BOTANICAL ENCOUNTERS: Rewilding In Southern Africa - The Savanna

Words and pictures by Ida K. Rigby, for Let’s Talk Plants! April 2025.

Rewilding In Southern Africa - The Savanna

The next few columns will feature a rewilding project in South Africa, Tswalu Kalahari Reserve. The reserve is located in the Southern part of the Kalahari Desert near South Africa’s borders with Namibia and Botswana.

The reserve consists of three main ecosystems: Savanna, dunes and mountains.

This column will focus on the restoration of the savanna; the next columns will feature the dunes and mountains as I experienced them in 2014. Then I’ll update the rewilding process with images from my visit five years later, in 2019, and a magical trek our guide orchestrated illustrating the life of the native flora and fauna and the use of this landscape by migratory San groups and Afrikaner farmers before the land became Tswalu.

On September 2, 2014 (the winter season), a friend and I boarded our Fireblade Aviation flight in Johannesburg; an hour and a half later we were at Tswalu and were welcomed by our tracker and guide.

In the l990s the Oppenheimer family embarked on the restoration and renewal of the land by beginning to purchase overgrazed farmland and reintroducing animals that once called this area home. The exception is the elephant, who once migrated through here, but needs more space than even Tswalu’s current 118,000 hectares (291,584 acres) can offer. The 2014 welcome letter for guests stated: 

“Tswalu is Setswana for ‘a new beginning’, which aligns with our creed to leave the world better than how we found it. . .  Tswalu’s successful conservation legacy of ecological restoration safeguards diverse habitats for fauna and flora to thrive. The reserve is dedicated to research-led conservation, cultural preservation, and the socio-economic development of a remote, under resourced region of South Africa.” 

The letter characterized the area in the l990s as “a landscape ravaged by cattle-farming and neglect.”  Over the last decade, our mission has been to restore the Kalahari to itself.”  Even in the short interval between my two visits, in 2014 and 2019, the progressive restoration of biodiversity was evident.

Before Afrikaners began ranching the area, it was home to the black-maned Kalahari lion.

We soon encountered a pride with cubs in an area that shows an advanced state of recovery with plentiful grasses and healthy trees. 

In well restored areas the unpracticed eye would not see the three sleeping cubs and their sleeping mother, although spotting the male would keep you in your vehicle.

The female was hidden in the grass until she woke up. 

The lounging male also blends well with the winter tans and browns. Of course the backlit grasses are a photographer’s dream.

 The winter grasses provided camouflage for another sleeping lioness who just looked like a long, tan boulder in an acacia thicket with a young shepherd’s tree (white gnarled bark) growing out of it. 

The restored grasslands also offer cover for African painted wolves (African wild dogs). 

The grasses can also shelter prey; a warthog disappeared into a burrow, frustrating the pack.

This  panoramic shot...

...shows a successful hunt.

It also illustrates the beauty of the restored savanna with various acacias and thick native grasses. The deep green, dense, dome-like tree in the middle distance is a common guarri, Euclea undulata. Its name is based on the  Greek for “to be of good report or to be famous”; undulata refers to the wavy appearance of the leaves. 

Wildlife browse the leaves, and birds and mammals eat the fruit. Humans use it for firewood, fence posts and fodder for livestock. Medicinal uses include brewing bark to ease headaches, cooking roots for a remedy for toothache and heart ailments and using powdered roots as a “drastic purgative”. Leaf preparations are used to treat diarrhea and stomach disorders and to relieve throat ailments. (pza.sanbi.org)

We followed the chase in a harrowing overland drive. It’s a grizzly spectacle, but the pack had pups to feed, and nature’s balance was maintained. The pups were not old enough to join in the hunt, but adults took back food to regurgitate for them at their den. The professional staff at Tswalu manages the introduction of fauna by keeping this balance based on scientific research. The Tswalu Foundation funds ongoing research by professional scientists and MA and PhD candidates. 

These magnificent grasslands...

...are the browsing, grazing and hunting grounds for many mammals and also the source of building materials for the smaller denizens of the land such as the weaver birds. 

Small predators such as the black backed jackal can hide from its rodent prey in the shorter grasses.

Large prey like springbok,...

...gemsbok...

...and sable antelope...

... count on restored thickets to escape lions, leopards, painted wolves and cheetah.

Antelopes and giraffes feast on the cream-colored, powder puff blossoms of the candle thorn acacia, Vachellia hebeclada. 

This acacia forms low mounds and, along with the winter tan grasses, can hide a stalking lioness.

It is called "a house of the lion" because lions shelter in it. (pza.sanbi.org)

Part of Tswalu’s success lies in the development of congenial relationships with neighboring villages. For example, African painted wolves historically ranged over limitless territories. They are masters at disabling or digging under fences. Local villagers see them as marauders and pests because they eat chickens and goats and can even take down cattle. Villagers know that they can alert Tswalu staff to an escaped pack and that there will be an instantaneous response and any necessary compensation. Tswalu also supports clinics, schools and transportation in the local communities. An annual impact statement cites one of the benefits of ecotourism at Tswalu is the impact on the lives of 282 residents: “In 2021, this equated to a US$ 5.8 million investment in nature and people. In addition, nature-based tourism helped provide essential health care to approximately 1000 people through the Tswalu Health Care Centre, a free community service for anyone living within a 100-kilometer radius of the reserve.”  (tswalu.com)

The reserve hosts two packs of painted wolves and participates in exchanges with other reserves to preserve genetic diversity. They are the most endangered of African predators and have a diminishing gene pool. Unfortunately, during their escapes to local villages, the dogs can contract distemper from village dogs, so the pack must be quarantined upon return to the reserve. The pack I saw in 2014 was wiped out by distemper two years later.

These five year old cheetah brothers are near a water hole, waiting for thirsty prey to arrive. 

 Cheetah males leave their mother as a nomadic coalition at about age 2; females leave alone and live a solitary, more territorial life. In the center of each image we can see trees familiar from our last column, the stink shepherd’s tree with its whitish blossoms and somewhat straggly umbrella shape and a shepherd’s tree’s gnarled white trunk among various acacia trees and shrubs. These photos show two of Tswalu’s three ecosystems, the savanna and the Korannaberg mountains. 

The third, the dunes, will be the subject of our next column.

The dunes at Tswalu are stable dunes covered with vegetation. These Kalahari sands are iron rich and deep red. It’s said that if you take some of this red sand home in your shoes you will return. I did. The hillsides are a diverse representation of native shrubs and trees that have re-established themselves. The 2014 Tswalu guest species checklist lists the most commonly encountered indigenous plants; it includes 30 trees and shrubs, 21 dwarf shrubs and 31 grasses.

One of the most precarious existences in Africa is that of the rhinos. Tswalu has their coveted desert black rhinos under tight security protocols. 

When I visited in 2014, guides radioed very vague indications of their locations because poachers could listen in. At some camps I visited in South Africa in 2016, the guides asked us not to send any image that indicated GPS coordinates for southern white rhinos to photo sharing sites. “Black” rhinos have a beak-like upper lip for browsing on leaves. 

The “white” rhinos have a broad mouth for grazing. In fact, they are called “white” as a misinterpretation of the Afrikaans “weit” referring to their wide mouths. The black rhinos are called black because to a certain way of thinking if one rhino is white, then the other would be black. The black rhinos are the more nervous and aggressive of the two. On walking safaris my guides were quite comfortable where there were southern white rhinos, but very edgy near thickets where they thought a black rhino might be browsing. We spent more time with the Tswalu desert black rhinos in 2019, so I’ll come back to them in a later column.

Tswalu is one of the few places in South Africa where you can experience habituated meerkats close up. This meerkat colony’s home is next to two buffalo thorn or zigzag trees, Ziziphus mucronata.

The mottled gray bark cracks to reveal a rust-red under-surface. According to The South African Biodiversity Institute’s website, PlantZAfrica, it’s frequently known as the zig zag tree, representing “life as we know it”. The young twigs are zig zag, indicating that life is not always straightforward. Two thorns at the nodes are also significant; one facing backward represents where we come from and one facing forward, represents where we are going.” (pza.sanbi.org)  “The ancient Greeks called the tree zizyphon, from the Arabic zizouf, a name for the mythical lotus. . .

The species name mucronata is Latin meaning pointed, probably referring to its thorns or the apex of its leaves. The stipular thorns at the nodes give the tree its common Afrikaans name of wag-'n-beetjie. . . these thorns are extremely vicious, and all those who have come into contact with them will know that you have to ‘wait-a-bit’ if you want to free yourself from them.” (pza.sanbi.org)

Indigenous people use the wood for kraals, wagons and fences. They use various parts of the tree for painkillers, digestive and respiratory ailments, boils, swollen glands, wounds and sores. These uses take advantage of the peptide and anti-fungal properties in the bark and leaves. (pza.sanbi.org) Villagers collect a sweet honey made from the nectar of its flowers, eat the fruit (related to the jujube, Z. jujuba,) and make a porridge from its crushed fruit. Roasted and ground dried fruit serves as a coffee substitute. (tree.sa.org) 

According to PlantZAfrica many beliefs and superstitions are attached to this tree: 

“It was once customary that when a Zulu chief died, the tree was planted on his grave as a reminder or symbol of where the chief lies. . .  A twig . . . is still used to . . . carry the spirit of the deceased . . . to the new resting place. When a stock owner died, and was buried according to custom, within the cattle or goat kraal, some branches were placed on the grave so that the animals nibbled on leaves and twigs, and so understood that their master had died. . . . In other parts, Africans drag a branch round the village to protect it from evil spirits. . .

In Botswana as well as most parts of South Africa, the residents believed the buffalo thorn to be immune against lightning, anyone standing under one in a storm would be safe. It is also believed that if it is felled in summer, a drought, hail or lightning will certainly follow.” (pza.sanbi.org)

On our last day at Tswalu in 2014 we followed a large pride through an area of beautifully rewilded savanna...

...to a water hole.  We always returned home to our chalets made of local rock and thatch totally satisfied with all we had seen. 

One evening our guide, the only female guide on staff, said she had seen a warthog slung up in a tree about forty-five minutes away on a little reconnoiter she had made during the mid-day break. She wondered if we were game for driving out and to see if her hunch was right, that the leopard who had stashed the warthog in the tree so other predators could not share in it might be nearby. Of course we were game!  We headed off and were rewarded with an hour watching a beautiful leopardess sleeping on the still sun-warmed boulders below a very tall tree with the kill slung up near the top.

Just as we were leaving, a 4x4 Land Cruiser roared up with half a dozen of the male guides that our guide had radioed. They seemed to be having a jolly time as we slipped away into the darkness. 

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Ida Rigby is a past SDHS Board member and Garden Tour Coordinator. She has gardened in Poway since l992 and

emphasizes plants from the northern and southern Mediterranean latitudes. Her garden received the San Diego Home/Garden magazine Best Homeowner Design and Grand Prize in their Garden of the Year contest in l998. Her travels focus on natural history.

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