What does it take to conserve vast and untamed African ecosystems for future generations?
A former Royal Marine, a pack of anti-poaching dogs and staff with in-depth local knowledge, according to Singita, Africa’s leading eco-tourism brand.
More than 4,000 miles away as the crow flies from where you’re probably reading this, one of Earth’s last mass wildlife movements is reaching its crescendo.
The Great Wildebeest Migration is an ever-moving, circular phenomenon, in which, from July, roughly two million of the prehistoric-looking animals — plus about 500,000 zebras — dare to cross the Mara River from the northern reaches of the Serengeti into Kenya.
Waiting for the wildebeest is their most formidable predator, the massive Nile crocodile, which can grow to 20ft long. To them, the migration is an all-you-can-eat buffet. Smaller herds of wildebeest and zebras choose to sit out this epic, 1,900-mile odyssey — and who can blame them when the mortality rate sits at 20%? These resident groups favour specific, food-rich areas, such as Singita Grumeti, a 350,000-acre open sliver of land bordering the Serengeti National Park.
This conservation success story is managed by Singita, Africa’s leading eco-tourism brand, and the Grumeti Fund, a not-for-profit organisation established by American billionaire Paul Tudor Jones II. The former manages seven very different properties inside the slender reserve, which, together, can host up to 136 guests — giving them about 2,500 acres or 23 Vatican Cities each.
Accommodation options include Explore, a light-on-the-ground, private-use space that’s as close to actual camping as you can get at this level of luxury; Sasakwa, an Edwardian-inspired manor house with shelves lined with first-edition books and Peter Beard artwork on the walls; and Serengeti House, a recently refurbished villa filled with contemporary African art and craft in a leading example of modern safari-lodge style.
There’s also Sabora, an ultra-luxury tented camp in which you can live out all your bush-explorer dreams in serious comfort. Here, everything is crafted out of canvas, leather and brushed metal, with outdoor showers and pots of salts next to the bath, meditation spots and smart, hanging organisers that look as if they’ve been made by Hermès.
Lions prowl through the unfenced encampment at night and sometimes stop to slumber pressed up against the hopefully tough textile walls. Getting up at 5am with the sun feels like a privilege rather than a chore, the sky stained in painterly strokes of peach and cornflower blue.
On twice-daily game drives from and to Sabora, our calm, confident and softly spoken guide, Mishi Mtili, tells us that Tanzania’s national animal, the Messiah giraffe, has the same number of vertebrae as a human being (seven) and psychedelic-looking lilac-breasted rollers get their name from the acrobatic dives the males perform in mating season. Movement is key to spotting wildlife, she keeps telling us; the weathered tree trunks we occasionally mistake for something more interesting are ‘ALTs’ or ‘animal looking things’.
‘For so long, it’s been assumed that African communities are not sophisticated,’ says Jo Bailes, Singita’s chief executive officer, ‘but then when you actually understand and you look, [you realise that] they’re the most sophisticated of all because they’ve learned to live with animals. They’ve learned to be completely integrated into Nature.’
A Grumeti Fund Canine Unit helps conservation stay one step ahead of poaching.
In the villages bordering Grumeti, people often keep bees because elephants actively avoid them out of fear of being stung. If Goliath wakes up one day and fancies taking on David, his GPS-tracking collar — fitted with the help of plucky guests who want to get involved — will sound the alarm the moment he strays into the neighbouring village. When I jokingly ask if we can paddle in the Grumeti River, Mtili shepherds me straight in without a moment’s hesitation. The monitor lizards — or unofficial river watchers — are lounging on the banks undisturbed, which apparently means I won’t be snapped up by a crocodile.
One of Bailes’s ongoing concerns is the steady exodus of young people to the cities and the gradual loss of their indigenous practices and knowledge that follows. Highly skilled trackers are necessary for the guests’ game drives, but they’re also an imperative component of Singita’s conservation and anti-poaching efforts. In the past 15 years, Grumeti’s lion population has exploded and it now boasts the highest density of the animals in the country.
We come across them every day: grooming, stalking wildebeest, tearing apart a just-slain topi and napping upside down with their legs akimbo. On our last evening, we pause next to a puddle of nine cubs, their still-mottled coats a natural camouflage to help them blend into the shadows and tall grasses as their mothers hunt.
As well as year-round food and plenty of water, Grumeti offers them something else: safety, courtesy of one ranger for every three square kilometres of ground. One hundred and twenty scouts and an elite canine tracking team managed by Glen Steyn, a former British Royal Marine, make up the Grumeti Fund Anti-Poaching Unit. The dogs can detect ivory, bushmeat, snares and track human scent; AI cameras that can capture images of specific animals and detect unwanted human visitors have been installed along the concession’s border.
To maintain the manpower required to staff the unit and lodges, there are a number of training programmes running at any one time, including the Singita Guiding Academy, which admits six students every year, offering them excellent references or the option to stay another year if there are no available jobs when they graduate. The majority choose the latter option. ‘I’ve been here as long as some of the furniture,’ says Mtili as we outrun the rain from our high-altitude sundowner spot back to Sabora, its pinprick lights just visible on the horizon.
Later, she shows me photographs of her two beautiful daughters. Every year, an all-female team of runners signs up to traverse the Grumeti corridor in support of thousands of local high-school girls, as 83 annual scholarships and female empowerment sessions to counter cultural traditions sensitively help to keep more young women in secondary education.
Proper immersion in the African continent, at Grumeti — or any of Singita’s other lodges in four, soon to be five, sought-after wilderness destinations — ‘is so much richer than just coming on a safari experience and looking at the Big Five,’ says Bailes — although you’ll see all five and more. He is passionate about reconnecting guests with nature. ‘By coming to Africa, and learning from our guides and trackers and other indigenous people, you can learn to have that relationship and, in learning to have that relationship, you do start to learn to care.’
Rates at Singita Grumeti start from $2,210 (about £1,640) per person per night, on a full-board basis. The price includes game drives and return airstrip transfers.
Exclusive-use options (Singita Serengeti House, Singita Kilima and Singita Milele) start from $19,505 (about £14,480) per night for eight or more guests.
