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Conserving and Expanding Habitats
By: Colin Bell
It was one of those pivotal moments in life. We were far away from civilization, gazing into the camp fire, stars blazing overhead, with hippos snorting and lions roaring in the background.
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Dereck and Beverly Joubert and I were on our annual canoeing safari along the Zambezi River when we conclude that the time spent lamenting the sorry state of the planet was over. The moment had come to roll up our sleeves, change our direction and to create a new conservation business whose sole purpose would be to address environmental crises that plague our planet. Approaching fifty years old was significant, as one has less time ahead than behind and that we had one last chance to make a real difference. Despite incorporating conservation into our respective professions and lives, and in spite of all the ongoing donor driven conservation projects, the planet was on a steady ecological downward spiral. Something drastic needed to be done.
That was five years ago and the fifty milestone has come and gone. I retired from Wilderness Safaris, the safari company that I had co-founded in the early ‘80s and in early 2006 started afresh. Great Plains Conservation, our new company, would create role-model conservation projects throughout Africa, the Indian Ocean and India. My partners at Great Plains are Paul Harris, owner of Ellerman House in Cape Town, Mark Read, Chairman of WWF in South Africa and a member of the WWF’s international board as well as Dereck and Beverly Joubert, five time Emmy award winning Botswana-based film-makers working primarily for National Geographic.
Just fifty years ago there were 450,000 lions in Africa, and now the number is down to just 20,000; tropical rainforests around the world are under siege; over 80% of ocean fish stocks are already depleted; tiger numbers are plummeting with just a little over 1000 tigers left in all of India – and most disturbing is the ever increasing population and poverty levels with associated pressures building up around Africa’s finest parks and wildernesses - with seemingly no solutions in site. At Great Plains Conservation we drew from all our collective experiences, both the successes and the failures, to invent radical new business models that can reverse these negative trends. We believe that you can throw as much donor money at a problem, but there will be limited successes unless a sustainable and caring business model ultimately drives the process. Great Plains’ sole aim is to create these sustainable, nurturing business models. Low volume / low impact / high quality tourism; carbon; bush homes and villa sales are some of the business tools that we use to make these projects sustainable. Most importantly, we partner directly with entire rural communities at family and individual level wherever possible and bring these people directly into our businesses so that the poorest rural inhabitants tangibly benefit from increasing wildlife numbers and wildernesses.
All our projects have sensational highest-quality luxury accommodation, each camp is unique. Permanent tents, designed and decorated by Beverly and Dereck Joubert have full bathrooms with freestanding copper tubs, Robb Report-type linens and 24-hour electricity, mostly produced by solar power. At Zarafa Camp in Botswana we have pioneered systems that have successfully and seamlessly integrated extreme green and absolute luxury. Every aspect of Zarafa is totally sustainable, yet, Zarafa is possibly the most luxurious tented camp in Africa. Zarafa’s 'oilfield' is its on-site solar farm with over 150 solar panels that provides the electricity 24/7 to power everything that a high end establishment needs - from refrigerated cold rooms, ice making machines deep-freezers, all the appliances that are needed in a luxury lodge and even hairdryers. In Botswana, used cooking oil, collected from fast food restaurants around the country, is recycled to fuel our 4x4 safari vehicles. Ultra-healthy food, inspired by Beverly Joubert, is available when and where you want. Depending on the camp, you can trek by canoe, mountain bike, by boat, on foot, on horseback or, of course, in 4x4 vehicles. There is no routine either and its all fully inclusive. All drinks and meals, all laundry, all camp activities are included in the tariff. All our people are highly adaptable, and are as passionate as we are: I remain a devout believer in finding the right people and fitting the business role around them. Mavericks are often the ultimate camp characters. As one of our partners Anton states “we are taking safaris back out of the hands of hoteliers into the arms of adventurous men and women, back to the days when it was about discovery and a passion for the creatures and the beauty that surrounds the camp”
In Botswana, the 320,000-acre Selinda Reserve is where our flagship camp Zarafa is located. In the entire Selinda Reserve, there are only a total of 16 guest rooms in three small, intimate camps– a staggering 20,000 acres per room. The 8-roomed Selinda Camp and our three night Selinda Canoeing Trail round off the Selinda Reserve’s operation.
In Tanzania, our Lukula Camp in the southern section of the Selous
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Game Reserve is sold not by bed, tent or camp but by the entire reserve. One group at a time books out the entire 300,000 acre reserve for their group, be they two people or a maximum of eight. This means you and up to eight companions get everything, including a staff of 20 and any activity you want – game drives, night drives, canoeing, walks, portered safaris. This camp honors the great FC Selous DSO 1851-1917, friend of Teddy Roosevelt who inspired Rider Haggard's Allan Quartermain. Today, the Lukula operation pays the hunting quota for the area, yet not one animal is shot (nor is any animal shot in any Great Plains organization).
In Kenya there are two prime camps, both deliberately away from mini-bus masses – one in the Masai Mara and one in the Kilimanjaro / Amboseli region. The 20-person Ol Donyo Wuas is on a 275,000-acre community-owned ranch looking directly at Mount Kilimanjaro. Ol Donyo Wuas offers magnificent two-bedroomed bush-homes where you can have completely privacy, your own private vehicle, guide and even your own private chef if you so wish. To stop Maasai tribesmen killing lion that have eaten their cattle, our Predator Compensation Scheme pays out cash, the full value of the dead livestock, on around 600,000 acres of land around Ol Donyo Wuas and around Amboseli, halting the lion slaughter in its tracks. The 12-person Mara Plains Camp is in the exclusive Olare Orok Conservancy along the northern boundary of the Masai Mara Reserve offers guests the opportunity to be within the Mara – or to get away from the masses and enjoy the quiet within the conservancy.
I have tremendous faith in Rwanda - and not only because President Paul Kagame is a visionary leader, but because he understands the issues at grass routes level and is proactive. I know of no other President on earth who personally spends one day every month on either community service or sweeping the streets to show the way. As a result of his leadership, Rwanda is one of the cleanest and safest countries in Africa today, with record economic growth levels. Great Plains is in the final planning stages for its six-room lodge at the edge of the mountain gorilla forests, and we are working with the Government on a reforestation project to expand gorilla habitat. To pay for the new forests and related community outreach programmes, Great Plains will shortly start selling their “gold-standard” Silverback Carbon Bonds to companies and individuals around the world who wish to neutralise their carbon footprint.
Great Plains Conservation also owns the Alphonse Island Lodge on the Alphonse and St Francois atolls, 250 miles from Mahé, Seychelles. These atolls offer arguably the best salt water fly-fishing anywhere as well as being a top ten scuba and snorkelling destination. The existing fly-fishing operation already attracts such inveterate fly-fishing enthusiasts as Ross Braun and golf legend Jack Nicklaus but this will be replaced by a small super-retreat designed by Dereck Joubert and Bali-based Canadian John Hardy, a former jewelry designer whose Green School builds using only bamboo, without a nail anywhere. John Hardy’s bamboo principals are being applied to the new Alphonse and its villas, with the aim of creating the world’s premier and most luxurious island destination, built using extreme green design and engineering principals and technologies. Six private villas are to be built here – three are already sold.
Do you know, I am having the most fun of my life - what happened to my so-called retirement?
THE AUTHORColin Bell is CEO of Great Plains Conservation.
His amazing life includes degrees that included economics, geography and geology, which are suitably complemented by 30 years' guiding, management and conservation throughout southern Africa. He is based in Johannesburg and when in town (rarely) and he has a rare evening free he may well be wining and dining at one of South Africa's best-loved, and best restaurants, Le Canard, owned by his good friends Frieda and Robert Appelbaum.
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