On decades of trails through the African wilderness, I’ve observed systems that have perfected the art of survival through millions of years of trial, error, and adaptation.
Between March 2024 and February 2026, the Upper Letaba Catchment Restoration Project transformed the landscape of the Upper Groot Letaba catchment while strengthening partnerships, creating jobs, and securing vital water resources for the region. What began as an invasive alien plant clearing initiative evolved into a landscape-scale restoration effort that is now helping to catalyse long-term stewardship, scientific research, and community collaboration across the Wolkberg escarpment.
Rising along South Africa’s northeastern escarpment between Polokwane and Tzaneen, lies Magoebaskloof. This sweep of mist belt forest, rolling grassland, and deep-cut valleys is one of South Africa’s most atmospheric birding destinations.
On 13th December 2025, the Finale community officially launched its Eco-Tourism Office and newly established hiking trails along the Olifants River, locally known as the Lepelle. For a community positioned between private reserves and along one of the region’s most significant river corridors, this moment marked the opening of a building, and importantly the beginning of a new chapter.
Last month’s lioness charge was a live demonstration of how living systems behave under sudden stress. Three people stood on
In a quiet room in Hoedspruit, wrapped in a blanket far removed from the wild it should have known, a newborn pangolin rests. Its scales are still soft. Its eyes barely open to the world. This is Archie – one of the most threatened mammals on Earth – and the subject of a photograph by Lance van de Vyver that has now been selected among the top 24 images worldwide for the People’s Choice Award in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards 2026 (#WPY61).
The good news is that poachers slaughtered far fewer rhinos in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in KwaZulu-Natal last year. The bad news is that they killed many more in Kruger National Park instead.
Elephants are steadily reducing the number of mature marula trees in the park, while regeneration has all but collapsed due to browsing from other herbivores. By allowing their numbers to remain at current levels we are choosing short-term comfort over long-term ecological integrity.
Across many rural parts of South Africa, an often overlooked but growing environmental and public health crisis is brewing, requiring urgent attention. It is a crisis shaped by everyday necessities, limited services and difficult choices, and it centres on the disposal of disposable nappies and sanitary products, known collectively as Absorbent Hygiene Products, or AHPs.
Hoedspruit has always lived in a delicate balance with water. The rivers that sustain our farms, wildlife and livelihoods can, in a heartbeat, become forces of destruction. Over the past two weeks, that balance tipped violently.
