For Dudu Ngcobo, conservation is not an abstract idea measured in hectares or wildlife numbers. It is part of how she is building a future for her family.
Dudu works as an herbicide controller for The Babanango Foundation, contributing to the removal of invasive alien plants and the ecological restoration of the landscape around Babanango Game Reserve. The income she earns has enabled her to support both of her daughters through higher education. Noncebo is a first-year Tourism student at the University of South Africa (UNISA), while Phindile is in her third year studying Accounting at the University of Johannesburg.
Dudu's story is one of the reasons we have come to question how conservation success is usually measured, and why, in the work we do at Babanango, we have tried to measure it differently.
We have become accustomed to counting conservation success in hectares protected, species restored and animals reintroduced. These measures matter. But we don't think they can be the only ones that matter. A protected landscape surrounded by communities with limited access to jobs, services and economic opportunities cannot be viewed in isolation from those communities. Conservation's long-term future is also tied to whether the people living alongside it can see themselves as participants in it.
Babanango Game Reserve covers roughly 21,000 hectares, most of it communally owned. Over the past eight years, more than 4,000 animals, including black rhino and elephants, have been reintroduced onto land that had previously experienced significant overgrazing and a loss of wildlife. That is a real conservation achievement. But it isn't the whole story we set out to tell.
Alongside the Reserve, we established The Babanango Foundation, a registered Public Benefit Organisation working with the land-owning trusts of Emcakwini, Esibongweni and KwaNgono. Its focus is on the people connected to the landscape: access to services, livelihoods, skills, education and opportunities for young people. Through our Access to Water Programme, for example, we have developed 17 boreholes and solar-powered water systems, helping more than 5,000 households access reliable water, evidence, we'd argue, that "community development" and "conservation" don't have to be separate line items.
Take employment. Beyond the 200 local jobs Babanango Game Reserve has created directly, the Foundation leads the removal of invasive alien plants, employing 23 community members who earn an income while contributing to the management of the landscape.
Dudu Ngcobo is one of them. Her work contributes to ecological restoration but the income from it also contributes to her household, and to the education of the next generation. This is where conservation and rural development intersect, in our experience more than in theory.
We want to be careful about the claim we're making. This is not an argument that every conservation project can or should provide every service a community needs or that conservation should become transactional in which communities support wildlife only because they receive something in return. Nor do we think we've solved rural development, as communal land governance is genuinely complex. What we do think we've shown is that these two goals (ecological and social) can be pursued within the same landscape without either one becoming a token gesture toward the other: Babanango Game Reserve manages ecology and biodiversity, while the Foundation invests in the people connected to that ecology.
The premise, put simply, is that people are part of landscapes. In rural South Africa, communities can live alongside significant natural assets while facing limited economic opportunity. Conservation must reckon with that context, not work around it.
So, when conservation projects are assessed, the questions shouldn't stop at how many hectares have been protected or how many animals have been reintroduced. They should extend to whether young people are gaining opportunities, whether local people are developing skills, whether households are gaining access to essential services, and, most importantly, whether the people living alongside these landscapes see them as part of their own future.
If conservation happens to communities rather than with them, we risk a lasting divide between conservation success and community wellbeing. Designed as part of a wider landscape strategy, it can do both at once, that has been our experience, at least, and it's one we believe is worth others testing for themselves.
Biodiversity outcomes matter. Hectares matter. Wildlife matters. But so do livelihoods, household income, local enterprises and meaningful participation. Dudu's story is a reminder that conservation does not end at the reserve fence, its impact can reach into households, classrooms and the ambitions of the next generation.
They should be participants in its future.
Thina Nyathi is the foundation manager of The Babanango Foundation. Dr Jorg Walter is chairman of The Babanango Foundation and a director of African Habitat Conservancy.