Our Stories

How tourism can help rather than hinder our efforts to preserve the natural world.

How does one go about studying the food preferences of one of the world’s most shy and elusive mammals? In a recent article researcher, Dr Wendy Panaino addressed the puzzle of what pangolins eat by collecting pangolin scats.

Considering their large impact on ecosystems, small mammals - especially mice, sengis and shrews - are particularly useful indicators of habitat health.

We tend to associate size with importance, both in terms of the role something plays in the world and how impressed we ought to feel in its presence.

The reward of getting to grips with the southern Kalahari’s profound sense of place is a reawakening of the senses and a longing to reconnect with nature and benefit from its healing power.

One of the tagged pangolins became a central character in Leonie’s story. On her very first night, after several hours of following the pangolin’s tracks with the researchers through the dunes to its burrow, she had a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Thomas Peschak’s assignments for National Geographic have taken him all over the world. Several months spent with the Tswalu Foundation led to a story for the iconic magazine about the impact of climate change on biodiversity in an arid savannah.

PhD candidate Wendy Panaino is Tswalu’s resident ground pangolin expert and project manager for the Kalahari Endangered Ecosystem Project (KEEP), which aims to understand the responses of multiple Kalahari organisms to climate change.

The Kalahari invokes many vivid images, but none more so than a silhouetted camelthorn tree complete with sociable weaver's nest in a red sunset.