The Shamwari Game Reserve

Shamwari shelters even those who carry their homes with them. (Rick Hudson)

A wary impala prepares to drink. (Shamwari Game Reserve)

White rhino like these, and even the rare black rhino, roam Shamwari. (Shamwari Game Reserve)

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Shamwari means 'friend', but not in the local Xhosa language. (Nelson Mandela, by the way, is a Xhosa, and, yes, he's visited the Shamwari Reserve.) The word comes from the Shona tribe of central Africa, and was brought here as part of a grand experiment by Shamwari's founder and owner, Adrian Gardiner. Born on the border of what was then Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo (now Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo), Mr. Gardiner is an industrialist who settled in the Eastern Province of South Africa, where he ran one of the country's most successful horse stud and racing stables. But throughout a decade of turf triumphs, he struggled with the contradiction of what he was doing: importing alien bloodstock into a country that was rapidly losing its indigenous biodiversity at an alarming rate.

In 1992, he took action to reverse the trend of 200 years of 'progressive agriculture'. He bought six farms, pulled up the fences, and strung a tall game barrier round the perimeter. Then he went looking for a new type of bloodstock. In this task, he was helped by the 19th-century diaries of an early adventurer, who had described in great detail the wildlife of what turned out to be a vanishing ecology.

Gardiner needed an experienced veterinarian to spearhead the re-introduction and breeding, and in Dr. Johan Joubert he found a man who believed implicitly that the ravages of two centuries of so-called 'modern' farming could be undone, given time, patience, and care.

It is now ten years later. The riverine thickets that mantle the deep gorges and steep hills are stocked with a variety of game. There have been failures (an elephant cow and calf stormed through the fence some years ago, damaging crops over a distance of 15 miles before, regrettably, being destroyed), but there have been spectacular successes too. Both the common white rhino and the rare black rhino have bred successfully. The elephant herd has multiplied. The lions have cubbed. The herds of impala, bushbuck, nyala, waterbuck, springbuck, and large numbers of other buck have bred, some in the hundreds, especially after the good rains five years ago. There are leopard and buffalo and hyena, too. Everywhere there is growth, where before there had been six failed farms.

The reserve has grown too. It now employs over 120 people, is home to over 5,000 animals, and covers over 49,000 acres. And, it is still growing. There is a joke in the rangers' bar that border patrols need a new job description every month. There are luxury lodges to accommodate visitors in four-poster splendor. The meals are lavish, quite out of keeping with the surrounding rugged countryside. And visitors now stream in, as word has spread about what it is that Dr. Joubert has created.

At the Animal Breeding Centre, I am surprised to hear a Canadian accent. Jacqui Taryn is from British Columbia, and has been at the reserve six months, helping the vet and his team. She is on a gap year after finishing at St. Michaels University School. She has plans to be veterinarian, she says, and is here for the big game experience. Watching her manhandle squirming bushpigs over a fence makes me wonder what differences there must be between veterinary science in Africa, and pet vetting in sedate Victoria, BC.

Some differences are obvious: when I speak to Dr. Joubert, he has had his knee kicked in by a waterbuck, during a night capture. He has spent time in a cast, unable to drive his jeep. He strikes me as the sort of man who does not enjoy spending several months in a cast.

He has a mission. He is extremely lucky, he tells me. How many vets are handed the opportunity to play God, he asks rhetorically. There is no vanity in this remark; that is what he is doing. He is re-creating the Eastern Cape bushveld the way it was before the white man came. It is an immense project, and so far it is going well. Very well, judging by the international honours recognizing the work.

In a world where we are busy slicing land into progressively smaller and smaller pies, where animal diversity and the indigenous ecology are in traumatic shock, Shamwari Game Reserve is reversing the clock, un-slicing the pie, giving nature a chance to rebalance again. It seems to be a grand dream.

At the center, a fly-covered carcass is being dissected by staff members, looking for the cause of death. Dr. Joubert explains. "We are learning as we go along, you see. There are no manuals for what is happening here. First we created the space. Then we introduced the game. Now we are starting to worry about the details, the small print, if you like."

There are many. The one that is occupying Johan Joubert and Jacqui Taryn right now is not for the squeamish. It's ticks. I had always thought African wildlife was relatively immune to ticks. This turns out to be wrong. Some species, such as the eland, are particularly susceptible to tick-born diseases. Worse, the females become so infested on their udders that their newly born calves cannot suckle, and die of dehydration.

Dr. Joubert explains. "When the white man introduced cattle here in the 1800s, he brought arsenic dips to fight the tick problem. And it worked. Sort of. But the arsenic also killed the birds that fed on the ticks, notably the oxpecker. By the turn of the 20th century, there wasn't an oxpecker left in the Eastern Cape.

"Now, here we are at the start of the 21st century, and we have to get the oxpecker back. But how?" It turns out there are game reserves in the north (the Kruger National Park, for example) that have a surplus of oxpeckers. But Shamwari needs permits to capture and move the birds, which take time. And there is a further complication that the birds need to be quarantined, to prevent the transfer of parasites from one game area to another. How do you feed an oxpecker in captivity?

"It's not easy," says Joubert, "but they have found a meat substitute that is acceptable. So they feed them this mix for six weeks, until it's safe to move them. But we are stuck, because of the permits. It may still be years before we get the go-ahead to have them here. And the eland, in the meantime, aren't breeding."

The center has come up with a non-toxic drench that kills ticks on eland, but will not harm birds. It is labor-intensive to apply, but appears to be working in the short-term, until the birds arrive. Out at the 'boma' (a wooden stockade some ten-feet high) a small herd of eland is being treated. Peering through a gap in the poles, I see these tall and stately antelope with savagely scarred bellies. "Tick damage," says our Canadian ranger casually. "You should have seen them when we got them in here. In a few weeks' time, we'll have them back on grass in a camp. And maybe they'll breed."

Back at my luxury suite, lounging in a hot bath before dinner, I gaze up at framed prints of African game. Stylized images of strange beasts look back, etched by 19th-century lithographers who lived in a world where nature was bountiful, and the herds of African game were endless. And I wonder what it must be like, just once, to play God, like Dr. Joubert is doing.