Many conservation projects can be funded only through tourism dollars. Harry Bateman, founder of TerraPi, one of South Africa’s largest conservation projects, believes that fencing people out is not a solution.
 | Harry Bateman, Director TerraPi"The land needs these people to heal it and, for example, take out exotic alien invasive plants. And the people need the land to sustain their livelihoods through tourism." (Photo: TerraPi) |
What is your project, TerraPi, about?
TerraPi is a huge wilderness farm bordering the Baviaanskloof Mega-Reserve, a World Heritage site. We try to conserve and restore an area of some 10,000 hectares through ecotourism, education, and sustainable agriculture.
When we came here, the land was over-farmed and over-worked. An exotic plant species, black wattle, was killing indigenous plants and creating wattle deserts.
With the help of the World Wildlife Fund, the South African government, scientists, and enthusiastic volunteers, we are pioneering a unique approach to rehabilitating these lands. Our motto is: “Healing land, healing people.”
What have you achieved so far?
When we bought the land, it was grazed quite extensively by cattle and sheep. The land was relentlessly burned and cropped to encourage grazing in a nutrient-poor environment. The farm employed two people and they were both unschooled and paid a pittance.
Today, TerraPi employs over 20 people from local communities. We switched to game farming, which is much less demanding on the land. We grow our own food, clear the land of alien invasive trees, and secure water supply for a huge area.
All our staff lives in houses built from renewable resources. We are using the wattle to make products like flower-bedding lattices, firewood, and garden furniture. Soon we’ll also provide edible mushrooms, construction timber for sustainable building, and compost.
Couldn’t you do such conservation efforts without tourism?
We soon realized that fixing the land did not pay money. This made us look at the resources we have on the land. Tourism is a way of using the land that does not require altering it. We offer what the land can provide—things like hiking, bird watching, or game walks.
There are also programs for volunteers who want to help with our rehabilitation projects, and we have started educational conservation courses for schools, corporations, and groups.
 | The South African TerraPi project employs ecotourism to fund conservation projects in an environmentally degraded area (Photo: TerraPi) |
Bringing tourists to our land creates income and helps us raise awareness about the trouble of alien invasive plants. And we ask our guests to support the restoration of a piece of land that filters over two million people’s water and provides livelihoods for a local community.
The land needs these people to heal it and, for example, take out exotic alien invasive plants. And the people need the land to sustain their livelihoods through tourism.
Do you think people can really learn from nature?
This is exactly what happens at TerraPi. In the beginning I thought people would prefer to go to pristine areas instead of an area that suffers from environmental degradation. But people like doing something about a problem if you give them the tools and show them how.
People need to know that the water they are drinking in the city is not coming out of the tap, but that it is coming out of the catchment area hundreds of miles away. Those people need to query what is going on in the areas where their water comes from.
We will have to see a lot more corporate help to keep water catchment areas clean, but the downstream consumers should also take some responsibility.
Some people say we would preserve nature best by leaving it alone.
I wish we had that luxury. We have already interfered. If we leave it now it will change irrevocably. If we leave the Kouga Dam catchment to be overrun, the whole area will lose its water. Farmers will not be able to irrigate an agricultural hotspot for meat, fruit, and vegetables, and we will lose an international heritage site, the Baviaanskloof Mega-Reserve.
Conservationists are too often ”top-down” academics, somewhat removed from the humanitarian desire to conserve and protect. A system that removes people from the landscape, puts a fence around it, and spends millions so that no one can get back often fails. People are but another organism on this planet; we cannot be separated from our environment.
Tourists often travel far, producing lots of CO2 emissions. Would you encourage people from Europe or the U.S. to visit your conservation project?
I am against short-haul flights, but I don’t see a competitive alternative to long-distance travel. We have a system in TerraPi where your carbon emissions are roughly calculated and you are given the opportunity to offset your carbon emissions by donating to a project at TerraPi.
We get visiting kids from local schools to collect seeds and plant the trees that will offset your carbon debt. So guests can do something constructive in an area that needs rehabilitation anyway.
editor: Thilo Kunzemann
publishing date: August 13, 2009
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