Interview with the conservation manager of iMfolozi Park - Craig Reid

"What difference am I making?"

The role of guardian of the wild and vulnerable things of our world can be a lonely one, particularly when the forces against conservation seem so huge. "Sometimes I sit out here all alone and think - What difference am I making? Is it all in vain?" acknowledges Craig Reid, Conservation Manager of the iMfolozi Park.

But then he remembers the vast network of supporters around the world who care as much as he does, and rely on people like him to hold the frontline. And he watches the extraordinary animals that wander past his home in the middle of the African bush, and knows that he has no choice.

"You feel so angry..."
Among the animals is the shy but inquisitive black rhino, a creature close to Craig's heart. As a student, he spent a year in the park monitoring black rhino full-time, so he knows the animals as well as anyone could. Perhaps that makes it particularly important to him that none of them fall victim to poachers. In 10 years, only one black rhino has been poached in the iMfolozi section of the park. It's a remarkable record, but that loss still hurt intensely. "You feel so angry, especially when you have knowledge of many of the individual animals," Craig says.

He and his team take it as a personal and professional insult when poaching gangs slip through their net, and they work extremely hard to prevent it. Guards patrol the area day and night, armed with binoculars and semi-automatic weapons. Patrols are carefully coordinated so that poachers can't predict their likely movements.

A protector, not a threat
The patrols also monitor the black rhino population, and WWF's ongoing funding in this regard is invaluable, Craig says. Knowing as much as possible about the population in the huge area (Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park covers about 100,000 hectares) means staff can make informed decisions about how many animals should be translocated to new homes each year in order to optimise population growth of the species.

Black rhinos, of course, have no idea that Craig is a protector, not a threat. To them, it would probably be as extraordinary to find out how carefully they were being protected, as it would be to us to find we're actually in a shoe-box experiment being conducted by white mice.

"Lucky them," laughs Craig.

Lucky indeed, to have people of the caliber of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife's best on their side.