October - 2019

34 / PEOPLE / Conservationists
PEOPLE / 35
Brian
Heath
Age
69
Role
CEO of Mara Conservancy;
Director of Seiya Ltd
Country
Kenya
Memorable moment
Working with his Tanzanian counterparts in order to
revolutionise the safety of the Mara Triangle and the
Northern Serengeti
Achievements
Presidential Order of the Grand Warrior of Kenya
(2013)
Online
maratriangle.org
Thandiwe
Mweetwa
Age
31
Role
Senior ecologist at the Zambian Carnivore
Programme; manager of the organisation’s
Conservation Education Programme
Country
Zambia
Memorable moment
Becoming a National Geographic Emerging Explorer
in 2016
Achievements
Alumnus of the Obama Foundation’s 2018 Leaders:
Africa programme
Online
zambiacarnivores.org
Edward Selfe
“People vote. Animals don’t.
That makes conservation difficult”
“I remember my mother’s vivid stories about the local wildlife when
she was growing up; they sparked my fascination with nature”
Brian Heath is a busy man. Right now, he’s negotiating to
become an advisor to – and hopefully manager of – the worldfamous
Maasai Mara National Reserve. He’s currently in charge
of the soutwestern part of it, which is called the Mara Triangle.
This section has been consistently regarded as the bestmanaged
area of the Maasai Mara. Less crowded than other
parts of the reserve, and with better-maintained roads and a
strong team, the area is a model for conservation turnaround.
“We were asked 18 years ago by the local Maasai to help out
with the western part of the reserve, where there were multiple
problems,” says Heath. “When I came to the area, there were 27
demoralised staff, a string of poachers’ camps, limited roads and
massive amounts of cattle-raiding. It was anarchy really.”
In his first year as head of the Mara Triangle, Heath made
considerable progress. He trebled revenue, made sure rangers
were paid on time, and started responding to calls for assistance
during cattle raids at night. Within three years, these issues were
under control, “Which was perhaps the single most helpful thing
we did for the Maasai,” says Heath. “On top of that, wildlife
numbers rose, and we haven’t had any poaching incidents in the
last 12 years.” Thanks to these improvements, the Mara Triangle
is now one of the few reserves in Kenya that doesn’t rely on
donor funding; with park fees financing most of the work.
“The Mara is relatively secure given its iconic status,” he
adds. “But it will only survive as long as the greater ecosystem
outside is intact.” Step outside the bounds of the conservancies
that fringe the Mara, and you’ll see wheat farms and housing
cause catastrophic problems for wildlife, such as blocking
migration corridors
“For conservation to be effective in the long term across
the country, its vital that the state looks to incentivising landowners
to keep their land for wildlife,” says Heath.
Lions are vanishing. Their numbers have halved in the last 25
years, leading to the classification as vulnerable to extinction by
the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Zambia, and the Luangwa Valley in particular, is one of the
last strongholds for the larger African carnivores. With roughly 40
percent of the country’s land set aside for wildlife, and strong buffer
zones for lion parks, these apex predators have a good chance of
survival here. “Luangwa holds Zambia’s biggest lion and leopard
populations and its second-largest wild dog population. So ecologically,
it’s a key area,” said Thandiwe Mweetwa in an interview with
BUCKiT.
It is, therefore, the perfect place for research. Mweetwa, whose
initial career choice of wildlife vet failed due to a fear of blood,
successfully turned her attention instead to ecology and biology,
and works to map the patterns of human-carnivore interaction as
they shift, so she’s often tracking and studying different lion or wild
dog groups. As well as rescuing snared animals, she liaises with
communities whenever there are human-animal conflicts, and she
runs a programme to educate youths about conservation.
“We need to balance the ‘boots on the ground’ approach with
meaningful engagement with disenfranchised communities,” she
says. “In the next decade, we’ll be faced with the daunting task of
rapid economic development coinciding with biodiversity protection.”
Partly to address this, Mweetwa set up Women in Wildlife
Conservation in 2016. Participants receive full instruction in all
aspects of conservation work, and this vital information is integrated
into secondary school- and community education.
“What makes me hopeful about the work that I do, and conservation
work in general, is that most of the problems are tied to
human behaviour,” adds Mweetwa. “As a global community, we
need to cultivate a sense of pride in our shared natural heritage,
and realise that only collective effort will make a difference.”