News
Workshop Report: Exploring Conservation Futures in Africa
We are pleased to share the official workshop report from the Exploring Conservation Futures in Africa workshop we hosted in Gqeberha, South Africa last year.We brought together leading conservation and futures-thinking minds from across Africa to discuss the...
A New One Health Partnership with Medivet
For over nine years, Medivet has supported the work of Wilderness Foundation Africa's Forever Wild Rhino Protection Initiative. Throughout this time, Medivet provided much needed funds that have helped enable multiple aspects of our work, including anti-poaching...
Equipping youth for a brighter future with Siyazenzela
In accordance with Volkswagen Community Trust’s aim to educate previously disadvantaged young people and empowering them to become self-sufficient, Wilderness Foundation Africa’s Youth Development Programme set out to train 15 youngsters from Kariega and Despatch...
Invitation to online workshop: How to Engage with Parliament as an Environmental NGO
Date: 21 November 2024 Time: 10h00-11h30 Aim of the workshop All too often people in the not-for-profit sector complain about lack of access to policymakers. Even when they get access, they express frustration at the lack of influence on elected...
Exploring conservation futures in Africa
Wilderness Foundation Africa (WFA) recently hosted a workshop in Gqeberha on “Exploring Conservation Futures in Africa” from 29 September – 1 October 2024. Facilitated by WFA Board Member, Professor Nicholas King, and Professor Laura Pereira, from the WITS Global...
Creating pathways for South Africa’s youth through Siyazenzela
August 2024 saw our Youth Development team facilitating the LCPA Packaging Southern Africa / LC Supports Foundation funded Siyazenzela course in Kwa-Zulu Natal. This year the programme was implemented in the rural area of Swayimane, at the Ithembalethu...
Celebrating a decade of conservation in the Northern Cape
Over the past 10 years, the Northern Cape Land Project has enabled the declaration of five new nature reserves and one new protected environment with several more in the pipeline. Conservationists gathered in Namaqualand recently to celebrate a decade of successful...
Empowering Futures: Youth Development Programme Celebrates 41 Graduates in Mpumalanga
On the 3rd July 2024 WFA’s Youth Development Programme graduated 41 Siyazenzela Basic Employability, Wellness & Leadership training course beneficiaries at a formal ceremony held at the Malelane Golf Course in Mpumalanga. The majority of the graduates hailed...
A boost for Addo Marine Protected Area celebrated on World Environment Day
On the occasion of World Environment Day, Wilderness Foundation Africa (WFA) today handed over a cheque from the Oak Foundation to Addo Elephant National Park (AENP) for the purchase of a new patrol boat for its Marine Protected Area (MPA). World Environment Day is...
Art for conservation: new partnership with the Kulinda Project!
This International Day for Biological Diversity, we are excited to announce a new partnership with the Kulinda Project! Faced with increasing funding challenges, it has become vital for organisations who are engaged in caring for the planet to find new and...
Celebrating 10 years of reducing the demand for rhino horn
In 2014, at the height of the rhino poaching crisis in South Africa, Wilderness Foundation Africa initiated a campaign in Vietnam with the aim of reducing the demand for rhino horn. Ten years later and with rhino poaching numbers significantly lower than they were...
Celebrating the first Siyazenzela graduates of 2024!
The first WFA Siyazenzela Employability, Wellness and Leadership training course for 2024 was conducted at the picturesque Nyosi Wildlife Reserve during the month of February. The course is funded annually by Community Conservation Fund Africa in aid of previously...
Taking on the Arctic for Wilderness Foundation
The vast, frozen expanse of the Yukon awaits John Beel and David Abratt from Medivet UK. They're not just seeking personal conquest in this 430-mile ultramarathon; they're on a mission to raise awareness of the rapidly changing landscape, and crucial funds for...
Nelson Mandela Bay set to become Climate Resilient City through ground breaking pledge
Nelson Mandela Bay is embarking on a proactive and comprehensive approach to addressing climate change, aiming to become a climate-resilient city within the next year. This initiative prioritises both adaptation and opportunity, recognising the challenges posed by...
WFA and VWSA celebrate 35 years of partnership
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1 December 2023 VWSA celebrates 35-year partnership with Wilderness Foundation Africa VWSA has supported WFA since 1988 The partnership has made an impact in terms of conservation and youth development Kariega – Over 2,7 million kilometres...
Building capacity and awareness of prosecutors in response to succulent plant poaching
South Africa’s Succulent Karoo Biome is one of only two desert biodiversity hotspots. It is exceptional among the world’s desert regions because of its extraordinary rich diversity of pant species and the richest succulent flora in the world. The region boasts 6356...
A DEDICATED TAX INCENTIVE FOR RHINO AND OECMS IN SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa has done it again! We have activated another tax incentive dedicated to the environment. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), together with the Sustainable Finance Coalition (the Coalition) and through implementation by...
Assessing technology to secure succulent plant populations in the Succulent Karoo region of South Africa
The illegal trading of plants for ornamental purposes has become a world-wide problem. Since March 2019, South Africa has been experiencing a significant increase in incidences of illegal harvesting of succulents to support this trade. As of December 2022, over...
Great or Small, Love Them All | World Animal Day 2023
Every year on the 4th October, we celebrate World Animal Day. This year we honor and appreciate all things great and small, wild and domesticated. It is on this day where we can also reflect on the many ecosystems around the world and the incredibly vast...
New partnership to accelerate nature protection
Wilderness Foundation Africa is pleased to announce it has partnered with EarthToday tech company and the Union of Nature Foundation, as they share common goals of protecting and sustaining landscapes to safeguard biodiversity and secure our planet for future...
Requiem for the /Xam of Poison Mountain
For thousands of years southern Africa was populated by an ancient people known to themselves by many names and who had different languages. The colonisers, who first appeared at the Cape in the early 17th century, called them all Bushmen. The meeting of cultures...
Wild steeds of the great Namib desert
One might expect to see a gemsbok, a jackal or even a springbok on the trackless plains and dunefields of the great Namib Desert. But a horse?... All photographs by Teagan Cunniffe. It had the makings of a joke, crouching beside a drinking trough in the blistering...
Going to ground: navigating a way out of climate grief and finding hopefulness
As scientists and politicians argued and bargained about the future of Earth’s life-support systems at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, Don Pinnock went to ground to mourn what is being lost. In a quiet cottage, he found a path back to hope. I’ve come to this cottage on...
Of rain and reflections
Cities are home to more than half the people on Earth. Cities are noisy, crowded, complex, often smelly and can be so stressful. They’re all the things a calm home in which to lay your weary head should not be. True peace lives elsewhere – in the natural world, our...
No bugs on your windscreen is bad news for swallows
If you want to gauge the state of the planet, you don’t have to be a scientist, you just have to look for what’s missing around you. We are essentially creatures of two dimensions and only slightly of the third: up. Above us is the kingdom of air, clouds, flying...
Antarctica’s water wonder
Water is so common it hardly bears notice until rain takes a holiday and the taps run dry. Nearly three-quarters of the planet is covered with the stuff. But in fact, it’s an absolutely magical substance – and when it becomes ice it can blow your mind. Water breaks...
South Africa: On Geological Timescale and Travelling Backwards
Gazing across the wild, rolling nothingness of the Kalahari or the ramparts of the Drakensberg, have you ever wondered how that bit of scenery got there? To a geologist the answer is all in the name, but ask them to elaborate at your peril. The film Jurassic Park,...
Brilliant bees that waggle with intent
It’s now common knowledge that bees communicate by dancing. But the extent of their intelligence deserves a hard look at just how smart insects are. Bees pose a problem. Not because they sting – all creatures have the right to defend themselves – but because they...
WFA 50: Katherine and Andrew — of wild things, magical music and being creative
Katherine Jenkins performing at Sanbona. (Photo: Don Pinnock) Katherine Jenkins, a singing superstar, and her husband Andrew Levitas, a top US movie producer and director, jetted quietly into South Africa with their children over Christmas for some game park time...
The mysterious travels of sea turtles: ocean gyres reveal an astounding story
For reasons hard to explain, the word ‘gyre’ holds a mysterious allure for me. It comes from the Latin word gyrus and means a ring, spiral or vortex. It’s a small word, which, in oceanography, describes vast pulses of water that flow to the heartbeat of sun, moon...
The panda’s ‘thumb’ — biological wonders that navigate the odds to ensure survival
The biologist Francois Jacob once wrote that nature isn’t a divine artificer but an excellent tinkerer. Its dictum is: never invent when you can adapt. Take the Epipactis, a marsh orchid. It uses two petals as a trap. One of these is a nectar-filled cup desirable...
Nature’s Defenders: Wangari Maathai, the tree woman of Kenya
‘If I have learned one thing, it is that humans are only part of this ecosystem. When we destroy the ecosystem, we destroy ourselves, for on its survival depends our own.’ One day, back in the 1940s, on the patch of land cultivated by her family near Mount Kenya,...
Rachel Carson: the quiet woman who ignited the environmental movement
Her vision laid bare corporate greed and government collusion in the poisoning of the world. Following the publication of Rachel Carson’s damning book Silent Spring, agribusiness in the US should have immediately stopped spraying deadly poisons over fields, forests...
The Dark Shadow in your Mind
I’m not afraid of dogs. They’ve been with me all my life and I’m very relaxed around them. I’ve never been bitten or even growled at. We instinctively understand each other. So the incident that took place years ago in a twilight lane in Noordhoek, Cape Town,...
