For Grant Fowlds, conservation is not about placing a fence around nature and calling the work complete. It is about rebuilding living landscapes in which wildlife, communities, and responsible enterprise can thrive together.
A South African conservationist, author, educator and co-founder of Amakhala Game Reserve, Grant has spent decades at the front line of rewilding and rhino protection. In conversation with Kensington Expeditions, he reflects on becoming what he calls a poacher turned gamekeeper, why language and education are central to lasting conservation, the responsibilities of tourism, and the stubborn hope that keeps him moving forward.
— Grant Fowlds
LOOKING AHEAD
When Grant joined our conversation from South Africa, his attention was fixed on rewilding and rhino conservation. What excites him most is the sense that some long-running interventions may finally be paying off.
The picture remains uneven. He sees encouraging signals in KwaZulu-Natal, while Kruger National Park and other areas continue to face severe pressure. Slowly, however, he believes the message is reaching more people: individuals, businesses and communities can make a meaningful difference to endangered species and the landscapes that sustain them.
No single organization can deliver that recovery alone. Grant points to the value of collective action, particularly conservation work carried out at scale. When degraded land is restored, secure habitat is expanded, and wildlife is returned to places where it had disappeared, hope becomes something tangible rather than abstract.
EARLY INFLUENCES
Grant grew up surrounded by nature and assumed it was inexhaustible. As a child, he hunted birds, rabbits and springhares, believing wildlife would simply reproduce. By his late teens, the cruelty of it had begun to trouble him, and he stopped. In his own words, he became a poacher turned gamekeeper.
His formal background was in agriculture, which gave him a practical understanding of soil, plants, trees, and natural resources. Without fully realizing where it would lead, he began rehabilitating land and creating a reserve. Restoring habitat led to reintroducing wildlife, and a small park gradually became something far more ambitious.
Tourism was part of that education. Grant had to learn how to fill beds, understand what visitors hoped to experience, and build a model capable of paying for conservation. At first, the idea of bringing back giraffes, elephants, rhinos, pangolins, lions, and cheetahs seemed impossible. Over time, careful restoration and reintroduction made much of it possible.
CONSERVATION REDEFINED
Grant's understanding of conservation has broadened with every project. It cannot be one-dimensional. Wildlife, people, tourism, economics, and the particular realities of a place all have to be considered together.
Historically, protected areas often neglected neighboring communities. Parks were fenced, people were excluded, and those living outside the boundaries were sometimes treated as the threat, even when they worked inside as rangers, guides and lodge staff. The result was a divide between the people asked to protect wildlife and the people expected to live alongside it.
Through Project Rhino and other conservation initiatives, Grant has encountered the same pattern across species and landscapes. His role has increasingly been to bridge travel, tourism and community conservation, helping people recognize that the wildlife they may fear or compete with can also become one of their greatest long-term assets.
LANGUAGE AND TRUST
Language has been one of Grant's most valuable tools. He grew up speaking Xhosa before English, later learning other Nguni languages and Afrikaans. Today, he estimates that he speaks nine or ten languages to varying degrees.
The greater value is not fluency for its own sake, but trust. In conversations about human-wildlife conflict, land or the risks of conservation, speaking someone's language changes the relationship. It allows Grant to meet people where they are, listen first and explain difficult ideas without expecting communities to cross every cultural distance themselves.
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
Responsible tourism begins by protecting the qualities that draw travelers to a place. Grant is deeply concerned by over-tourism and the way that natural encounters can be diminished when visitor numbers become the only measure of success.
He recalls seeing 25 safari vehicles crowded around a lion kill, some unable even to move. Similar pressure can be seen when boats surround a single animal or when fragile destinations are overwhelmed by poorly regulated access. For Grant, this is not ethical wildlife viewing.
The answer is deliberate restraint: clear limits on vehicles, carefully managed permits and a willingness to resist short-term revenue when it threatens the long-term character of a destination. Travelers have a role too. Choosing somewhere quieter and responsibly managed can protect the environment while creating a more meaningful experience.
— Grant Fowlds
COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP
For communities to have genuine ownership of conservation, Grant believes education and opportunity must come first. He points to Gorongosa in Mozambique, where recovery after civil war was approached not only as a wildlife project, but as a people project. Investment in education, health ,and community development created the foundation for wildlife recovery, jobs, and long-term support.
Grant says the awareness programs he has worked with have reached close to a million children over the past decade, particularly around rhino conservation. The results can be profound. Young people have reported poaching activity, chosen careers as rangers or conservationists, and travelled to Southeast Asia to understand the consumer markets connected to wildlife crime.
These experiences turn conservation from an outside instruction into a source of knowledge, pride and possibility. Even the strongest ecological plan will struggle if local people do not see themselves within its future.
REWILDING REALITY
Rewilding is rarely a smooth return to some imagined wilderness. At Loziba, a conservation initiative in KwaZulu-Natal co-founded by Grant, the ambition is to restore a large, connected wildlife landscape while creating livelihoods for surrounding communities.
The work has tested him through difficult negotiations over grazing, boundaries, fences, and the safety of both people and elephants. The consequences of human-wildlife conflict have also been deeply personal. An elephant killed a friend of Grant's and seriously injured a villager, intensifying an already difficult debate about how people and wildlife can share a landscape.
Yet when Grant returns and sees more than a hundred people employed, restored land, and the potential of the place, retreat does not feel like an answer. The challenge is to keep listening, adapting, and building a conservation economy strong enough to endure.
— Grant Fowlds
TECHNOLOGY IN THE FIELD
Technology is changing what is possible in conservation. Drones are improving wildlife counts and surveillance, while locally developed rhino-monitoring devices work almost like smartwatches. By learning an individual animal's normal patterns of movement, rest and sleep, they can trigger green, amber, or red alerts when something changes.
An unusual pattern can prompt a drone flight, a foot patrol or another response at any hour. Similar monitoring is advancing for pangolins, while camera systems, number-plate recognition, shared intelligence networks, and DNA analysis are strengthening the wider effort against wildlife crime.
But technology is only as effective as the institutions behind it. Arrest warrants, case files, and legal procedures can fail, allowing offenders to avoid prosecution. Tools in the field must therefore be matched by capable investigators, functioning courts and the political will to see cases through.
RHINO POACHING
The greatest misunderstanding about rhino poaching, Grant argues, is that it is only about the horn or its supposed medicinal value. At its core, it is about money.
Rhino horn operates within a much larger criminal economy. It can be traded as a high-value commodity and used to move or store illicit wealth. Even if belief in its medicinal properties disappeared, Grant believes a market would remain, just as illegal markets persist for drugs and weapons.
Demand-reduction campaigns matter, but they cannot solve the crisis alone. Conservationists must protect and grow viable populations, stay ahead of criminal networks, and invest in security, intelligence, and enforcement. Just as importantly, they must strengthen the local economies that make living wildlife more valuable than its illegal trade.
REASONS FOR HOPE
Grant remains hopeful because conservation has already shown that decline can be reversed. The latest published IUCN estimates record 6,788 black rhinos in Africa, a hard-won recovery from fewer than 2,500 in the mid-1990s. White rhinos number 15,752, although recent losses show how quickly progress can be undone.
Range-expansion programs and carefully managed reintroductions continue to create new populations. Zoos and sanctuaries also have a role in education and in maintaining a measure of protection, even if Grant's preference will always be for animals to live across vast wild landscapes.
The long-term goal is larger than preventing extinction. It is to return rhinos to parts of Africa where they once lived and create landscapes that people feel confident visiting and investing in. Philanthropy remains vital, but success ultimately means tourism and responsible enterprise generating enough value for conservation areas and neighboring communities to sustain themselves.
For those drawn to travel with purpose, there may be opportunities to engage more deeply with the work of Grant Fowlds and the conservation initiatives he supports.
Select clients may be able to meet those working on the frontline, visit carefully managed rewilding landscapes or explore bespoke ways to support rhino protection and community-led conservation, subject to timing, suitability and availability.
