Great Plains Conservation

Great Plains has launched its 12 Days of Giving fundraising programme this Festive Season to spread joy and hope throughout Africa. Please watch the #12DaysBrighterFuture video to support any one of the twelve community and conservation projects supported by the Great Plains Foundation and donate through this link.

The Dream is Alive, and I'm Awake! In the period that Botswana has been closed you could have not only dreamt of having a baby, but had a baby! So to celebrate the birth of tourism again we take a nostalgic look back, by taking you to the waters of the Okavango now that Great Plains Botswana camps are open for business again...

At Great Plains we understand that thriving conservation programs are only possible when communities living alongside the wildlife and protected areas are afforded opportunities to learn, interact, and benefit from these conserved areas. Based on this, the Great Plains Foundation has been working on launching an innovative initiative called the Great Plains Academy, which aims to provide personal and community enrichment opportunities for individuals in northern Botswana.

Great Plains Conservation and Botswana’s Xigera Safari Lodge, unified through their mutual commitment to environmentally conscious hospitality and the conservation of Africa’s pristine wild places, have joined forces to create elevated, tailor-made, and life-enriching experiences for the seasoned safari-goer.

Great Plains Conservation's enviroment team are constantly looking into how we operate and how we can improve our behaviour and in particular the cycle of our waste products.  Our latest environmental initiative in both Kenya and Botswana aims to combat glass waste.  The bottle crushing initiative in Botswana is based out of our Maun office on the fringe of the Okavango Delta.

Today, we are announcing a bold initiative for you to return home to Africa, to the warm welcome of our communities and staff, to the conservation-based safaris that are synonymous with Great Plains Conservation and to the spectacle of Mother Nature.

On seeing rhinos for the first time in their lives, last year, the Chiefs of six remote villages from the Okavango Community Trust couldn’t believe how calm the rhinos were, having only heard tales of the animals’ ferocity and dangerous nature. But there lay three rhinos, in the shade of a tree. Three hefty, healthy and peaceful rhinos that now called Botswana home, after being relocated through the Rhinos Without Borders project from poaching hotspots in South Africa.

While we wait to head out into the world and wild again, our boots are laced, our linen shirts are buttoned and our explorer hats are tipped, as they keep the adventurer inside us alive and inspired. Our clothes prepare us for the day, for the night, for the unforeseen. They prepare us for ambles with lechwe and leopards, photographic missions across remote rivers and campfire dinners under the Milky Way.

Alchemy is defined as a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination. The word, in this context, is used to describe all kinds of things from romantic love to perfumery, consciousness to nature’s seasons. Historically, it is a science that originated in Greco-Roman Egypt and was practiced throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, as alchemists attempted to purify mature and perfect certain materials.

Last week I wrote, and declared, no more use of ‘the C word.’ So I’ll stick to that. But for many of us now Conservation is everything. For the first time in history we can demonstrate that bad conservation can collapse economies and even kill us.

At Great Plains Conservation we love to surprise you. In a good way! A bush dinner, a hand made gift, small things to make your safari a momentous experience. I will personally be taking on that responsibility now. Stand by.Just because borders are closed, and airports have become like hot zones, preventing you from experiencing a Great Plains Conservation safari for real… it does not mean you have to shut down your senses and not experience our wildernesses at all.  I will be sendi…

"Okavango: River of Dreams' is a three-part blue-chip series from Dereck & Beverly Joubert on Nat Geo WILD. Viewers in UK, Ireland, mainland Europe and Africa can see the first chapter starting Sunda 01 September (UK and Ireland) and 05 September (mainland Europe and Africa). Chapter 1: Paradise. 01 September UK & Ireland; 05 September mainland Europe & Africa

Our beautiful Botswana is under siege by lobby groups. On Thursday 21 February a white paper was submitted to the government recommending wildlife utilisation with a series of suggestions to: a) open up the largely condemned hunting of elephants and all wildlife again, b) the culling of massive numbers of elephants, c) the setting up of canning factories for those dead elephants to convert them into pet food, d) more fences, and e) the active cutting off of wildlife corridors. Read the Botswana Government's White Paper on their official Facebook page here.

The official opening ceremony of Great Plains Conservation's Mpala Jena Camp took place on Friday 15 February.  The Hon P. Mupfumira (Zimbabwe's Minister of Environment, Tourism and Hospitality Industry) opened the camp in front of tourism dignitaries from Zimbabwe and the co-owners of Mpala Jena Camp Dereck and Beverly Joubert and Blessing Munyenyiwa. Great Plains Conservation is honored to be a part of Zimbabwean conservation tourism story.  Watch the opening presentation and view the camp here

Great Plains Conservation's Dereck and Beverly Joubert's latest film, Tribe vs. Pride, will be shown on Nat Geo Wild channels this Friday 10 August* on World Lion Day, during Big Cat Week.