Conservation in Africa: How Your Safari Dollar Protects Wildlife and Communities
Interview, August 2025
In this exclusive interview, Carolyn Tett, Owner, Tett Safaris, sits down with Craig Glatthaar, a dedicated conservationist with a lifelong passion for Africa's wild spaces.
Craig's work is built on a powerful idea: that high-end, low-volume ecotourism is one of the most effective models for protecting and restoring the continent's wilderness. From his hands-on involvement in black rhino translocations to working on chimpanzee habituation, he is a firm believer that every traveler’s safari makes a difference.
This conversation explores the full scope of this model, diving into how a safari directly supports conservation efforts and empowers local communities. He shares the tangible impact of the Wilderness Trust and how every safari makes a real difference in protecting Africa's wild future.
Interview Transcript
Courtesy Wilderness: Craig Glatthaar
Carolyn:
Today, I have a very special guest, Craig Glatthaar, from South Africa. As an executive at Wilderness, he's a dedicated conservationist who believes ecotourism is one of the most effective models for protecting and restoring Africa's wilderness. His passion for the wild was born from a childhood spent on off-road adventures with his parents that have fueled a career dedicated to conservation. His education includes a Masters in Conservation Science and a Bachelors in Tourism Management. He has been involved in hands on projects from black rhino translocation in Namibia to chimpanzee habituation in Rwanda. He's a key member at Wilderness and has been involved in conserving and restoring millions of hectares of land. Craig's work is driven by a simple but powerful idea that high end, low volume, ecotourism can create life changing journeys that not only fund conservation but also inspire guests to become agents of positive change. When he's not in the bush, he enjoys surfing and spending time with his dogs. Welcome Craig.
As a side mention I think that we've known each other for over 20 years in the safari business, and it's just been a pure pleasure working with you. So, I wanted to start by just asking, how did your love of Africa's wilderness begin?
Craig:
Thank you, Carolyn, well, you mentioned earlier that I was fortunate to grow up in a family of conservationists and passionate wilderness lovers, so I spent a lot of time, as you mentioned, on off road adventures, and that led to me choosing a career in the conservation science world, more on the research side, and that actually evolved from there into moving into ecotourism, as I realized that the commercial value of ecotourism was really at the crux of what is conservation.
Carolyn:
And you've said that Ecotourism is one of the most effective conservation models in the world. Can you just break that down for us and just help us understand that? How, when you stay in a safari camp, how does that translate into, say, saving a rhino?
Craig:
That's a great question, and it's quite complex. To put it in more simplistic terms, essentially, all of these amazing wildlife experiences happen within natural ecosystems. But whether we like it or not, as the most successful species on the planet, we've created a new ecosystem that everything else lives within the global economy.
Ecotourism is an amazing idea that has evolved into a commercial industry. Its goal is to ensure that natural areas and massive conservation landscapes offer more commercial value than other industrial land uses. For example, a national park offers more commercial value—and here we're not talking about its intrinsic or psychosocial value—than, say, mining or agriculture. In that way, ecotourism ensures that these natural habitats are preserved because they retain and offer
Carolyn:
We've all seen beautiful pictures of wildlife, but you get to live and breathe this all the time. What's a recent pinch me moment you've had in the bush that reinforced your mission?
Craig:
I had a significant moment quite recently, and I wasn't the one who got to experience the exact emotions, but I got to view my wife experiencing these emotions. My wife has been on many safaris before, probably over a few 100 at least, and we sat in a sunken hide, or blind, as it's termed in America, so a sunken shipping container that acts as a blind water hole that's permanently pumped using a solar pump. And it's in an area in northern Botswana, which is arguably the highest concentration of elephants anywhere on the African continent. And we watched a large breeding herd of elephants approach the water hole. And as they approach the water hole, they aim to get access to where the water pumps the freshest water out there. These are very intelligent animals with a very similar social structure to ourselves. And I got to watch my wife completely enthralled, and one could argue, overwhelmed by the presence of nature, by the presence of these elephants. And we watched in absolute silence, breathtaking, absolute silence, as these elephants drank from the water hole and the defining moment, and I don't want to embarrass her, but the defining moment was watching a tear roll down her cheek, just because it's so unbelievably overwhelming, and that was a very emotional experience for me.
Carolyn:
That's amazing. Can you share a story about a specific animal or a place that felt like a personal loss, and how that fueled your work?
Courtesy Wikipedia: Southern double-collared sunbird
Craig:
Yeah, wow. Carolyn, another pertinent question that happened three days ago on the weekend. As you know, I do research work voluntarily on sunbirds and pollinating networks in the Cape, which is important work to me. And on the way into Cape Point Nature Reserve, I drive through quite an urbanized area about an hour and a half from the City of Cape Town, and I saw a beautiful, endemic sunbird called an orange breasted sunbird, on the road, and I could see it was injured, and so I stopped. This was on Saturday. I picked it up and then took it to the car and tried to resuscitate it, tried to give it water, just to see. Obviously, I'm no vet, so I didn't understand what, what physiological damage that that sunbird had, but it sadly passed away in my hand. And that was quite an emotional moment for me, as I realized, you know, urbanization and fragmentation of their habitats, and the sun bird was just doing what some birds do on a Saturday morning and didn't get to see the rest of that day, I found that quite a that was hard for me to bear. I know it sounds maybe small and insignificant because it's just a sunbird, but yeah, it was a very emotional experience for me.
Carolyn:
So let's talk about Wilderness Trust, which Tett Safari supports with an annual donation. And a lot of people donate to charities, but they don't always know where the money goes. Can you give a concrete example of how a donation, even a small one, directly impacts a project on the ground?
Craig:
Yes, Carolyn, I'm going to thread that previous story together with a story about Tett Safaris. And you all remember, well, you donated a significant amount to the wilderness trust to our nonprofit division last year, and part of that funding supports the restoration of pollinating networks in Cape Town. And so, a really good example of that is as cities urbanize, as the Earth urbanizes, as more natural habitat becomes fragmented and breaks down all of these connected networks. And we are starting only now to understand how interconnected our lives are with nature, whether we like it or not, how dependent we are on what are called ecosystem services. And your funding helped establish the building of a new steppingstone garden in the center of Cape Town, where we try to restore and connect pollinating networks by building the stepping stone gardens at schools in very impoverished areas and very heavily urbanized areas, as most impoverished areas are. They're usually the most urbanized areas because they can't afford any greening of their areas. And we are building these steppingstone gardens using indigenous plants and some birds are acting as the connectors, as the pollinating connectors. And through that, we hope to restore the connectivity between the national park that surrounds Cape Town, called Table Mountain National Park, and areas beyond the urbanized city center. And so something like your funding is not only restoring pollinating networks, which is really critical, pollination, as we all understand, is critical and out of the entire Earth ecosystem collapses, but at the same time, it's also bringing children in very impoverished areas closer to nature, and through that, we hope to develop future conservation leaders. So that's a really good example of a project that's considering not only the biodiversity conservation of a single species or the restoration of a critical ecosystem service, like pollinating networks, but it's also considering communities and humans and the role they play, which I think is a big challenge in conservation. So often now we see conservation separate from human involvement, which it isn't. It's all one in the same.
Carolyn:
Can you tell us about a specific success you've witnessed before and after that shows the impact of the work?
Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda
Craig:
Yes, indeed, there's an incredible before and after project, which is a result of us building a lodge on the edges outside Volcanoes National Park, which is in Rwanda. And of course, the reason for that is because arguably, one of the best examples of ecotourism, an example of where ecotourism has saved a single species from extinction, is mountain growers. And obviously, a lot of that has to do with Diane Fossey, an amazing American pharmacologist Who brought attention to mountain gorillas. A lot of work has been done since then and mountain gorillas are growing in number, which is a great success story. However, Volcanoes National Park is a definitive size, and outside the park is urbanized areas in Rwanda, which is arguably one of the most densely populated countries in Africa. So, a big challenge is, if mountain gorilla numbers are to grow in size and continue growing, the next trick is to grow and restore their habitat. So Wilderness Destinations was involved in a project, a groundbreaking project at end of 2016 and early 2017 where we bought a number of farms that were being used for the growing of pyrethrum and potatoes, and we bought farms on the boundary of Volcanoes National Park, and those farmers sold that land at almost double the value, and bought farms further away from the National Park, and in building an ecotourism lodge on a collection of 123 property’s farms, we started restoring the land.
We noticed from 2017 until now, a complete restoration of a secondary cloud forest that has grown on that land. And we know it works because we measure the outcomes. We've seen the return of birds. They’re one of your best ecological indicators, because they're highly mobile with the ability to fly. So, birds started returning to the land, then insects, now mammals, and we've even had, on occasion, mountain gorillas passing through the property outside the boundary of the National Park. So that's a great example of the before and after effect of habitat restoration all centered around one charismatic species.
Carolyn:
That's wonderful work. So, conservation is always changing. What do you see today as the most urgent need or the most critical area? Is it anti-poaching, community empowerment, or maybe just an equal combination?
Craig:
I like the way you described it, because you alluded to the fact that there are a lot of variables involved in the term conservation, the outcome of effect of conservation. I think there's a enormous conservation renaissance happening at the moment where there's this understanding, first of all, that conservation landscapes means conserving large tracts of land. At the moment, we are well beyond the concern for singular species, and we now entering the realm of conserving massive areas as we start to stare down the barrel of effects like climate change and these much larger global effects as a result of our urbanization of the earth. And so at the moment where conservation is going involves looking at landscapes and networks, meaning the interconnectedness of all species, and very importantly, it's looking at the impact and the connectedness that human beings play in the conservation space. So, conservation has gone from what was previously viewed as an exclusive perimeter type method to an inclusive coexistence method, even to the degree that you see in the conservation of cities. Another term for that would be the greening of cities. And so I think we're starting to enter that space now where all of these variables you mentioned are being considered as we connect urbanized areas with natural areas and try to create a greener Earth.
Carolyn:
Sometimes travelers are willing to make a donation, but they always want to also make sure that their money is making a real difference. So, I wanted to ask, what's the process for wilderness trust deciding who and how they support and how do they ensure that the administrative costs are kept to a minimum so that the guest money actually goes to the purposes that they intended to donate.
Craig:
Great, thank you. Carolyn, great question. Often this is a very difficult one for people to answer, but the answer lies in the outcomes and the metrics that are measured. So, we use a scientifically proven and robust method known as the theory of change. Now the theory of change considers five different factors when we are considering a conservation project, and those five factors are we first need to identify a threat. We need to identify a causal relationship to that threat. So, what is the actual cause of that threat? We then look at the various activities that we can use or contribute to resolve such a threat. And those activities must be grounded in three different wilderness pillars. Those activities have to be grounded in the education, the empowerment and the protection. The last two things we look at are the outcomes, which is the metrics. So, we want to measure the impact of educating, empowering or protecting from a specific threat. And then finally, we look at the actual impact. And that's where we want to see. Has there been any measured change? Now, in order to reduce the administrative costs, we choose to operate some of our projects ourself, but then we also choose to partner with the number of NGOs that are small NGOs making a big impact. That means they have very low administrative fees, because they are very small, they're not suffering from large overheads, which is usually staff or personnel overheads, but they're able to make a big impact. And then Wilderness as an umbrella organization, or wilderness impact, the Wilderness Trust organization as an umbrella organization, we can pull all of these NGOs and their projects together, and that's where we start to link what I referenced earlier, this interconnectedness of linking networks of various projects to have a large landscape or land scale conservation impact.
Carolyn:
So, if a traveler wants to just look beyond a safari and maybe get personally involved with a project, are there opportunities to visit a community or a conservation project, particularly those of Wilderness Trust might be supporting?
Craig:
Absolutely. Carolyn, there's a number of those opportunities. The community engagement can often be a little bit more challenging, because most of the areas we operate in are in remote wilderness areas. You don't necessarily have easy logistical access to a community, but certain areas like Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, which I know you know very well. The community lives right alongside wildlife on the border to the National Park, and there we have a number of community projects that revolve around glass recycling, school support, a livestock farming program there, and because we are close to the national park boundary, we often take our guests to see the work being done in those projects, and even to get them involved. It's not so much just about viewing, but we like to know from certain guests what their skill set is. If there's teachers, we'll involve them in even teaching a class if we have vets, we can involve them in the livestock veterinary program. So, we often all bring guests and then try to get their hands dirty in the project. In other projects where we got very close to communities in habitat restoration projects, we involve the guests, we get them to also be part of the habitat restoration projects in terms of planting various different tree species at certain altitudes on a project. Even when it comes to wildlife work, we're involved yet in some of the biodiversity projects that we have, whether it's being involved in the notching of a rhino horn or the attaching of a transmitter to a line, for example, we can involve this in those projects.
Carolyn:
That sounds interesting. I'd like to do that! For someone listening now and they're thinking about taking a Safari or maybe going on another Safari. What's the single most important message you'd want them to take away with why your safari is so important in helping naturally, just with conservation, just by going.
Craig:
There's two parts to that. The one I'll reference is why it's so good for people selfishly, to consider going on safari just for themselves and their family. I think the largest part of that probably lies in the disconnect to reconnect. There's very few distractions. When one is on safari, you become immersed in an environment where you understand, maybe subconsciously, you understand your own significance within nature. Elon Musk might be a really significant figure at the moment, but over a billion years, he becomes quite insignificant. So, you start to feel that insignificance, which is really important, because it enables you to develop perspective, your place on Earth, your place in nature, and suddenly that changes the way you view yourself and the people around you. That can be a very difficult thing to define, a very difficult thing to measure, but it can have very important and significant outcomes for people. You know, the idea that journeys change lives is certainly a very relevant and important one, and then more in a more utilitarian, idealistic manner, going on a safari has an enormous impact in conserving those areas. And we know it's scientifically proven that nature is important for human well-being. You can go and research that. There's a number of scientific papers proving this, and so that's one important, more utilitarian reason to go on safari. And then even further, I can tell you, as you know, we measure the metrics of our impact very closely. And I can tell you for a fact that most of the areas we operate in, each person who is employed in the ecotourism role is a dependency ratio of between seven to 10 family members that are dependent on their job, on their income in that role, in that ecotourism role. So even though going on a safari, you're not only supporting people that are working in the industry, but, you are potentially supporting entire villages, entire communities through that dependency ratio that the ecotourism revenue support. So, there's a number of good reasons, selfish and unselfish reasons, to go on a safari.
Carolyn:
Thank you, that’s very clear. Lastly, if you could leave anyone listening to this today with one final thought about the future of conservation in Africa, what would it be?
Craig:
Gosh, I might, I might reference somebody else why it's so important, the future of conservation, not only in Africa, but on our Earth, there's an incredible American biologist by the name of Janine Benyus, and she runs an NGO called the Biomimicry Institute. And Biomimicry is essentially this idea that the answers lie in nature, and nature is what drives innovation. A good example of that would be the bullet train in Japan, Shinkansen, the engineer who helped design that bullet train, had to reduce air friction by 30% to reduce noise pollution and improve profitability of the bullet track. He was a birder, and he noticed kingfishers diving into the water, and in a long story short, he designed the nose of the Shinkansen on the shape of the Kingfisher's beak and reduced air friction by 30% so this is the idea of biomimicry, and there's lots of examples of it, but Janine Benyus has my favorite quote. In her quote, she states that for 99% of the time human beings have been on this Earth, our lives have been dependent on knowing and understanding the minute details of the natural world around us, and deep inside we have a longing to be connected to this nature that shaped our language, shaped our song and our dance and our sense of the Divine. And I love that quote because it doesn't definitively tell you why conservation, why safaris, why all of these elements are important, but it makes you remember that we are nature, and nature is us, and without it, we are nothing. And so that's why conservation, that's why ecotourism, that's why safaris are so important. It goes well beyond us.
Carolyn:
Thank you, Craig. I appreciate your time. So glad to be supporting Wilderness Trust and grateful for all the amazing information that you've shared today on the value of our being part of the projects that you support. And thank you for your time.
Craig:
Thank you Carolyn and thank you Tett Safaris for all your support and conservation efforts.
