Tswalu Blog

Marcus Westberg, a renowned photojournalist with a passion for storytelling, recently spent several weeks at Tswalu documenting his day-to-day experiences.

While pangolins are known to be threatened by the illegal wildlife trade, electrocution by electric fences, habitat loss, and road mortalities, very little attention has been focused on how climate change will affect their welfare.

The cheetah, the world’s fastest land mammal, is one of the predators that finds sanctuary in Tswalu Kalahari’s wide, open spaces. Cheetah are known to be shy and elusive and, as a result, we don’t know exactly how many there are on the reserve.

Tswalu Kalahari Reserve is regarded as one of Africa’s great conservation stories, not only through the preservation of the southern Kalahari’s diverse habitats but also the protection of many rare and critically endangered species. One such species is the Desert black rhino.

Three of South Africa’s nine vulture species, including the once-prolific White-backed vulture, have declined to such an extent that they are regarded as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Aardvarks are strange animals. They look like a bizarre hybrid between a kangaroo, pig and vacuum cleaner. They are mostly active at night, smell odd, and live most of their lives in solitude.

On World Pangolin Day we are reminded that all species of pangolin are threatened by illegal trade, which persists and is escalating.

On 7 September 2019, International Vulture Awareness Day, BirdLife South Africa declared Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve as South Africa’s first Vulture Safe Zone.

The KEEP (Kalahari Endangered Ecosystem Project) project has been formed to try to answer some of the pressing issues related specifically to climate change effects in the Southern Kalahari region.