The main reason the Joubert's got into filmmaking was to make a difference in conservation, and all the themes of their films reflect that and a deep appreciation of the beauty of wild Africa.

It is my firm belief that what we have learnt since Darwin and Wallace is that islands and the wildlife on them are vulnerable. The smaller the island the more likely an extinction in the future. What we have done in African wildlife management is divide up free ranges and make them into islands of safe zones surrounded by wildlife hostile blocks, be they hunting, ranching, farming or civilization. If any effort at all is to be put into conservation it has to go towards linking these islands again, joining them up and recreating home ranges and natural migration routes. This can't happen without everyone's help, from governments to local communities to the commercial sector. I don't personally think that major donor help should be necessary although some would help initially, but Africa, wild Africa can have a working revenue model as well as any business.? Dereck continues, ? However to insist that wildlife and nature pay for their existence is very shortsighted and assumes that they are somehow the opposition, a renter or customer not an integral part of who we are. We are nature, a part of it not apart from it, and as such everything we do either assists nature or harms it, and by default is either good or bad for us.? Corridors, linked reserves is the future we believe in. (See Patterns in the Grass and Reflections on Elephants.)

GREAT PLAINS - http://www.greatplainsconservation.com

The Jouberts have joined forces with some dynamic and successful partners, Colin Bell, Paul Harris and Mark Read, to create a company that has its basic mission in the words ‘Conservation Tourism”.

Great Plains was formed as a conservation company that uses the lightest footprint tourism to re-establish areas, the iconic places of the world that may just fail without this kind of help. Great Plains looks at each venture as a challenge to enhance a natural habitat or build up wildlife numbers and work with communities. The idea is that without long lasting partnerships between the land, the communities that live on it and commerce, many areas will fail, turn into denuded and poached wastelands.

With a little help from selective tourism, these areas or wildlife populations just get the lift up they need. It's the concept of  ‘conservation tourism” where viable businesses are run but with the whole reason for doing business at all being to serve some conservation need. Serving the needs of the planet is not counter to the needs of a business, indeed it is essential to any business.

This is what we are currently targeting on conservation:

Rwanda: Tropical rain forests and mountain gorillas: This former war torn country is best known for its mountain gorilla population. Today there are only around 700 of these critically endangered animals left in the world.

The deforestation over the last century has compacted the Rwanda range of the mountain gorilla into just 16,000 hectares.  Much of the 16,000 hectares consists of the peaks of extremely high mountains that further reduces the effective habitat for mountain gorillas to about 8,000 to 10,000 hectares. 

Great Plains’ Rwanda project is primarily a reforestation project. Through reclamation and reforestation we aim to provide, in time, more prime gorilla habitat that will allow gorillas more territory to expand into and breed. Our plan is to buy non-productive land on the periphery of the Volcanoes National Park, turn it back to indigenous forests and to donate the land back to the park to enlarge both the park and gorilla habitat. 

The intention is to buy up around 4000 hectares of poorly used subsistence farming land that has no people living on it and effectively increase Rwanda’s prime gorilla habitat by at least 40%.

Seychelles: Fisheries of the world: Many scientists are predicting that there will be few or possibly even no sustainable fisheries anywhere in the tropics within the next 50 years. Over fishing, global warming and human abuse are some of the reasons given for their demise. The aim of this project is to ensure that there will be at least one viable fishery.

Great Plains have targeted the Seychelles and the atolls of St Francois and Alphonse were selected as our first base in the Seychelles. This is a group of two large atolls that lie about 400km south-west of the main island of Mahé. Alphonse was selected for the fisheries project due to its isolation and the extremely deep waters offshore which help to minimise the risks of global warming. 

Great Plains has entered into a contract with a respected NGO, the Island Conservation Society (ICS) ( www.islandconservationsociety.com ). This is a Seychelles based NGO that has its mandate to look after the “outer” islands of the Seychelles.

Four full time conservationists are now working on Alphonse and St Francois for ICS and have started to collect base line data on the island and its fauna and flora, so in the future we can make informed decisions.

Botswana: Stop the hunting: The Selinda Reserve is a 300,000 acre private wildlife sanctuary in the northern part of Botswana. It is centred around the famous Selinda Spillway which snakes its way through the reserve, linking the outer reaches of the Okavango Delta in the west with the Linyanti Swamps in the east - a truly spectacular and unique landscape

When we took over just a few years ago, 80% of the land at Selinda was used for trophy hunting. On our first day of tenure we stopped all the hunting and since have seen a tremendous difference as the wildlife has responded in kind. Elephants sense the change and now calmly drink as you pass by. Lion numbers have increased and in general the whole area seems to now breathe a deep sigh of relief.

Every decision made is one based on how we can be better, how we can enhance natural habitats and be role models in our society by looking after the environment, developing "greener" ways to conduct our business, and respect our communities' culture.

Lions

After quite some time working with lions we understand this much: lions are not as secure in their population numbers as they are in character. Figures jump around with good reason, it is difficult to count lions, however the IUCN Africa Lion Work Group recently published a best estimate of around 25,000 for the whole continent. That isn't very many considering the 500,000 round estimate for elephants. Lobby groups want to hunt more and others wish to exterminate lions from their land. Most people would be uncomfortable living with a pride of lions breathing down their necks each night, so an alliance with the communities most affected by lions is essential.

On the other hand if we have only 25,000 lions, or even the higher figure presented by Chardonnay in his study, these numbers, especially in isolated islands of reserves, make this species vulnerable to many things, poaching, disease and over hunting in particular. We need to be careful about the way we manage our lions. This is, by all best estimates, the least number of lions we have ever had in the world.
The IUCN ALWG has a website, and Dereck is a member.

Elephants

Botswana's elephant population is constantly under fire for being out of control. However if you fly over Botswana you will be astounded if you know this reputation by the lack of elephants! In addition you will be struck by what looks like miles and miles of perfect elephant habitat, and once again I would caution that the media attention on a few hectares along the Chobe River, which in the worst months of the dry season does look over used, the rest of the country is not. In addition elephants can and will move through most of the 17,000 sq km of available land to them. Right now they don't. We don't know the reason why, perhaps this group has grown up along this piece of river and doesn't know the interior, maybe they are perfectly happy living where they are. What we do know is that just fifty years ago the river front of the Chobe River in Botswana was a timber concession with millions of cubic meters of hard wood cut down leaving the riverine forest fairly bare, before the elephants were allowed to make it their un-molested home. The debates rage long and hard. Mostly those who want to see the elephants culled are those who want to benefit from their death.

Poaching

Botswana is a role model for Africa in many ways, military forces trained up as anti poaching units all but exterminated every single vestige of poaching in the country under the leadership of the then Commander, Lt General Ian Khama. For more on this see the film Wildlife Warriors. Today the Department of Wildlife does a good job of managing in as subtle a way as possible and our personal belief is that a hands off management style in a country with as much open range as Botswana has is the wisest range management style one can employ, if it is protected from abuse, poaching and development.

Rhinos

In Wildlife Warriors we followed the soldiers doing their patrols and capture operations, but we also got quite involved in the rhino story where Botswana was in danger of losing all its rhinos to poachers. The last few were taken out and kept in safe houses. Now years later, the poaching under control we have been involved with an effort to bring the rhinos back. So far in a joint venture between the Dept of Wildlife and National Parks, private donors and Wilderness Safaris, 33 black and white rhino have been released again. There are plans for even more and the success of the program is reflected in the recent birth of six calves to the released females, now all roaming wild again.

Education

The future is in the future! Children of course represent that. In Botswana there is a very successful and interesting children's environmental, health and life-skills program that we support. Its is mentored by Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Foundation. Locally here in Botswana the programme is called Bana ba Naga and its the Botswana version of the Children of the Wilderness programme. See www.childreninthewildernesscom. Each year kids are selected from lower income rural families and sent in groups of 24 to one of the Wilderness Safaris camps. The camps are closed off to paying guests and opened to the children who are hosted on a one week curriculum that exposures them to the wild in a very positive and uplifting way. The kids come away with their lives changed, with a new sense of purpose of what life can offer them and with a deeper understanding of what opportunities are available to them if they continue with their schooling. Topics covered during this week include all the environmental issues - but also life skills, nutrition, HIV / Aids, theatre, sports, the arts etc.

Hunting

As much as we can debate this and as sad as it may be, we can no longer stand behind hunting! For years we tolerated it because it seemed like some spiritual journey in itself. Today we have come to the conclusion we should have years ago: hunting is no longer anything like this, It is all about the kill, and sadly now there is no doubt that hunting now falls under the category of recreation (even mentioned as such in official brochures and websites.) We don't believe that it is ethical to enjoy killing animals (or anything) and while it may be acceptable to kill and eat meat, the enjoyment of that process is shameful. Sport hunting, recreational hunting, blood sports are no longer acceptable morally. To any who say that they enjoy hunting for the bushcraft and chase we say that it is easy to find a substitute today for both of those. In a place called Palmwag in Namibia for example (a Wilderness safaris area) Chris Bakas will take you walking up to black rhinos. His challenge to you will be to get close enough to take a photograph, however you will have failed if the rhino detects you, and failed twice if it charges. Now that is a challenge greater than driving up and shooting an elephant the size of the average African dwelling from your vehicle. That deals with the clients, but the guides or professional hunters should know better, many have grown up with the scent of African sage in their noses and understand her songs. But so many things are being done today in the hunting industry under their watch (that we have seen and filmed or photographed) that the words “ethically bankrupt” are applicable here. If there is to be a hunting industry at all in the future there must be a new way of management of the hunters, by the hunters themselves, with full accountability for their actions, as morally disturbing as sanctioned killing of animals for the fun of it is.

Wild Places

The wilderness is a state of mind, but it lives in wild places, and as we are seeing in Linyanti where hunting was stopped and the animals have come back in numbers, and in Selinda where that same process is happening right now, wilderness can be recreated.
At the moment in Selinda we are turning back time and letting the wildlife build up again. There are two lodges there and you can get more information from www.selindareserve.com. In Linyanti Wilderness Safaris runs camps and lodges.