Dr Mike Peel, Specialist Scientist and Ecologist at ARC Animal Production, Range and Forage Sciences, has received the Southern African Wildlife Management Association’s 2026 Wildlife Excellence Award, presented on 3 September at the SAWMA Conference Gala Dinner at Cradle Moon Lakeside Game Lodge.
The award recognises nearly four decades of research shaping how the Lowveld’s wildlife is managed. In 1989 Peel launched the Savanna Ecosystem Dynamics project in Nelspruit – still running today, with around 600 vegetation monitoring sites across the Lowveld and an annual aerial game count, started in 1992, covering roughly 450,000 hectares of private protected land west of the Kruger National Park.
His work extends well beyond South Africa’s borders. Peel has contributed to conservation programmes in Mozambique’s Gorongosa, Zinave, Banhine, Maputo, and Limpopo National Parks, and to livestock-rangeland management in Zimbabwe’s Dimbangombe. Most recently, he helped develop the Elephant Management Plan Framework for the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area.
A registered ecology professional with SACNASP and an NRF-rated scientist, Peel isn’t attached to a university – yet his research footprint runs through most of them. He holds a Research Fellowship at Wits, and collaborates with UKZN, Pretoria, Mpumalanga, Nelson Mandela, and Tshwane universities locally, alongside international partners including Wageningen, Cambridge, Texas A&M, and NASA.
Over his career he has authored or co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed papers, seven book chapters, and over 500 technical reports for landowners – output that would be respectable inside a university department and is more remarkable outside one. He served as President of the Grassland Society of Southern Africa in 2010 and currently sits on the Scientific Advisory Committees of Welgevonden and Tswalu Game Reserves.
Peel was adamant the recognition isn’t his alone. “This award was achieved not by the work of one individual but through long-term support of family and a small, dedicated and highly competent field team,” he said.
