Indagare Journeys: Zimbabwe Conservation with Dereck and Beverly Joubert

I am just back from hosting an unforgettable Indagare Impact safari in Zimbabwe with legendary filmmakers and conservationists Dereck and Beverly Joubert. The couple, who are heroes of wildlife preservation, joined us for the last three nights of our journey at their camp Tembo Plains (our favorite of the trip). On river cruises and at bush dinners, they shared stories of a truly wild life—complete with surviving airplane crashes, buffalo and elephant attacks, venomous snake bites and assassination attempts. (Our group agreed that they must be the most interesting couple alive.) Learn more about the wildlife conservation initiative that brought us together with member highlights from the trip below.

Last month, ten adventurous Indagare members joined me on our second Impact trip to Zimbabwe. While based at some of the most remarkable lodges in Zimbabwe—Mpala Jena Camp in Zambezi National Park, Wilderness Linkwasha in Hwange National Park and Tembo Plains Camp on the Sapi Reserve—our group of travelers experienced captivating wildlife encounters in remote, private concessions. (A few highlights: a male and female lion trading off territorial calls; a gaggle of cubs roughhousing; elephant mud baths; giraffes at a salt lick; and much more.)

We chose Zim, as locals call it, because of the groundbreaking conservation work being done in the country. Award-winning photographers and filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert, who joined us for our last four days of safari at Tembo Plains, have begun the largest translocation of animals in history in the north of the country. They are using the lessons learned from their Rhinos Without Borders project that successfully moved endangered rhinos in South Africa to Botswana on an ambitious new initiative to transfer elephants from an overpopulated region in southern Zimbabwe up to a former hunting concession that they have leased for photographic safaris. This concession, which is bordered to the north by the Zambezi river and to the west by Mana Pools National Park, is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that now encompasses more than a million and half acres of protected wildlife area.

​​From Mpala Jena, where we visited Victoria Falls, and Hwange, which is the oldest national park in Africa, to Mana Pools, everywhere our days consisted of spectacular wildlife encounters, as well as talks with scientists, wildlife veterinarians, rangers and monitors. They spoke of the human-wildlife conflict crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa but also shared hopeful signs: one of the translocated elephants arrived pregnant at Sapi and has given birth. Endangered African wild dog have recently been translocated, and the pack also contains new pups. A lion expert in Hwange shared the innovative ways that the Long Shield Lion Guardians are spreading conservation principles throughout their local communities.

One evening as we dined out on a flood plain surrounded by oil lanterns and with the stars of the Southern Hemisphere and a sliver of a moon above, the Jouberts talked about some of the lessons of a life in conservation. “If you spend every day for years in search of real discoveries,” Beverly explained, “you are going to have some disasters.” They had shared the story of her being gored by a Cape Buffalo and barely surviving. The incident only increased their determination to protect wildlife and wild places. As a pair of fewer than a dozen individuals who have been named National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence (along with Robert Ballard, who rediscovered the Titanic), they have been deemed “infinitely curious people who are making the planet a better place.” That night, we all felt like we were in the rare presence of heroes. As rangers scanned flashlights into the dark, illuminating hippo and elephant grazing a few hundred yards away, we marveled at the couple who had brought us into the wilderness that they are rewilding.

“Africa is magical,” one of our first-time safari-goers declared. And it is true, I thought, that the magic of nature that you felt as a child seems more present there. It appears when a guide picks up a guinea fowl feather and explains that his brother once used its magic to wreak havoc on an ex-lover or when a tracker suddenly spots an animal in a vast landscape, as though conjuring it from the sea of grasses. And when a falling star streaked across the sky and three of us saw it all at the same time, we gasped in unison. To be in the bush on a perfect night with real-life heroes who are making the world better—that was magic too.

Read more impressions from some of our travelers below.