Conservationista - Article 1 for The WOMA scholarship

Bianca Botha with the girls from a small village during an outreach 

Conservationîsta

She wakes up an hour before sunrise, straps on her boots and a warm jacket to shield her from the icy winter wind of these early mornings. She loads the cruiser and trailer with bails of blue buffalo grass and sleeves of lusern. She’s off to feed the buffalo, sable, kudu, giraffe and all the other species on the ranch. After feeding as the sun begins to rise she drives patrol around the farm to check the water points and for signs of poachers. Not a week ago two more rhino were slaughtered on her ranch and in the fight she had wounded one of the culprits with a perfect shot to the right leg. He was captured but his accomplices managed to escape and will no doubt return for the last few rhino remaining. She will not let them get her rhinos, which are akin to her own children on this ranch where she faces the elements and dangers of rural living daily, alone.

When a ranch, game farm, conservationist or ranger is mentioned in conversation, the first image in the mind is a strong burly man in Khaki wrestling a lion or driving his land cruiser or walking around with his big gun on a hike or hunting safari. This view has made it very difficult for women to break through in the industry, even though they have always been there. There has recently been a rise in the amount of women taking on careers on ranches and game reserves. Not as the general admin or hospitality positions as is often thought, but as Ranch and Reserve managers. They work down in the dirt with the rest of their crew. Darting and catching game, wrestling them to the ground to ensure safe capture and that they do not injure themselves. They ensure game populations do not exceed the carrying capacity of available land by taking hunters out on hunting safaris. They are mechanics, builders, game wardens, anti poaching team members, skilled in archery and shooting with rifles, they are professional hunters and outfitters, they are the women in conservation, they are Conservationistas.

Elmarie and Ansomie Minnaar of Hunters-Rock Safaris and outfitters, 

a mother and daughter dream team

Conservation is a career path that fills every niche. There are admin workers, farmers, hunters, vets, ecologists, biologists and the list goes on. Women fit into this career like a cold hand into a glove. They have compassion, caring, stamina, strong wills and work just as hard as any man. Most importantly women can multitask, making caring for clients and all other hospitality duties a breeze to fit into the odd hours of taking clients out for a hunt and entertaining them between shifts.

Many of these women may not even consider themselves to be conservationists but their jobs play a vital role in the conservation of African wildlife and the environment as a whole.

An African rock python removed from one of the Lodge venues

A struggle to get the python out of the pipe
in which in sought to escape capture

Working in the bush of Africa is no joke and you are always faced with challenges. When clients arrive there may be a snake in the room and you will need to remove it, using the opportunity to educate your guests about venomous snakes etc, or you may have poachers; which are always heavily armed, usually with AK47s used to kill rhino and elephant, at which your workplace becomes a warzone and you and your team the meagre defending force facing life or death. The women on the ranches in Africa fill these positions gladly and love every minute of what they do.

An important part of conservation is working with the community around you. Many ranches employ the rural people on their farms in a way to discourage poaching and educate them on the importance of protecting the wildlife in the area. 

A hunted wildebeest is recovered after tracking in the dark

Other ranches will do outreach, providing the rural homesteads and villages with meat from hunts or basics such as milliemeal and toiletries bought with profits from hunts. This encourages the villagers to report persons they suspect of poaching or any news of planned farm attacks.

 The female ranch managers have great success in these projects because they are viewed as caretakers by the villagers. This does however pose some problems as well. When wanting to distribute meat or supplies to the villagers one must often first talk to the chief, who due to their cultural beliefs, do not talk to women. You also need to be careful when entering their villages, as looking a man in the eye, wearing pants, or not having your head covered may be a great disrespect depending on their culture.

Being a woman in this industry is not easy. You are often looked down upon, denied a promotion or raise or even laughed off at a job interview as you are not taken seriously, regardless of your qualifications or experience. There are a few of us however, who are just as stubborn as any man and stick it through, fight the fight and earn the respect we deserve. We excel and show the world that a game ranch is just as much a woman’s place as a mans. 

Bianca supports the head of an impala ewe
which has been darted for translocation,
Butch (Jack Russel) keeping an eye on her vitals. 

South Africa now has its first all female Anti-poaching squad, the Black Mambas, whose exclusive duty is to patrol and protect the rhinos and elephants on specific reserves in the Limpopo province. From the establishment of this team the presence of snares and attempted poaching has decreased significantly more than any of the previous projects. These women are unarmed spending their time in the reserves alongside all the wild animals and taking their skills and experience to the schools and communities around them, fighting the war on poaching through monitoring, community building and education.

Women play a vital role in the preservation of the African environment. You need only look at the growth in awareness campaigns for STEM with the hash tag #womeninscience and the history of great female scientists, conservation biologists and film makers to see how important women are in conservation and how great the need is or their work to be recognised.

A young Vervet monkey rescued from being a pet
is cared for to regain strength before being taken
to the Vervet rehabilitation centre.

There are the greats; Joyce Poole, Terri Irwin, Rachel Carson and of course Jane Goodall who we all know so well and praise their work and books and films, however, we must not forget the work of the ladies on the ground in Africa. Their names are not known and their faces are not on newspapers or in scientific journals, but they put food in the mouths of hundreds of people in the villages around their farms, they employ and train thousands more to uplift the community and protect the environment, and they put themselves in the frontlines to save the animals they care for 24 hours a day 365 days a year.

Bianca and Jan, the rescued vervet monkey.

Women in conservation, the hunters and outfitters, the lodge managers, the farm labourers and so on may not be the first thing one thinks about when conservation is a topic of discussion, but they are the women from all cultures, ages and backgrounds, the mortar that holds the entire industry together and key element to successful conservation.

[ This is the full article of the article Published on 19 April 2018 by The WOMA. I would like to thank The WOMA and the wonderful women working there for the amazing opportunity they have given me as the scholarship recipient for 2017. Please visit and support this wonderful community of women here: The WOMA . See also the link to my article as published in the links below. ]

Please follow me on twitter and Instagram via the links below to see the world from my perspective, with a foot in the door.

https://twitter.com/BiancaBothab211

https://www.instagram.com/aconservationistsjourney/

Read my scholarship articles for The WOMA at the links below:

The WOMA Scholarship : Conservationista by Bianca Botha



To visit or donate to my crowdfunding page please follow the link below! Thank you for your support!

US, UK and South Africa: 

Back-a-Buddy Conservation study fund

Project Clean Up part one

The three R's, one of the most important principles in today's commercialised and convenience driven life, Reduce, reuse and recycle!

In recent years the "Go Green" movement has taken the world by storm, celebrities everywhere are promoting green living, sustainable energy and everything that comes with it. All this via the glitz and glamour of the silver screen, social media and very publicised platforms. Its not often you'd catch one of the top speakers for this movement knee deep in in the very problem they are talking about, much less if there are no cameras involved.

They spew "facts" and data and scientific findings, all which are great and need to be shared, but have they ever been on the ground, seen with their own eyes and helped with their own hands to do anything about it. Yes the argument can be made that they have changed their lifestyles and influenced others to follow suite, that they have donated or raised large amounts of much needed funding towards these "save the world" causes, but it that enough?

At least they are talking about it, right?

Let's get into the nitty gritty of it, what things are really like in the depths of 3rd world Africa where the "Go Green" funding and silver tongues from foreign lands don't reach, of have very much effect.

First we need to understand where and why the problem comes from, the causes are many. Africa is a continent ripe with scars and history of colonisation by countries all over the world. Netherlands, England, Spain, France and many others all sent their ships over the years to claim and colonise land in Africa. This resulted in the rich and sometimes confused cultures which have developed over time. Cultures which to this day still believe in the traditions of old, which are as alive today as they were in the 1600's, and also flourish with new beliefs and traditions as influenced by the relative country of colonisation of a specific area. The people have merged, creating the need for a completely new method of communication to convey messages about global warming, recycling etc. In these cultures you find groups who do not believe in today's education, and refuse to educate their children in "Western" schools, believing in having many uneducated children, so if one or more were to die there would always be some left to care for them in their old age, rather than having one well educated child who would be able to care for them for a much longer period of time. Yet all these same people will have the latest smartphones, Dstv, laptops at their disposal. The difficulty in Africa, is the African mindset, the biggest communication barrier faced by educators and conservationists on a daily basis, making it extremely difficult to get the message across about why conservation, anti-poaching and RECYCLING are so vitally important.

The next most prominent cause is the poor developed social understanding or acceptance of the need to reduce, reuse and recycle. This world has become consumed in a lifestyle of ease and accessibility, cheap foods, cheap products all available as easily as possible and kept cheap with cheap packaging. Non recyclable, toxic and non biodegradable packaging. In a world filled with "want want want" and "need need need" no time is given for the consumer to contemplate the repercussions of this 1 second decision they have been so colourfully led to with song and dance on the silver screen.

Beautiful women caressing an ice-cream with their tongues and giving full visual explanation of what to do with said ice-cream yet it's never shown what is done with the wrapper. The human condition is bent and shaped by big companies who just want to sell sell sell and manipulate the people with their instinctive needs of sexual gratification, and need for food to create a super product that seemingly satisfies all needs and shows absolute disregard to the reality of the world we actually live in in which ice-creams do not come attached to a nearly naked woman but are in fact wrapped in a tiny piece of seemingly insignificant plastic which is flung out the car window as the consumer searches for his creamy lady on a stick. No lady to be found. The wrapper, however, is found. Countless animals not only dying due to the ingestion of plastic and non recyclables but suffering. Not only the animals but the earth as well. Rivers choking on waste dumped down their banks, oceans smothered in plastic, suffocating each and every living organism under the surface.

So it's clear to see how through media and commercialisation, partnered with the "Hollywood" idealisation and 3rd world uneducated reality creates quite a significant problem in the attempt to fight pollution and waste dumping in Africa. 

As conservationists we do what we can to curb this problem. To educate, to clean, to reduce, reuse and recycle what we can in and with our local communities. We try to show them that there is money to be made from recycling, often the best way to get them to start, but the effort in collecting becomes too much for some and they soon give up. Its a never ending cycle, educate the people, get then excited and incentivised to start, try keep them going, once they've given up, group the next lot and do it all again.

Two years ago, we started project clean up at Nimeng. This was a project where myself and the rangers divided the land up into a number of zones and over the next three months would move through these sections and remove any and all waste from the ranch.

Please follow me on twitter and Instagram via the links below to see the world from my perspective, with a foot in the door.

https://twitter.com/BiancaBothab211

https://www.instagram.com/bothab211/?hl=en

Read my scholarship articles for The WOMA at the links below:

The WOMA Scholarship : Conservationista by Bianca Botha

To visit or donate to my crowdfunding page please follow the link below! Thank you for your support!

US, UK and South Africa: 

Back-a-Buddy Conservation study fund

Hyena Diaries: part one continued

"I would sort out the details with my employer later, I just wanted to get this animal offloaded and out of the trap as soon as possible." I told my friend yes! I urged him to get to the farm as soon as possible and we sorted out the arrangements. I would wait for him at the main entrance gate to our Trekpad property and lead him in as fast as possible to the drop off zone I had identified.

In previous months I had walked extensively through the range doing road mapping and marking. In this time I was able to keep an eye on the leopard and hyena activity in the area. From this I had identified at least one resident male brown hyena and knew exactly where his regular feeding areas and den were located, giving me somewhat of an idea as to where his territory is. A brown hyena does well in sub Saharan, dessert like areas so the foot of the hill, with a good amount of brush looked like the ideal drop off zone.

I drove ahead on the ATV leading the capture team into the bush. With the road recently opened I was happy to see they had come with 4x4 vehicles, as they may need them over the rocky and through the deep sand terrain. On the way to the drop off point, through the meandering shrub and trees I noticed our resident hyenas' tracks in the road; he has been expanding his territory.

We reach the drop off point and I motion for the truck to be parked with the rear end towards the foot of the hill, the others vehicles to pull of and park in-front of it. We begin to remove the sheets of canvas used to cover the cage and keep the animal calm during transit and are able to get a glimpse of her. A young brown hyena female, which we have decided to name Roxy, sulking in the front corner of the cage.

We all move to the front of the vehicle and the capture team ready themselves on top of the cage. The sliding door is lifted, she bolts out of the cage and runs directly for the cover of the shrub at the foot of the hill. She runs, winding through trees and bush searching for cover where she believes we would not be able to capture her again. She had been in the cage for almost 20 hours where she had been captured on a neighbouring farm in one of the breeding camps. About 5min and 100m from us, she crosses the previous nights path of the resident male, picking up his scent from the pastings he had left. She was not distressed. The scent trail had distracted her from us and we watched as she followed his trail down the open road. This was a good sign.

As we left we took a route to the opposite direction, not wanting to disturb her in her efforts to locate the male or possibly find a den of her own. We discussed with hopeful spirits that she and the male may cross paths one night and mate. It would be a wonderful, however small, success in the attempt at saving the critically endangered Brown hyena.

For more information on the well being of and future of this hyena, please read future entries of Hyena Diaries on my blog, where I will be posting about the tracking and research we will be doing.

Please follow me on twitter and Instagram via the links below to see the world from my perspective, with a foot in the door.

https://twitter.com/BiancaBothab211

https://www.instagram.com/aconservationistsjourney/

Read my scholarship articles for The WOMA at the links below:

The WOMA Scholarship : Conservationista by Bianca Botha

To visit or donate to my crowdfunding page please follow the link below! Thank you for your support!

US, UK and South Africa: 

Back-a-Buddy Conservation study fund

The Struggle

Around the age of 10 I had visited an Outdoor expo, this was where I would meet the wonderful students from the Technical University of Pretoria and decide that this is where I would like to go to university and obtain my degree in Nature Conservation. Each year around 200 students walk into the university to start their Conservation careers, only about 20 to 60 graduate.

The reasons for the dramatic drop in numbers are many so I will only name the most prevalent. Firstly the lack of understanding of what Conservation is. Many first year students walk into their first classes thinking they are going to walk around a ranch or reserve ( if they know the difference ) with a rifle of some-sort shooting poachers, or working with animals in enclosures; petting cheetahs and riding elephants. That is not the focus of conservation, only a small part of it, for which you do not necessarily require a degree. Once the students realise this they drop out, following a different career path entirely or finding some other way to enter the industry for example The Field Guide Association of South Africa (FGASA) or similar courses. Secondly is the coarse material itself. Conservation flows over into many arenas, many conservationists fulfil their careers sitting in an office and never spending a day in he field, however, to reach this point you are still required to complete the coarse and all the scientific subjects it entails. This proves difficult for some students and again they drop out. Last but not least, in fact this may be the most prevalent reason of all, is finances. Going to a tertiary education institution of any sort is already difficult enough, and this is true for many countries throughout the world, but in Africa it is made so much more challenging due to the corruption, protests and discrimination the youth face today. Student loans are not only exorbitant to pay back but are increasingly difficult to obtain. For a conservation student this is an even bigger problem as the general salary a conservationist could expect to receive at entry level (and even into management positions) would be barely above the bread lines and most certainly not enough to repay the monthly instalments.

Finances has always been a big issue in conservation. One only needs to look at the amount of foundations and conservation funds that exist to understand that there is very little money going from the country's coffers to the aid of conservation and research. Many projects spend years lobbying to foreign investors in hope of finding a compassionate soul with deep pockets who doesn't mind throwing their loose change to the critically important research and work conservationists are doing. 

Conservationists never worry about money when it is for themselves, many conservationists do the work they do voluntarily, they live in small rural communities with the people they are helping and feed themselves and community members off the small vegetable gardens the grow, help communities raise money by collecting and recycling any and all recyclable materials, they get communities involved in assisting landowners in the fight against poaching and the landowners reward them with small amounts of money or food. When a conservationist does worry about money, it is about their projects. In order for us to be able to see the dramatic drop in Leopard numbers in the Soutpansberg, a conservationist or related professional needed to do the research. This research requires years of hard work, tracking collars, darting expeditions, trapping cameras and so much more, which all require money. Money is the only way this research can come to life and we can do what is needed to determine what is happening to the species around us and what we can do about it. Without the finances for this research to continue, these animals would all go extinct.

The struggle is real. Yet conservationists will always find a way to get done what is needed. It would simply be so much easier with the support of local governments, to have them recognise the need for and importance of this research and work. 

Education is the key, the world needs to be told about environmental issues and each country must make a point of it to have finances available for conservation work and research.

Please follow me on twitter and Instagram via the links below to see the world from my perspective, with a foot in the door.

https://twitter.com/BiancaBothab211

https://www.instagram.com/aconservationistsjourney/

Read my scholarship articles for The WOMA at the links below:

The WOMA Scholarship : Conservationista by Bianca Botha

To visit or donate to my crowdfunding page please follow the link below! Thank you for your support!

US, UK and South Africa: 

Back-a-Buddy Conservation study fund