this initiative can become a major catalyst to ensure that young people uplift themselves and get themselves out of the poverty cycle.

7 7 Okavango Community Trust Name OKAVANGO COMMUNITY TRUST Location Botswana Project Duba Plains, Kaparota, Little Vumbura and Vumbura are part of a successful rural community development programme in the Okavango. Villagers who live to the north of the Okavango have been given this prime area by the government to manage as a wildlife reserve. They have formed the "Okavango Community Trust" to look after the villagers interests in the area and to oversee the flow of funds coming from the camps and the reserve. The communities are now benefiting from substantial cash returns, jobs, skills transfer and significant training, and in turn are preserving the area. We have started secondary businesses in the villages to ensure that the benefits from our operations flow to as many of the villagers as possible. Many of the baskets sold in the camps come from these villages. Many of the vegetables we consume in the camps will be grown here. Some of our guests visit Gombo village on a day trip and these people benefit from these visits. Local shops have been started in the community and inter-village transport infrastructure has been improved. We aim to employ as many of these people as we can in our other camps in other parts of Botswana.

8 8 GUIDE & MANAGEMENT TRAINING Name TRAINING Location Botswana Project Training is an important part of the Wilderness Safaris operation and we take it extremely seriously. We have one of the finest guide and management training programmes in Africa, where our commitment is to take local rural people and teach them the skills to be amongst the best guides and tourism managers in Africa. We are already beginning to see results, as guides in Botswana are rapidly progressing from being the worst in Africa a mere ten or fifteen years ago to being amongst the best! This guide and management training programme is entirely self-funded and takes up huge amounts of time and money, coupled with enormous inputs and energy from our dedicated guides, naturalists and managers who share their knowledge with the next generation of staff. The programme takes place at Kaparota Camp in the Okavango, Botswana, which is closed off from November to March each year and used exclusively for training our guides and managers during this period. Each course runs intensively for ten days for ten guides at a time. After that period, they go back into the field to study further. Over time, once they have passed through Level 1, they return for further courses and training and gradually rise through the ranks. Brian Worsley, one of the top guides in Zimbabwe, has evaluated the courses and has stated that this is one of the best guide training courses he has seen.

9 9 Botswana Rhino Re-Introduction Name Rhino Re-Introduction Location Botswana Project Part of their Mombo management plan includes rhino re-introduction. Hunters and poachers eliminated rhino in Botswana in the late 1800s and nearly again in the early 1980 s when Botswana lacked meaningful wildlife controls. This has all changed and the country has Africa s most effective antipoaching program. Botswana s Department of Wildlife and National Parks are currently working with our staff to re-introduce rhino into the Moremi Game Reserve. Mombo s isolation and excellent grazing conditions make it the perfect place for this project. However, rhino are expensive! The first 5 white rhino are now running free and wild in the Okavango and a lot more are on their way thanks to a rhino for roan antelope exchange program currently on the go between Botswana and South Africa s National Park departments The WildlifeCampus Game Ranging and Wildlife Management Courses both contain vast amounts of information on the Capture, Translocation and Re-introduction of game.

10 10 ECO-FRIENDLY SYSTEMS Going back in their history, Wilderness were one of the first safari companies to install eco-friendly systems in their camps, long before it became fashionable or law. These systems helped to ensure that the camps would have as little negative impact on the environment as possible. Solar hot water systems for heating hot water; solar lighting; Calcemite tanks for safe sewage processing; can crushers; trucking or flying rubbish out of the camps to towns for safe disposal - all these were some of the practices we were among the first to voluntarily install in our camps, often at considerable cost to ourselves.

11 11 Definition of Ecotourism The following extract is from the WildlifeCampus Game Ranging Course Component on the Introduction to Ecotourism. It is included here to re-define this special term. Although touted as a new term, it was in fact first coined by Hector Sevelos Loscorane in the early 1960 s. Now, ecotourism has became a buzz-word of the tourism industry in the 1990 s, as people become more environmentally aware. As a result of inaccurate definitions of what ecotourism means, and what responsibilities are required of those that are involved in the industry, the industry (and the concept) runs the risk of losing credibility. This is mostly the result of profit-seeking organisations cashing in on the new acceptance of ecotourism by the public and using the environment of tourism destinations in a non-sustainable way. The term ecotourism has been used interchangeably with a host of other terms, not all of which accurately reflect its true meaning. Ecotourism has variously been described as a product, a destination and as an experience, and has also been used to reduce the feelings of guilt associated with some forms of tourism and travel. Words and phrases such as environmentally sensitive, quality, green, responsible, low impact, ecologically or environmentally responsible, nature based, appropriate, alternative, soft, environmentally friendly and others have all been used (often incorrectly) to promote the image of travel companies and of their products (Hattingh 1994). It is impossible to define accurately what ecotourism is, but it generally refers to: Any aspirational form of tourism which simultaneously conveys value to natural resources, resident communities in visited destinations and the visitors themselves without any of the negative and damaging implications inevitably associated with poorly managed mass tourism. (Bennett) In order to determine more accurately what may be classified as ecotourism and what is simply tourism with an eco flavour, various definitions have been applied The Ecotourism Society defines it thus: It includes purposeful travel to natural areas to understand the cultural and natural history of the environment taking care not to alter the integrity of the ecosystem while producing economic opportunities that make conservation of natural resources beneficial to local people. The University of Pretoria Centre for Ecotourism defines it as: An enlightening participatory travel experience in environments natural or cultural or both that contributes to the conserving of these environments by generating sustainable economic opportunities of direct benefit to the local people and maximises use of environmentally sound infrastructure. In light of how the term is used, those who have completed the WildlifeCampus Ecology Modules will remember that eco was derived from the Greek work Oikos meaning home or place where you live. How much meaning does the term ecotourism have now?