Namibia's Skeleton Coast has its own canary in a mineshaft.

Much like miners used canaries in coal mines as an indicator for the presence of methane or carbon monoxide, Namibians have their own “indicator species” that can serve as an alarm bell for environmental hazards. Now you may be thinking about the more impressive species like the desert elephants, the huge Etosha Lions or perhaps you associate Namibia with its wondrous micro-fauna like the dancing dune spiders or side winding adders. These are certainly very impressive candidates and they would serve well as the ambassadors for environmental health, however, our canary is far smaller, far less known, less colorful and infinitely more sensitive to environmental discord than any of these, I am talking about lichens.

What are lichens? They are a plant like symbiosis between a fungus and an algae that have joined together to become a self sustaining organism quite unlike any other on earth. Lichens survive on the most challenging environments on earth from hot deserts to frozen tundra. They are extremely wide spread and long lived. They are generally very slow growing and are very important to ecosystem health in their role as a “pioneer species”.

A pioneer species is the very first plant life to settle down in a barren environment. Pioneer species are an important component of a “fringe habitat” and are vital in transforming these habitats into new, higher producing (in terms of biomass) systems important for ecosystem health. Pioneer species are crucial in serving as a substrate, or shelter trap for seeds and spores and they also help settle the soil, combating wind and water erosion and accelerating plant settlement.

It is the very morphology of lichens that make them so important to us as an “indicator species”. Lichens tend to be sensitive to issues of pollution and will show concentrations of heavy metals and other toxins. By assessing the wellbeing of lichens in areas where local pollution is not really present, we are able to use these lichens health, as a barometer for global environmental health. This is why the Skeleton Coast in Namibia is so deserving of its high environmental status.

Namibia’s Skeleton Coast is one of the most isolated and remote areas on the planet and every minute spent in this ecological land of the lost is a privilege. Entry into the Skeleton Coast Park is heavily restricted with no more than a handful of carefully controlled visitors allowed at any given time. Wilderness Safaris, as the only current concession holder in the park, has more than proven themselves as deserving custodians of this area. They have joined forces with government and local communities and together they have developed a code of ethics for this area that is strictly adhered to, and is fast showing reward. The lions have returned, rhino next?

For near on three decades the Skeleton Coast was devoid of a resident lion population but through the efforts of government, NGO’s, Wilderness Safaris and the local Purros Conservancy, lions have established themselves once again in this unlikely fringe habitat and from all accounts are settling in very well. This is a testament to the conservation efforts of the Namibian people and their dedication to this land. It is not inconceivable, and I dare say that I predict it, that Desert Adapted Black Rhino will soon return to this area as well. The phenomenal conservation efforts of the Save The Rhino Trust and the community conservancies further south, have led to a significant increase in the Black Rhino population in the Palmwag Concession as I saw recently on a visit to The Desert Rhino Camp. As these populations grow and start competing more heavily for habitat, it is inevitable that some young males will set up territories further North.

So let us always remain mindful of the high importance of areas like the Skeleton Coast and its inhabitants as they are how we measure our conservation success, and, the well being of our planet.

Posted by: Chris Liebenberg
Wednesday May 12, 2010

Posted under: Piper & Heath  //  Africa

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Natural selection and the cheetah - Evolutionary Self Help

Much is, has been, and no doubt will be said about evolution and natural selection. This is a subject of choice on game drives and walks while on safari in Africa. The reason is simply that the African safari destination is so transparent and dramatic in its daily portrayal of the much touted “circle of life”. It is in fact true that all species in these ecosystems are interconnected in one way or another and each of them is shaped by the demands of this beautiful but challenging continent.

All the varied adaptations of the many bizarre looking species on safari stand testament to the intense competition to outdo your neighbor, not to mention your prey or predator. You simply have to look at a giraffe neck, elephant trunk or a cheetah’s speed to see to what extreme these adaptations manifest themselves.

Let us consider the cheetah. Most large cats manage to catch their prey by hunting with ambush tactics, working in a pack, or by using their stamina to tire the prey. The cheetah has simply chosen to become so fast that he would be able to catch up with his prey. In the past, as the continent started drying up, savannahs started to form and with all the extra space, antelope simply evolved to become faster and faster until they were able to outrun their predators. Most of the other large cats likely tried to keep pace but the trade off for speed is bulk and strength and the other large cats would not give up brawn for speed and so had to develop better hunting tactics that did not rely on speed.

The cheetah recognized a niche in being the only super speed hunter and took full advantage. The faster the cheetah became, the more bulk it had to give up till it became a finely tuned hunting machine able to outstrip it’s fastest prey. By giving up that speed the cheetah became unable to defend its kill from most large predators and as a precaution it started hunting in the daytime, when most ambush hunters were asleep. That would appear to be the end of the story, a nice example of evolution that played itself out with textbook simplicity. This was not in fact the case.

About 10 000 years ago the cheetah populations plummeted. The reasons for this population crash are unknown but could have been due to a crash in a common prey specie population (most likely), or extreme pressures from other predators, much as the cheetah still experiences today. When populations crash, animals become inbred and inbreeding leads to a phenomenon known as genetic drift. We are all familiar with the effect of genetic drift in the host of deformities we see in both human and other species when they are inbred. These deformities cause us to have a negative connotation to genetic drift when it is in fact a very positive product of inbreeding. Genetic drift is evolutions way of saying: “Whatever we are doing now is not working, this is why we have become inbred, time to try something totally different”.

During the last population crash in cheetahs, the genetics of the animal changed and whatever change was brought about, perhaps some extra burst of speed, it save the cheetah from the road to extinction it was on. It also had two other known effects, one was an unusual coloration that has become known as the King Cheetah, the other is a defect in the little tail that propels the sperm, known as the flagellum. This defect has caused many cheetah male to be sterile.

Genetic drift is a last ditch effort to bring about some significant change (webbed hands in the Mountain Gorilla?) that may help the animal adapt to an environment where it is unsuccessful.

These and many other insights are the ones that we will share with you on safari.

Posted by: Chris Liebenberg
Wednesday April 14, 2010

Posted under: Ecology  //  Nature

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Percieved "value" and the economic value of conservation.

When I was growing up in Namibia in the seventies and eighties. A great deal of land was suffering under a combination of inadequate land use, land mismanagement and the effects of poaching. The tribal lands of the Damara people, named Damaraland by the Odendaal commission, as a prequel to the group areas act where different ethnic groups were separated into their own distinct areas, were in especially bad shape. Damaraland is an arid area and people and animals exist on the very fringe of what is considered habitable. Trying to carve out an existence in this area is a severe challenge to even those few tribes who have spent hundreds of year learning the way of these lands. In the mid seventies, the South African government forcefully removed a group of people from the valuable farm lands in South Africa, to a desert in Namibia. The land that they were removed from was “re-allocated” to white farmers and the group, who became known as the Riemvasmakers, were left to make do with this new challenging land.

As to be expected, these people knew little of survival in a desert land with wild animals preying on their livestock, and a dry hot sky that never brought enough rain. They were resourceful people and made do as best they could. When the South African defense force occupied the area during the Namibian liberation struggle, and supplied all the men with rifles “to defend themselves”, many of the Damaraland inhabitants naturally turned to poaching for survival. Over the next ten years the wildlife populations were decimated and the key mega fauna (elephant, rhino, lion etc) were hunted to near extinction and those that were left made sure they were never seen.

During the 80’s and 90’s, a few insightful conservationists recognized that this area had great tourism potential due to its remoteness and the relative untouched status of its wilderness areas. The one major component lacking however was the presence of the key species known to attract tourists. Damaraland is an enormous area that is impossible to patrol and manage with the meager budget available to the conservation authorities at the time. It took the insight of people like Garth Owen-Smith, Chris Ayre and Blythe and Rudi Loutit to realize that the only way to conserve and rehabilitate the land, was with the help of the local communities. These people and their associated government, and non government agencies, recognized that if they could convince the local people that wildlife had a sustainable long term value in terms of tourist revenue, that the people would then have a vested interest in conservation. This is what they set out to do.

From this was born organizations of world acclaim like the Namibian Association of Community Based Tourism (NACOBTA), Save The Rhino Trust (SRT) and a whole host of government registered conservancies (communal land dedicated to joint conservation). The early years were tough and it is a tribute to the foresight of the Riemvasmakers, Damara, Herero and Himba leaders of the time. They made the commitment to conservation based just on the promises of the conservation movement and hoped that it would pay off. And it did.

One of the first tourist camps built as part of a community based conservation project was Damaraland Camp. This camp is a joint venture between the Grootberg Riemvasmaker community and their associated Torra Conservancy, and Wilderness Safaris Namibia. Wilderness Safaris supplied the initial investment as well as the expertise and training to run a successful tourism operation. The camp was a “outside the box” type of experience and it took quite a while for the travel community at large to discover how unique and rewarding this destination was. During the early years, it was only due to the financial backing of Wilderness Safaris that the camp was able to stay afloat.

Once word started spreading however, it became clear that this was a unique camp in a superb area and soon the tourist dollars started pouring in. Now, many years later, this camp is a multi award winning camp having recieved international status as THE model of sustainable community based tourism. Wilderness Safaris has since handed over ownership of the camp to the Torra Conservancy and the moneys raised has helped with schools, clinics, anti poaching patrols, skills training, and a general economic and political empowerment of these people. More importantly, the success of this camp has led to a stampede of communities signing on to develop their own conservancies and many more successful camps have sprung up all around Damaraland and Kaokoland, further to the north.

All the while, the communities and other custodians are being shown the value of conservation from an economic perspective and being mainly farmers by trade, they understand that a wise utilization of their resource is crucial to its sustainability.
It was during those early days at Damaraland Camp, waiting for the travel community at large to recognize what an astounding place Damaraland Camp was, that I learned firsthand the frustration of having something very special, and very unique, but not being able to convince sellers of travel to take the plunge. Considering the nature of travel in Africa, it is surprising how unadventurous many travel companies can be. Much of the fear in trying a lesser known destination is the fear of the unknown. That is why it is so important to find a travel company that has strong “on the ground” firsthand experience. When I started Piper & Heath Travel, I promised that I would help bring profitability to areas in need of conservation, thereby ensuring their continued conservation status. I also committed my company to the exposure of deserving destinations like Damaraland Camp, thereby alleviating the lag time between opening day, and self sustainability. This is why I developed the Expose Safari concept.

Please take a look at our Expose 2010 at the Expose tab above, for a unique travel opportunity.

Posted by: Chris Liebenberg
Wednesday April 7, 2010

Posted under: Exposé  //  Eco-tourism

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An environmental perspective - Ecosystems.

One of the lofty yet daily attained ideals of ecotourism, is the preservation of land for the sustainable benefit of the local population, and the health of the whole planet in the broader sense. The areas we visit on safari, all fall under protection of one status or another, whether it be government, community or private land ownership. All these areas are managed to a greater or a lesser degree depending on the resources, needs and attitudes of the various custodians. It is this “degree of land management” that I would like to discuss. No ecosystem exists in a vacuum, they are all interdependent of each other for the exchange of resources and waste. If you put 5 rhino onto a reserve and let them breed unchecked, they will become inbred and you will end up with birth defects. We manage this situation by bringing in members from other populations, or through artificial insemination from an animal not from that family. Management techniques such as this are what keep these areas healthy. I would venture to say though that we overestimate our own importance when it comes to our responsibility to land management.

Time and again I come across land management practices that were commonplace in the 50’s, 60’s or even 70’s that are so obviously disastrous, it is inconceivable to us today. A mere 4 decades ago it was policy in parts of Africa to exterminate Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus), or set fire to sociable weaver nests as both of these were considered a “pest”. Today the wild dog on the endangered list and sociable weavers numbers are way down from what they were before these practices. These were policies that were carried out by game wardens with the best intentions. They thought that these management practices were aiding the ecosystems they were tasked to protect. It is only through our research and modern knowledge that these practices have been proven to be detrimental.

Controlled burning following precise mathematical cycles and land grids, is another example of a land management practice that is still in use all over the world today. The wisdom is that by burning the” fuel buildup”, we will have more fires, but ones that are less hot. Many plants need “hot” fires to aid in germination, and the release of minerals into the soils with “hot” fires is different from those of less hot fires. It worries me to think what it is that we may learn in the future that would prove this practice, or many others, to be detrimental, as has happened so often in our recent history.

Posted by: Chris Liebenberg
Wednesday March 24, 2010

Posted under: Ecology  //  Conservation

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What should I look for in a good African Travel Agency?

There are a number of obvious features to look for in any travel agency or business that you intend doing business with, but there are a few key areas to explore when dealing with an agency that claims to offer African Travel as a specialization. Here are a few of these areas:

• When dealing with the agency, take note of their response time to you, as well as thier willingness to listen to your comments and ideas. If your Safari is to be suited to you as an individual group with your specific desires, then it is imperative that your destination specialist take the time to get to know you.

• Look for strong partners. Your destination specialist is only as strong as the inbound operators that they have partnered with in the host country. Have they established strong partnerships with operators that practice sustainable eco-tourism, or do they simply go with the lowest bid, regardless of their ethical grounding?

• Watch out for packaged deals. Packaged deals are generally designed when an agency does not have enough knowledgeable consultants. To make it easier on themselves, they package deals that require less knowledge to put together. Packaged deals are also often used to hide cheaper and often less desriable destinations.

• Does the travel agency display a transparent and accountable dedication to eco-tourism and sustainable travel? If you get too vague an answer when you ask this question, beware.

• Look for feedback from previous travelers. Feel free to ask for feedback from other travelers or partners; these can be a great guide.

• Find a knowledgeable destination specialist. If your consultant constantly needs to check with someone else to get answers to you, then chances are, your consultant does not have enough experience.

• Auxilliary Services – It is so much easier when your agency offers to take care of all your flying, transfers, travel insurance etc. These services are often “not worth the effort” to many agencies but the ones that care, will offer them simply to ensure a more rounded travel experience.

The deciding factor in who you choose for your African Travels should not be who has the best deal, but who has the most knowledge, practices sustainable eco-tourism and goes the extra mile to ensure the perfect itinerary.

Posted by: Chris Liebenberg
Tuesday January 19, 2010

Posted under: Piper & Heath  //  Africa

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