Location
Wilderness Encounters’ Good Guides operate mostly within the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve as well as the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, both of which are situated on the western boundary of the world-renowned Kruger National Park. There are no fences separating these private conservation areas from Kruger, thus allowing wildlife to roam at will across millions of acres of unspoiled wilderness. Good Guide Alan McSmith also has extensive experience guiding through wildlife areas of Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland.
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Timbavati Private Nature Reserve
The Timbavati is located in the Limpopo Province of the Republic of South Africa in what is called the “Lowveld,” a vast stretch of subtropical savannah bushveld.
History
The reserve came into being in July of 1956, when a group of conservation-minded people who owned “game farms” on the western boundary of the Kruger National Park, came together to form the Timbavati Association. Over a period of several years a handful of visionaries from the area met frequently to discuss ways and means to create a nature reserve of a meaningful size. These pioneering spirits of conservation and sustainable utilization eventually managed to convince sufficient numbers of landowners in the region to join them in forming an association. This body was, and is still today governed by a constitution limiting the rights of the individual landowner for the greater good of all.
Man’s incursions into this part of the Lowveld have always been temporary and brief, from Early Stone Age down to the early 20th century. Large tracts of land in the northern portion of the Lowveld were never permanently settled by man, and the lands now comprising the Timbavati were barely touched and are still only sparsely inhabited. This part of South Africa ‘s bushveld region may, therefore, be regarded as truly unspoiled, deserving recognition as truly wild land, as opposed to the “restored” and “restocked” lands commonly found elsewhere.
Sabi Sand Game Reserve
History
Situated in Mpumalanga, South Africa, the Sabi Sand game reserve is a 65 000 hectare / 135 000 acre wildlife sanctuary which forms part of the great 2.3 million hectare Kruger National Park game reservation area. The Sabi Sand shares a common 50 km unfenced eastern boundary with the world famous Kruger National Park in South Africa.
The Sabi Sand game reserve, Kruger National Park South Africa, is an association of freehold landowners many of whom manage commercially active photographic safari operations. Sharing a common environmental management program, this association is administered by a warden reporting to an elected executive committee.
Two perennial rivers supply the Sabi Sand game reserve with a valuable water source. The Sand River flows through the reserve for 50 km from northwest to south east whilst the Sabi River flows on the southern boundary. The sustenance of these rivers ensures that this area enjoys one of the highest and most bio diverse wildlife populations of any area in Africa. Over two hundred different species occur in abundance whilst the ever-changing bird life provides even the most experienced ornithologist with rare finds.
The history of today’s Sabi Sand as a formal association dates back to 1948 when the landowners formed this private nature reserve. Credit for the association however, should go back to the original pioneers of this private game reserve in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Of these pioneers, no less than six of their families are now third and fourth generation owners of the land – a credit to the foresight of their forefathers who loved and respected Africa’s flora and fauna. As now, fences were unheard of with only claims of stones marking the corner beacons of individual properties within the Sabi Sand Game Reserve in the Kruger National Park, South Africa.
The Sabi Sand game reserve was proclaimed in 1898 and incorporated what is today both the Sabi Sand and the Kruger National Park. However, in 1926 the National Parks Act of South Africa was passed and many private landowners were excised from the Sabi reserve. They in turn formed the Sabi Private Game Reserve in 1934 , a forerunner to the Sabi Sand. It was in 1926 that the first tourists were allowed into the Kruger National Park – the birth of sustainable wildlife tourism that is the recipe for conservation in Africa today. The Sabi Sand now forms part of the greater Kruger National Park wildlife enclave and its immense wildlife gene pool.
Wildlife
The principal attraction in the Timbavati and Sabi Sand Game Reserves is the astonishing diversity and abundance of wildlife species. Mammalian species alone number 147, including 27 ungulates (hoofed mammals) and 4 large carnivores. Many of these spectacular animals, including the so-called “Big Five,” (lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, rhino) are likely to be spotted even on a short visit.
There are also many lesser-known animals that most visitors find fascinating to behold, from exotic reptiles and amphibians, to colorful and bizarre insects. And for those with a botanical bent, there are hundreds of species of trees and shrubs as well as an enormous variety of grasses and other plant life.
Wilderness
Within South Africa’s private nature reserves there exists an atmosphere of undisturbed nature – of true wilderness – which is difficult to define and describe, but can readily be perceived by the discerning traveler. This subtle and ineffable quality, which is so powerful and captivating to the imagination, is no longer to be found in most game parks and reserves in the world. In the private reserves of the Greater Kruger National Park, however, there is a sense that the land has never belonged to man.
