Our Stories

CONSERVATION JOURNAL ISSUE 12 – Twice a year, Tswalu's conservation team surveys herbivore populations across all five of the reserve's habitat types. The data collected goes well beyond a headcount – find out what it reveals, and why it matters.

Some people return to a place for the landscape. Others return for the wildlife. Dana Ladzinski and her family return to Tswalu for all of it, and for something harder to name.

In the semi-arid southern Kalahari, one tree above all others defines the landscape. Boscia albitrunca – the shepherd's tree – has sustained people, wildlife, and entire ecosystems for centuries. Tswalu's newest restaurant bears its name.

CONSERVATION JOURNAL ISSUE 11 – Late winter into early spring brings a wave of flowering across Tswalu. As the Kalahari's thorn trees come into bloom, the reserve is tracking the season through phenology, nature's own calendar.

Tarkuni is Tswalu's sole-use private homestead, tucked into a secluded valley in the Korannaberg foothills. Five suites, up to 10 guests, and 118,000 hectares of the southern Kalahari entirely to yourselves.

Using camera traps, GPS collars, drones and AI, conservation student Daniel Sacker is spending his year at Tswalu discovering how technology is quietly reshaping fieldwork, from tracking wild dogs to identifying brown hyena from thousands of images.

CONSERVATION JOURNAL ISSUE 10 - At Tswalu, conservation is regenerative as well as sustainable. Beyond protecting what is already here, natural processes have been restored and wildlife reintroduced, rebuilding the ecological resilience of the reserve.

Photojournalist Marcus Westberg has returned to Tswalu every year since 2021. He talks through the details that mark a Tswalu photograph, and the frame he almost missed.

Tswalu is more than a protected landscape. Through the Tswalu Foundation, it functions as a living laboratory, hosting multiple active research projects that build, over time, into a connected body of evidence about how the southern Kalahari works and how...