The Problem
The Solution
Partner History
What Will I Be Doing?
Location
Making a Difference In Swaziland

The Problem
Swaziland\\\'s Game Reserves offer a unique combination of big-game country, extensive wetlands and soaring escarpments. Fifty years ago, Swaziland’s once abundant wildlife had been almost eradicated, poached for meat, skins and ivory. Thanks to the dedication and hard work of conservationists and with King Mswati’s support, there are now healthy populations of game in several designated reserves and Africa’s “Big Five” are back to stay in Swaziland. Quest Overseas work with four of these game reserves in the north-east Lubombo Mountains.

Quest have worked in these reserves for 8 years to help improve infrastructure, build trails in the parks, manage the invasion of alien species, conduct game counts and work with the local rural Swazi communities surrounding the parks to ensure they understand why it is essential to minimise poaching of wildlife and to protect and conserve the animals and their habitats. It is essential to demonstate to the communities how they can benefit from game reserves, through tourism and a better economy.

The Solution
We work in the parks themselves to help improve their infrastructure, manage the parks and encourage more tourists to visit and stay for longer. We also work with the local communities to improve their infrastructure and facilities, as well as educate them about wildlife and conservation.

Our long term goal is to bring down the fences within the Game Reserves in Swaziland, in partnership with the Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation Area and the internationally recognised Peace Parks Foundation to work towards the creation of a wildlife corridor that spans international boundaries.

Partner History
Quest has been working in Swaziland since 2000, with the support of King Mswati II of Swaziland and the Reilly family, one of Swaziland’s most important conservation families.

 What Will I Be Doing?
Conservation Projects: Quest volunteers are involved with improving the infrastructure of the reserves, to make them more appealing and accessible to tourists, an essential part of bringing the conservancy together and making it profitable.

Volunteers have so far constructed a bird hide on Hlane’s large waterhole, designed and cut a mountain bike trail, cut various hiking trails, donated three radio collars to track and monitor the hyaenas, the only wild predator found in Swaziland, and carried out numerous game and bird counts. This data is used for practical management of the parks by the Wardens. All data collected is requested by the wardens and the results are passed on to them for their use.

Community Projects: In the Shewula Community you will complete a construction project for the community which can range from renovating a classroom for the many HIV orphans, to helping to renovate and re-construct clinics or kitchens. These are extremely rewarding projects to work on. Alongside such major infrastructure developments you will also be involved in painting and maintaining existing schools, establishing income-generating gardens and orchards and, of course, playing regular games of football in the village! We also include a large element of informal environmental education with the children from the community.

Further achievements are listed on The Quest Charitable Trust website.

The Quest Lubombo Trust Fund
10% of the funds you raise are held in trust to eventually pay for the translocation of mammals back into the Lubombo Conservancy once the fences between the reserves have been removed. So far Quest volunteers have raised over £8,000.
A typical cost for animal translocation would be 7,000 Rand (approx £500) to move a giraffe from Kruger National Park in South Africa, to Swaziland.

Location
Community Work, first ten day phase:

Shewula Community Reserve
Chief Sifundza of the Shewula community has set aside a huge area of his people’s land in order to preserve the natural bush as a wildlife reserve. The reserve is situated high up on an escarpment of the Lubombo mountains overlooking the Mlawula river valley and the rest of The Lubombo Conservancy.
The Shewula community has worked hard to build “Mountain Camp” on the edge of the escarpment, offering one of the most spectacular views in Swaziland. “Mountain Camp” is home for your first ten days.

Conservation work: Your second ten day phase will be spent in either:

Mbuluzi Game Reserve
Many mammal species roam freely through Mbuluzi including giraffe, kudu, nyala, warthog, baboon, hippo, crocodile, wildebeest, waterbuck, zebra, duiker, bush pig and jackal. It is also a haven for birds, with over 300 species recorded.

or

Hlane Royal National Park
Hlane is the traditional hunting ground for King Mswati III but these days he has handed over the management of the Royal National Park to Big Game Parks who also manage Mkhaya Rhino Sanctuary and Mlilwane Nature Reserve (where we hold our in-country orientation days).

Hlane is the largest reserve in the Lubombo Conservancy at 30,000 hectares and has already established programmes to re-introduce lions, elephants and white rhino into the safety of its double perimeter fences. These animals used to roam freely across Swaziland but are now heavily protected from poachers within the Big Game Parks reserves. Poaching in Swaziland has decreased considerably after King Mswati III established a successful anti-poaching law in 1992.

Working in Hlane provides a unique opportunity to observe these great mammals at close quarters. Sitting round the waterhole at dusk watching white rhino come down to drink is surely one of the “Big Five” wonders of Africa.

Making a Difference In Swaziland
All of our projects are carefully selected to provide the maximum positive impact on the communities and environments where we work. There is nowhere else where the communities are more intrinsically linked to conservation than in Swaziland.

Long term partnerships with the Shewula community, the Swazi organisation Big Game Parks, the Swaziland government and international organisation The Peace Parks Foundation have been established to help create short, medium and long term objectives for this project. These carefully managed objectives guarantee that every team makes a lasting difference to conservation in Southern Africa.

Professional project managers working in close consultation with the Chief of Shewula and game reserve wardens, manage the team members donations, using the money for projects such as building schools and environmental education facilities around the reserves.

Food, materials and labour are sourced locally whilst following strict environmental and ethical policies. Together we are able to guarantee that we will make a very positive difference to the communities that we work with in Swaziland