A new inbound safari operator, Natural Selection, has set up shop in Cape Town, and aims to offer experiences that foster deep links with Africa.

Well-known industry personality, Colin Bell, a founder of Wilderness Safaris and Great Plains Conservation, is an investor, shareholder and advisor to the new operation.

Natural Selection will set up camps in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique, and while most of them are set to come on line by mid-2017, the operator is already able to offer beds in Botswana.

The sales and marketing function for the new company is being undertaken by Australian-born Peter Allison, who has been associated with African wildlife for the past 22 years. He told Tourism Update that while there were a lot of great safari companies doing great work, Natural Selection would focus more on “real safaris rather than soft furnishings”.

“We are winding the clock back,” he said, “We want our travellers to really touch Africa.” The company would offer basic, but not rustic, camps minus the chandeliers and artfully draped rugs, he said; instead they could count on enhancing activities such as story tellers and community encounters. 

At present, Natural Selection is a shareholder in the Meno a Kwena camp on the Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana. It has also struck a partnership with Unchartered Africa, affording utilisation of four camps in Botswana, and mobile expeditions.  The portfolio includes the upmarket Jack’s Camp.  Allison says it is now possible to offer guests pursuits such as horseback riding and a ‘seat’ at spectacular events such as the annual zebra migration across the pans round about May.

Many more concessions have been lined up and because camps will be kept simple, the period ofconstruction is expected to be brief.  However, environmental assessment impact studies (EIA), which the operator sets great store by, will take time. 

Particularly noteworthy is the East Caprivi development at Nkasa Rupara in Namibia, across from Botswana’s Linyanti Reserve.  Here the company has secured a 200 000 ha concession.  Allison says this largely undiscovered gem is “raw and exciting” and has potential to become the “new Okavango”.  With terrain more open than at Chobe, it has large buffalo herds which attract predators. It will be accessed from Botswana and form part of a circuit with three other camps to be built by Natural Selection, two in the Okavango and one outside.

Also in Namibia, a camp will be constructed on the dry Hoanib riverbed, where the attraction is desert wildlife and the Himba people.

In Mozambique, Natural Selection is in talks with Anvil Bay in the Maputo Elephant Reserve and could be in a position to host clients by year-end, while in South Africa, development of a camp at Mkambati on the Wild Coast, where fresh- and salt-water kayaking will a major activity, is on the go. The company has also secured concessions for two properties in the De Hoop Nature Reserve in the Western Cape; reaching the second of the two involves a guided walk that intersects with the Whale Trail.

Natural Selection will seek a balance of guests from the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and Asia where it has connections in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines.  Ultimately representatives abroad will be appointed.

Allison is a one-time guide who has worked in the Sabi Sands, Botswana, Namibia and the Amazon.  He says the staff of Natural Selection are a group of old friends who got together to bring fun and conservation back into safaris.  They include Dave van Smeerdijk who is charged with the day to day running of the company, Debbie Swandale on reservations, Kim Wagner who is assisting with sales and Dr Jennifer Lalley, consulting on conservation.  Offices have been established in Westlake, Cape Town, and a website will be live in June.

According to Allison, the team firmly believes tourism has a huge role to play in conservation, and “if you can save the land, you can save species”.  The company and its investors have committed to a donation of 1% of turnover to conservation from the get go. A cross-continental view will be taken in the allocation of these funds.

In setting up camps, the company seeks the involvement and part-ownerships of communities, believing these to be beneficial to service levels and sustainability.

“There are exciting times ahead,” states Allison, “we look forward to putting people on safari.  We have to make them fall in love with Africa before they fall in love with conservation.”