Singita Lebombo

Is it possible for a travel destination to be luxurious, hot (as in magazine-worthy), and sustainable? If anyone proves it, Singita does.

This African-based company has properties that go a long way to show that their hearts and minds are in the right place – they care about where they are and what they are doing. Travel is their business, but a business that has to last and in a country that has to last. Singita Grumeti, in Tanzania, has virtually turned what used to be a virtual wasteland (after years of illegal hunting and poaching) into an Eden. Bordering on the Serengeti, the 350,000 acres now have as good as you’ll get animal-wise (and probably even better than) in the iconic park next-door.

Sabora Tented Camp, Grumeti

Working with the community surrounding Grumeti is as much a part of the day-to-day as it is in Pamushana,  in Zimbabwe. For years now the property, which lies adjacent to the stunning and barely visited Gonarezhou park, has served thousands of meals daily to local children. Singita’s community work dates back to 1998 already. Whether it is buying products locally, supporting a cooking academy for staff (watch the video), or contributing to local schools, the company is doing it.

At the ever-popular Lebombo and Sweni lodges in Kruger Park, South Africa, Singita has tried to emphasize low-impact design, creating stunning rooms made of glass, steel, and reeds, perched singly on a ridge. An ongoing program of monitoring the wildlife and land around Singita’s first lodges, Ebony and Boulders lodges, in Sabi Sand, South Africa, endeavors to keep the much-used park seemingly untouched.

Children at Pamushana

At each of these properties, the work with low-impact design, the community, and the wildlife goes on daily and never ends. And that Singita doesn’t forget.

Kafue River

Certain countries and hotels are repeatedly brought to our attention for the way they train locals, pay for schools, invest in local artists, buy medicine, fund anti-poaching – if it’s not Costa Rica, it’s any number of lodges in Kenya or a resort in Indonesia. But one rather unusual candidate has started popping up in recent months – Zambia.

The Bushcamp Company's Chindeni Camp, South Luangwa

Until a decade ago, Zambia was relatively unknown to travelers looking at Africa as a first-time destination. Its economy small, it didn’t have the resources to fund the kind of international tourism campaigns of South Africa or Tanzania. So it has always come across as an also-ran, second or third choice. Its best national parks, South Luangwa and Lower Zambezi, have also never had the cachet of the Serengeti or the Masai Mara.

Sausage Tree Camp, Lower Zambezi

In a way, though, this off-the-radarness might have contributed to Zambia’s charm today. There are 19 national parks, none of them nearly as crammed with lodges as Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa, with the competition good and yet friendly. The philosophy among operators seems to be less about being cut-throat than about working together towards a common goal. And the goal is to take care of the country without and within.

The SLCS on Patrol

First in a notable series of initiatives is Zambian Horizons, a group of lodges that, despite being competitors, pool their resources to publicize the country. At this year’s Indaba, the huge annual African travel-trade powwow in Durban, South Africa, these camps walked away with most Best Of awards. Working together has worked for them individually.

Inside the country the South Luangwa Conservation Society (SLCS) keeps tabs on conservation at every level. More than a dozen camps and lodges participate, including Flatdogs, Robin Pope Safaris, and Norman Carr Safaris. (See more). Each camp often does its own work too, generating small offshoot projects, and offering trips to local communities or craftspeople. Robin Pope Safaris is a case in point.

The Victoria Falls, Zambia

As in any country with parkland and a burgeoning population nearby clamoring for land, there is a knock-on effect. Animals get poached for commercial reasons, for sustenance, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some get shot for damaging farmers’ crops.

The School Gets New Chairs

By the early ’90’s, the Zambian Wildlife Authority was struggling to tackle the problem of increased poaching. Local tour operators and lodges offered to help ZAWA by providing scouts, whose salaries needed to be paid and who required uniforms, vehicles, and training. For this they carried out fundraising drives. And so was born the Rapid Action Team – better known as Ratz.

Planting New Trees

Over time the lodge operators and the Ratz team realized there was a lot more they could do, especially in terms of the conflict between humans and wildlife, education, and wildlife rescue and rehabilitation. Ratz became the SLCS, and its programs have expanded and flourished. In 2009, it even started a mini-marathon, which drew scouts, police, farmers, schoolchildren, teachers, and members of the Zambian Air Force. At the last event there were more than 300 runners. This year, it launched an Eco Awards program that is focused solely on local works.

Project Luangwa, meanwhile, is a charitable organization supported by five safari operators in South Luangwa – besides Flatdogs and Robin Pope, there is Kafunta River Lodge, Shenton Safaris, and Crocodile Valley Camp. It aims to help local communities improve their long-term economic prospects while also avoiding a negative impact on the environment and wildlife. By developing and improving schools, creating a vocational training center, and supporting the micro-financing of small businesses, it tries to give families the chance of a lasting and sustainable income.

Working with Chilies

Among Project Luangwa’s innovative projects is one to keep elephants and other wildlife away from crops by using chilies. Yes, chilies. The peppers are used to make fences and are also added to bricks made of elephant dung that are burned at nighttime to keep animals away. Locals are offered chili seedlings to grow themselves. Project Luangwa also builds schools (check out its website to get an idea of its range of activities).

On the Zambezi River

In the Lower Zambezi national park, SLCS’s equivalent is Conservation Lower Zambezi. Members include Sausage Tree Camp and Chiawa. For the past 8 years it has been funded largely by the Danish Embassy, which has allowed it to buy a plane and establish a base camp outside the park boundaries. From its environmental education center, it runs a mobile education unit, media promotion, and safari guide training.

That many travelers to Zambia don’t know about these projects says a lot about the lodges and operators that fund and run them. They could shout their achievements from the rooftops, but they rather focus on giving their guests a great safari, a great time, and a great lodge. Doing good things for the locals they do behind the scenes. For them it’s all in a day’s work.

- Caren Banks

Watch the Trailer and $10 Goes to Save Lions

It’s a fact learned by few people who go on safari. They don’t realize that the animals they are watching, enjoying, enthralled by, might not be there for their own children to one day see. And that’s what the Jouberts, who have been filming predators in southern Africa for twenty years, mostly for National Geographic, are trying to do with The Last Lions. They want to make people aware of the beauty and irreplaceable richness that will die when the predator cats do.

The Jouberts follow one lioness, who, with her three cubs, flees a pride of females and settles on Duba island in Botswana. The rest of the movie is about her battle to keep her family alive, to feed them, and to fend off attacks by other cats and a massive herd of buffalo. It’s a story of Africa’s wildlife, heartbreaking at times, but it reminds you what’s at stake. Lions in all their glory.

Financed by National Geographic, which has launched Cause an Uproar in order to spread information about the plight of lions.  Also, The Big Cat Initiative, which was started by the Jouberts and National Geographic, is working in Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, and other countries, to try and halt the decrease in the number of cats. As Dereck Joubert says, “We are fighting for one cat at a time.”

But the Jouberts also do their own share.

As stakeholders in the Great Plains Conservation, which owns properties in Botswana, Tanzania, and Kenya – such as Duba Plains, where the movie was filmed, and Ol Donyo Lodge – the company puts money back into conservation and cat programs and anti-poaching. To support their company and its properties is to support wildlife.

Gorilla, Goodbye?

The small Central African country of Gabon has been getting a lot of great publicity over the last few years. A tourism jewel, magazines and newspapers called it. This was mostly due to the efforts of – and 15 million Euros paid by – one man, Rombout Swanborn, the low-key Dutch businessman and conservationist. Investing in aviation access, tourism infrastructure, and nature conservation in Gabon, he had lodges and eco-camps built, staff trained, and he made way for research and monitoring groups to study the area, especially the rich Loango National Park.

But no more.

Swanborn’s company Africa’s Eden, has announced it will pull out of Gabon on September 1, 2010. Behind it the company will leave a country to which it, as the main tourism operator, has helped introduce thousands of tourists. Through Africa’s Eden they saw Gabon’s magic rich forests, lowland gorillas, and rare beaches.

The sudden move - a serious blow to sustainable tourism in the region – comes as a result of “the failure of negotiations following a dispute between the Gabonese civil aviation authorities (ANAC) and Africa’s Eden’s sister company SCD Aviation, which ran a regional airline charter company to transport tourists from the capital Libreville to the park.”

In a strongly worded statement, Africa’s Eden called ANAC a “malfunctioning civil aviation authority that failed to create the conditions necessary for regular and safe aviation transportation.” As a result of this, the EU blacklisted all Gabonese airlines in 2008 and it got “the lowest percentage of all audited countries (which) makes ANAC in Gabon one of the poorest performing civil aviation authorities in the world.”

Swanborn said numerous efforts had been made to come to an agreement, but they had failed. The inability of his company’s planes to function properly in Gabon had crippled the company and led to severe financial losses.

“We are highly disappointed,” he said, “as a solution would have benefited all parties involved. In the end, the Gabonese people. ”

Africa’s Eden is no longer promoting Gabon as a tourism destination. At least 125 people will lose their jobs when the company leaves. And conservation research, which has so far been helped to the tune of 3 million Euros in the study of whales, manatees, lowland gorillas, and chimpanzees, will lose a crucial benefactor.

(See A World Different’s Q&A with Africa’s Eden’s Jacqueline van den Broek.)

The Pool on High

Karl Ammann, a Swiss-born former hotelier who now lives in Nanyuki, Kenya, has built a splendid villa for rent high above the turquoise seas of the Seychelles. Few people who stay in it probably know that Ammann is also a photographer and filmmaker, an avid conservationist who has helped uncover the terrible truth about the bushmeat trade – which got him named as one of Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment – and  has made several devastating documentaries about animal smuggling and poaching, among other things. (Watch here.) Ammann uses the money he earns from Residence on the Rocks to finance his film projects.

A Villa as Haveli as Hotel

Situated on Intendance Bay, Mahé, a full 100 meters higher than the last hillside villas  of the Banyan Tree resort, which also manages Ammann’s property, the Residence was built in the tradition of the Indian mansions called havelis. The villa has a gargantuan 450 square meters of living space, with incomparable views – a wonderful hideaway, as Prince William recently found out when he stayed here. The main house, built around a courtyard, has two huge bedroom suites, and there is a third bedroom in the guest cottage. Both buildings, in Creole style, have flat-roofed porches surrounding them.

Much of the materials, décor, and furnishings were – in an attempt to re-create the splendor of the 1920s – collected by Ammann and his wife across Africa and Asia over three decades and include valuable tribal and ethnic art.

One of the Bedroom Suites

“I wanted the place to have a colonial style that would combine decor and furniture from Asia and Africa,” Ammann says. “This led me to India and Burma and northern Thailand. In the Jodhpur area of northern India there were still a lot of reasonably priced items. The region also has a tradition of carpentry – although no trees – and as such a lot of furniture-trading businesses set up shop and repairing old furniture was one of the mainstays of their business.”

When havelis are torn down traders go in and salvage what they can, sometimes collecting enough bits and pieces to spread across yards the size of several football fields. It is from one of these traders that Ammann bought 16 haveli doors, all of slightly different sizes, which meant the villa walls had to be built around them. The floors are of recycled Burma teak. Also from old buildings he got carved beams, a metal staircase, wood- and stonework, pillars, and a gazebo. All the carpets were woven in traditional tribal village cooperatives in northern India.

The Residence

“I presented the architect with the challenge to build these items into the design. I believe it worked and gives the place a pretty authentic and lived-in look.”

Bits of a Haveli Being Reworked in India

In the Seychelles, where minimal impact on the environment is encouraged, large rocks were incorporated into the building’s design and no large trees were cut, and were in fact often assimilated in the design.

The Residence is very high-end, with prices ranging up to 3800 Euros a night for the villa and guesthouse, with all the services (butler service, room service, laundry, housekeeping, wi-fi, turndown) that you would get at a hotel like Banyan Tree, whose facilities are also open for guests’ use. Any income that is generated from the Residence Ammann invests in his film-making ventures.

“With the present lull in the market, this is affecting (the documentary) investigations like the one in Egypt and Tanzania,” he says. (See below for link.)

Ammann, as anyone who has watched his searing 60-Minutes-like documentaries knows, does not shy away from controversy and showing what many people don’t like to see. After viewing The Cairo Connection, which won the SAB Environmental Journalist of the Year in 2008, you will never look at Egypt – or a small zoo – the same way again. (Beware: This film is graphic and disturbing.) His ongoing investigations include ape smuggling, the China wildlife trade, Sudanese chimp orphans, and Egyptian cheetahs.

The Gobi at Your Doorstep

Who They Are

Three Camel Lodge was built in the heart of the Gobi Desert according to environmentally and culturally sustainable development guidelines, without forsaking traditional style and superb service to give the ultimate expedition experience. Each ger, or felt tent, has a wood-burning stove, hand-painted wood-framed king-size beds, and locally produced toiletries (which include camel milk moisturizing lotions!). Exclusive tents have private bathrooms.

Aspects of Three Camel

Unprocessed natural stone was used for the main buildings, and local artisans and workers crafted the roofs which, following the tenets of Mongolian Buddhist architecture, don’t employ a single nail.

Riding a two-humped Bactrian camel is but one of the adventurous ways for lodge guests to explore the Gobi’s diverse ecosystems. Camel treks through sand dunes and forests of saxual trees are an unforgettable Gobi experience and give you the opportunity to see desert wildlife such as black- and white-tailed gazelles. Four-wheel-drive excursions to remote canyons and valleys, horse treks to mountain springs, and mountain biking trips can all be arranged from Three Camel Lodge. Tented overnight field explorations, fully supported and catered by the lodge, are also available.

What They Are Doing

Three Camel Lodge has a first-of-its-kind cooperative agreement with the Bulgan Sum Township and the Gobi-Gurvansaikhan National Park authorities. The lodge serves as a base for scientific research and wildlife monitoring and actively fights animal poaching and the unauthorized removal of dinosaur fossils from paleontological sites. Hunting has been prohibited within a 12-mile radius of the camp.

The Gers

In an effort to preserve the population of indigenous Gobi plants and provide cover for migratory birds that visit nearby Mt. Bulagtai, the lodge has planted over 6,000 native plants and trees throughout the camp since 2003.

The lodge is an active supporter of the Ongii River Movement, an award-winning organization that aims to protect one of the few rivers that runs into the Gobi from the damaging effects of mining activity. These desert rivers and the seasonal lakes where they end are critical resources for Gobi wildlife.

The lodge recycles its organic waste to local farms for use as fertilizer, builds and supports greenhouse projects, and helps local farmers with the raising of pigs, chickens, and livestock. These efforts result in less waste being transported to Ulaanbaatar and a reduction in the amount of food being imported to the area, as local ger camps can now buy eggs, vegetables, and meat from nearby farms.

A Golden Eagle

Three Camel launched a No Plastic Bags in the Gobi program and is working with local residents and small businesses to encourage the use of cloth shopping bags. Also being explored are systems whereby non-drinking water can be reused for watering trees and supplying toilets.

The Flaming Cliffs

The lodge established The Kids Who Love Nature Association, which gives local children the opportunity to learn about environmental issues and participate in conservation. Leading naturalists and scientists from the Mongolian Academy of Sciences give presentations on the wildlife, botany, and paleontology of the Gobi, and children participate in projects such as planting native trees and cleaning and protecting mountain springs. With the assistance of the lodge staff, children have helped clean up national park areas like the Yol Valley and the Flaming Cliffs, and the lodge sponsored and funded the planting of 2,000 trees at a local public school in Dalanzadgad, the provincial capital of the South Gobi.

Since 2005 the lodge has been a sponsor of the Thousand Camel Festival, organized by a local NGO with the goal of protecting the endangered Bactrian camel. The festival has also inspired a reawakening of interest in traditional crafts created by local artisans.

Three Camel has the highest percentage of local employees of any camp in the country, and is one of the largest employers in the Gobi. All of its staff are Mongolian, with more than half being residents of the South Gobi province where the Lodge is located, and every trip guide is hired locally, as are all suppliers of transportation and food.

When the Camels Aren't Patroling

Who They Are

Peponi is a small hotel on the exotic island of Lamu in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya. The Korschen family, who still own it, opened the hotel two miles from Lamu town in 1967, and it still retains much of the same original character and charm. Small and personal, it is an ideal place to rest after a safari or simply to use as a hideaway.

Sit and Relax

The 24 rooms are divided into superior and standard, and all of them have ocean views. All rooms have overhead fans, mosquito nets, showers (no baths). Fresh flowers add a nice finishing touch. The hotel is at the one end of the 12-km.-long Shela Beach.

Peponi on the Beach

What They Are Doing

The Lamu Marine Conservation Trust, or Lamcot, was started by Peponi in 1992 to save the local sea turtles, whose numbers were fast diminishing, and is now headed by Atwaa Salim. With the backing of Carol and Lars Korschen and with financial support from conservation organization Tusk, its mission is to reduce the illegal trade of sea turtle products on the black market; increase the survival rate of the hatchlings and enhance beach security in Lamu through regular patrolling; treat sick turtles that have barnacles, tumors and other complications; spread awareness of the turtles as an essential part of the ecosystem and biodiversity, especially among the local community; promote eco-tourism through the trips to see the hatchlings.

Locals View the Hatchlings

Practical work on the ground includes the monitoring of nest sites, hatching of turtles, and tagging of turtles that are caught by mistake. Patrollers, all of them ex-poachers, now patrol the two main nesting beaches using camels sponsored by Tusk. The patrollers work on an incentive scheme, receiving bonus payments for every successful egg that hatches and nest that is protected. Ten years ago, only 20 nests hatched successfully; this rose to 70 nests last year.

Measuring a Turtle

Local fishermen who catch turtles by mistake now bring the animals to the trust headquarters, where they are they are measured, treated if ill, tagged, and released back into the ocean. Each fisherman is put on a register and paid an incentive according to the size of the turtle (in other words, what would he have gotten for it on the black market?).

As with many other Tusk projects its success depends on the commitment of the local community. Here they have taken on the plight of the turtle and changed their fishing and cultural practices. In addition, the trust and Lamcot work with the primary schools on Lamu to establish tree nurseries and run an environmental after-school club. They have also set up a bee-keeping project as an alternative form of income.

Another World - Lamu

Tusk has been the project’s primary donor covering annual running costs since 2000. In addition the trust has purchased a boat, camels, and radio equipment for the beach patrolers. Through donations made by visitors to the project and the sale of merchandise, the project is able to cover the cost of capital items each year.

Misool Eco Resort, the highly respected diving resort built on a former shark-finning camp, has a 425-sq. km. no-take-zone, where fishing is forbidden. But just outside its area, finners are at work, as the latest news from Misool explains in captivating detail. It is suspected that lots of illegal fishing goes on in Daram, to the southeast, which Misool is trying to turn into a no-take-zone too (see the resort’s fabulous 14-day-yacht auction for details on how it wants to finance that). This week’s discovery of the massive haul (some of the shark fins and rays pictured) has made Misool even more determined in its efforts.

Floating library

If there isn’t a saying that good begets good, there should be. Take what’s happened at the Misool Eco Resort in Indonesia, already a diving destination that’s getting a great reputation but is also involved in local activities. Its head ranger, Rajak Tamher, was in Bali on an 8-week capacity building mission with the Coral Reef Alliance when he had the idea to spearhead a floating library project. A Coral representative helped to obtain free Indonesian-language children’s books, donated by the publishers, and now the rangers use Misool’s patrol boat to deliver these books to the primary schools in the nearby villages of Yellu and Dabatan. The students are desperate for learning materials. The schools are so short of funds they can’t afford to pay their teachers – Misool and private donors support two full-time teachers in Dabatan. Good idea!*

* The Ranger Patrol has received generous funding from WildAid, Coral, Precious Planet, and several private donors, but as the number of infractions increases, Misool needs to step up the intensity of its patrols. The patrol always needs more contributions – so keep that in mind.

Kids See a Coral Grouper on the Page

(Photo by Jürgen Freund)

A Fund Member Addresses Villagers

A long and severe drought in East Africa has killed off not only huge herds of cattle belonging to pastoralists like the Maasai but also wild animals. Predators have sometimes resorted to killing cattle, leading to a new standoff between man and lion. This has been a true testing ground for the efforts of the Maasailand Preservation Trust, started by Richard Bonham of Ol Donya Lodge. Its Predator Compensation Fund has been working hard to save lions by paying participating communities for any damage to livestock the predators cause. In an incident last week, members of the fund went to a village where a lioness had been killed. It turned out that she was with a pride that had left Amboseli park in search of food, and that the lioness had actually jumped a fence into a protected boma to try get a cow.  A herder speared the lioness through the heart, killing her instantly. It was a justifiable killing, the fund decided, but the incident has made it redouble its efforts in the community.  Read more about the fund and the latest test of their success. Anyone who visits Ol Donyo Lodge will see the efforts of the Maasailand Preservation Trust firsthand.