Prime
Meet Carel Verhoef, a conservationist who advocates eco-friendly tourism
What you need to know:
- Carel Verhoef has been a conservationist for close to two decades; he has been following and documenting the migration, and his 20 years of scientific data in Serengeti-Maasai Mara have been relied on by major news networks.
Arusha. The great migration of wildebeests, zebras and other herbivores across the Serengeti in Tanzania and the Masai Mara in Kenya is the only place in the world that can support up to two million animals migrating from one place to another.
Recognised as a wonder of the world, the migration has annually attracted an influx of tourists from all corners of the world.
This never-ending journey of these magnificent animals to and from these neighbouring countries that the world comes to bear witness to has increasingly been affected by several factors.
Questions have been arising about how long the destruction will finally put a halt to this world wonder.
Mr Carel Verhoef has been a conservationist for close to two decades; he has been following and documenting the migration, and his 20 years of scientific data in Serengeti-Maasai Mara have been relied on by major news networks. CNN Inside Africa held an exclusive interview with him a few years ago, and his concern is still substantial.
Born and raised in Kruger National Park in South Africa, Carel first visited Tanzania as part of the team that came to learn how Tanzania was able to conduct conservation without fences. Ever since, he has established an eco-friendly safari tour company called The Great Migration Camp that uses only mobile camps and tented accommodations.
“We don’t even use the generator,” he says.
Conservation has been a hot topic in Tanzania; however, Mr Carel insists scientific data supports all the government initiatives in conserving the National Park and surrounding areas. There has been negative publicity, but Tanzania is largely a success story when it comes to conservation,” he said.
“Together with the Tanzanian government, we have new technology to solve human-wildlife conflicts,” he adds.
Tanzania is geographically crucial in connecting Southern and East African elephant populations, so keeping the corridors open is very important and thus practices fenceless conservation.
For the last 20 years that he has been tracking the migration, Mr Carel has noticed the migration is getting ‘boxed in; the space on the Serengeti side is slowed being encroached; already, he says Maasai Mara has been invaded by cattle grazing in the area; it’s a dire situation because cattle are owned by humans.
Once humans are involved, human rights activists will always be on their side.
With the human population closing in, Mr Carel fears that the number of migrating animals will drop. “Once that number drops to a certain level, the animals will stop migrating,” he warned.
This won’t be the first time; in the 1950s and ‘60s, the wildebeest population was not of a sizable number, and the animals did not migrate across the two countries; only after intervention and an increase in the population did the migration start occurring.
Mr Carel operates The Great Migration Camp, an eco-friendly tour company that does not use a single brick or mortar.
A tourist gets to witness what it is like to eat lunch while the lion roars next to the tent, an exhilarating experience that remains ingrained in the minds of tourists long after they have departed Tanzania, but to Mr Carel, it is part of his endeavour to conserve the environment and heal the nature that has been affected by human activities for far too long.
“It’s a zero-impact camp; we all run on sustainable energy,” he said. I grew up in the bush when my father was an archaeologist, so this is nothing new to me, but still, the camp is more comfortable than my house; we have hot showers and everything,” he added.
Most tourists who have spent a day or two in the tents leave with amazement at how it’s so enjoyable to live so simply without the bulk of modern technology and how that draws one close to nature.
One tourist still remembers hearing hyenas howling outside his tent, with only the tent fabric separating him from the beast. More impressive is that people learn how to use a minimal amount of water for their daily use, and they are always baffled at how one can truly get by without wasting resources. Most tourists go back to their world with reformed minds.
“We aim to show that you can live a life with the least effect on the environment and still be content,” he said.
Mr Carel has visited Tanzania’s national parks for decades now, and he is impressed with how the conservation efforts have been achieved compared to other countries.
He still faults the herders who encroach on the conversation land that largely bring about human-animal conflicts, the human activities he says that will be detrimental to the environment, drive away the wildebeests, and put the great migration in tatters.
He asserts that Tanzania is such a big country to have land problems, and he emphasises the importance of conserving the national parks and buffer zones. He acknowledges the polarising views on this matter, but he insists on looking at the scientific data that is readily available.
“This debate has been there long before the discussion of hunting blocks’,’ he mentions.
If the great migration stops, so will be revenue for the economy chain that survives on it, from the hotels and all the Tanzanian youth employed there, but a big chunk of the tourism foreign exchange that comes from visitors will dry up. But as a conservationist, Mr Carel thinks much further in the future about what kind of country the Tanzanian younger generation will inherit. Thinking a hundred years from now, he says: “Once you lose this, you never get it back; that’s what people do not realise,” he warns.
