Beyond the Safari: Guiding a Starling Journey to South Africa

Last month I joined Jeffrey Van Daele to guide a STARLING trip into South Africa, to the infamous Zimanga private game reserve. Those last three words mean that the land is privately owned, and that ecotourism (not hunting) is the purpose of the reserve.

Tucked away in the heart of KwaZulu-Natal, Zimanga Game Reserve is a 7000ha (70km2) private property, managed and designed with photographers in mind. It is characterised by a variety of habitats within its borders, ranging from forest to grassland, as well as the Mkuze River that traverses across the reserve. What really makes Zimanga stand out though is its intricate network of specially-designed photographic hides which offer diurnal and nocturnal photographic opportunities. In addition to the hides, vehicle safaris at Zimanga also provide special possibilities for wildlife photography. The reserve is home to more than 80 species of mammals including those which are synonymous with the great African continent including lion, leopard, hyena, elephant, white rhino, zebra, hippo, wildebeest, buffalo and cheetah.

But after a long flight from Brussels to Durban, and before the drive to Zimanga, we made a stop in St Lucia to visit its lagoon.

A few hours later we were at the gate of zimanga. Where the trip really started.
The goal was to use wide angle lenses as much as possible in the night hides, and spend time with elephants, rhino's and big cats.

I was keen on guiding together with Jeffrey. He is different from me. He is an artist, a true photographer.
During this trip I learnt the hard way that people like me... want to understand and see nature. We want to show the foodweb, the ecosystem and that sometimes means we look very hard for a rare species, to then take an ordinary picture of it. A picture taken with good equipment, meaning a good bokeh, and with often good lighting sure... But that does not mean a good picture. Will a non-wildlife photographer like your image? That is the question to ask.

Jeffrey only thinks about photography as an art, and he -rightly so- pointed out that a lot of wildlife photography is documenting, not photographing. The people that join his trips are fully onboard with his philosophy, and think long and hard about images.

Years ago, the owners of Zimanga contact none other than Bence Mate to build hides, just like the ones he had created in Hungary. And O boy are these crazy. Perfect composition of subjects in front of the hide, and all creature comforts inside the hide. In some hides you have wifi, food, beds, outside lighting etc.

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And on the advice of Jeffrey I also tried to photograph reflections of the diving kingfisher in the water. 1000 images later, I had one dreamy image:

Next up were the infamous Elephant and rhino night hides. A little pond is filled daily for the animals to come a drink and usually you have activity all night long. This year, just like the three previous years, it has been unusually wet weather. That meant many puddles everywhere and less necessity for wildlife to visit the hides.

Nonetheless we had crazy moments with elephants just 2m away. Where you really have to look at the sky to see its face. What an experience.

But then it was time for the big boyz:

Zimanga has been very involved in breeding and protecting white rhinos and it was very interesting to speak to the rangers about the protection of this species. Rhino poaching is a never ending problem and many different measures are taken to protect the rhinos. 24/7 anti poaching armed patrol is one thing, proactively cutting of horns which grow back in a few years, is another. Because of all their work, no rhinos have been poached in Zimanga since many years. The White rhino story proves that when biologists, conservationists, governments and land owners get together, they can protect a species of which the horn is worth more than €60.000/kg on the black market. The southern White rhino, that is.

The northern white rhino on the other hand, used to occur in middle Africa and went extinct due to a combination of severe human-led pressures, primarily intense poaching for its horn, which was exacerbated by political instability and civil wars in its native range. Habitat loss from agricultural expansion and human settlement further reduced populations, ultimately leading to the death of the last known male in 2018 and leaving only two infertile females, meaning the species is now considered functionally extinct in the wild. 
Let's make sure the remaining white rhinos don't suffer the same fate!!

The last hide we visited was the vulture hide, where carrion is put daily, attracting a few dozen white backed vultures.

If you love the hides, you spend more time in the hides, but Safari's are also always an option.
In Zimanga there are no more than a handful people a day doing Safari, which means the quality of the experience is usually higher than what you can experience in many of the (mainstream) big parks. Meaning: too many people.
And the subsequently chasing of animals, in order for people to take a crappy smartphone picture.

The rangers will ask what you want to focus on: Elephants, Rhino's, birds, Lions, (dung beetles) or Cheetahs. Some animals can be remotely tracked, this helps off course to find them, but it also helps for example when you want to spend time with the cheetahs. Rangers will let you approach them on foot if they know that the lion prides are elsewhere in the reserve. And that completely changes the game: laying on your belly to get very different angles.

Rangers even think about lighting and they will advise activities in certain areas of the reserve when the lighting is in a certain way (eg backlit animals on a ridge, diving kingfishers in highkey etc.).

One off the bittersweet lessons we learned is that Southern africa has managed to halt ivory poaching and protect its elephants. Hooray, we all say. Southern Africa now even has "too many" elephants. Kruger has 31.000 elephants, with an estimated carrying capacity of 7000. Botswana now has 130.000 elephants! In contrast to Northern and middle African countries that lost or are losing their elephants. That means overgrazing as a result of overpopulation, and big changes in vegetation. You can visually see different vegetations in areas without elephants.
In general, Africa lost 90% of its forest elephants and 70% of its Savannah elephants.

Surely the southern surplus can help the middle and Northern African countries help rebounce their dwindling populations?
I learned that the answer is a hard NO.

Moving one single elephant to a nearby park costs 50.000euro and takes 20 people plus a helicopter. And you would need to move entire herds, to maintain their complex social structures. Moving herds across Africa simply is not possible. The only thing we can try, is to create large corridors for Elephants to move North across the continent. In addition to solving the problems in those countries that extirpated them in the first place.

Conclusion: It is all about creating better conserved landscapes as well as more balanced engagement with local communities...
ie.: solve the people problems and you will solve the wildlife problems

Now, for some long teeth:

The most unique experience next to wide angle elephants, was spending many hours with cheetahs. We followed two brothers during two days and the relationship between them was very interesting. The rangers had been following these for a long time, so they got to know the individual character of these animals. I had only seen cheetahs in Botswana, and I was surprised with how big they are if you are close to them on the ground.

Rangers would start by checking the positions of the lion prides in the reserve. If they are far enough, you are allowed to approach and photograph the cheetahs on foot.

For me the most interesting lesson on ecology I learned this trip, relates to... The fence.

Fencing parks in Africa presents a classic dilemma, and the benefits and drawbacks often depend heavily on the specific location, the type of fence, and how it's managed. I see it as a scale from 1 to 10.
1 being a tiny area where animals are released but can't ever create a healthy population (eg. small hunting parks). 10 being the Masai Mara: Huge and wild. No human help needed.
Even Kruger, the largest park in South Africa, has fenced parts.

Upsides of fencing: Less human conflict with animals ranging outside the park (where carnivores are often poisoned), Protection against intruding poachers, Conservation (rare species breeding programs), disease control, and also... the protection of an investment in a safari reserve. This requires more explanation: You can see large land owners willing to wager and stop farming to turn their large private area into a wildlife reserve. This is followed by spending enormous capital to receive visitors on the one hand, and introduce large mammals on the other hand.
People want to protect that investment by putting up a fence.

Downsides of fencing: Disruption of migration, possible genetic isolation, cost of placing and maintenance.

Zimanga has dozens of people of staff just to manage the Reserve. This includes plant diversity, bird lagoons, herbivores and carnivores as well as looking after the genetic health of large mammals that can not migrate anymore. This takes a lot of work. Don't forget: animal species that don't have a founder population of 20-30 diverse genetic specimens, can never establish healthy populations. They need human management.

Does this mean that these fenced parks cannot be valuable for nature? Of course not... For plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals and even many larger mammals that jump or dig (leopard, hyena, wild dog)... the fences don't stop their distribution. So Yes, these areas are very valuable for nature.
I think that in many ways, these fences are a necessity if you want to restore nature outside of the large parks. In an ideal scenario, those fences can later be removed (eg. Kruger).
The paradox that I learnt is that in difficult places (for a multiple of possible causes) a fenced park is more than often the only viable solution. But it takes a lot of money to create a fenced private game reserve. Yet places like Zimanga have proven that large areas (7000ha) can be turned into nature reserves and support the lives of dozens of employees and their families. As well as doing their part in preserving rare species like Rhino and Cheetah. The benefits just come at the cost of a continuous relocating of animals in order to preserve genetic diversity. A biologist in Botswana once told me that thanks to these relocation projects, Africa has three times more cheetahs than it could have in the large parks only. So with a world population of only 6500 adults, maybe cheetah conservation even needs fenced parks, in addition to the large "free roaming" parks. In South Africa, 1000 of the 1300 cheetahs live in fenced parks. Something to think about.

Projections from the UN show Africa's population, currently over 1.4 billion, will reach about 2.5 billion by 2050 and potentially over 3.2 billion by 2070.
This means even more extinction and decreasing wildlife populations. Time will tell whether fenced parks, combined with alternatives focusing on landscape-level conservation and community engagement, will halt human-wildlife conflict and poaching in that ever changing continent. I honestly believe that the knowledge of South African land and reserve owners, can be vital for bringing back elephants and rhinos in other parts of Africa.

I don't want to end this trip report on a political note. I want to return to the images, and to Jeffrey his ideology.
He is the only photographer I know that shoots everything in Black-and-white. Meaning, his viewfinder does not show colours. He wants to see the view in its essence, and solely based on composition. He told me several times this trip, focus on the Black-and-white... so I did:

Big thanks to Billy, and to Jeffrey. Also big thanks to a super motivated and knowledgeable group of passionate photographers.
A super nice group of participants!
Zimanga, we will return!!