Out in Africa: On Behalf of Man and Beast

Out in Africa: On Behalf of Man and Beast

By Jodi Nash

While humans erect walls and fences, animals aren't constrained by the geopolitical boundaries drawn by man to separate ourselves from each other.

Long-time Delaplane resident Matthew Sheedy knows that better than most. For many years, he’s been working with several non-profit foundations operating across approximately a dozen countries in the south of Africa, with roughly 250 million acres of conservation land to preserve and protect, in a prodigious effort to re-establish lost ecosystems and provide wildlife security to threatened species.

Trying to keep rhinos alive and well.

A Harvard MBA, Matt spent years with a large commercial real estate firm until the market tanked in the early 1990s. That, and the death of his mother were an epiphany. He pressed the reset button and decided to follow his bliss.

Passionate even as a teenager about wildlife conservation, a three-week trip to Tanzania and Kenya during college was transformative.

“Africa is primal,” he said. “I had this immediate sense of belonging.”

He started his own commercial real estate business, MJS Properties, and took advantage of natural breaks to travel the globe on the conservation “volunteer plan,” mostly with Earthwatch.

Participating in field research expeditions, Matt got up close and personal with bears and tigers in Nepal, crocodiles in South Africa, jaguars in Brazil, snakes in India, sea turtles in Costa Rica, and chimps in Uganda. After a month or so of arduous volunteer work, he wandered vagabond style via youth hostels through a region to experience its culture and people.

At a benefit event in 2015, he met Jason Paterniti, founder of GEOS, a non-profit dedicated to animal and habitat conservation.

When “Rhinos Without Borders” (RWB) transported 100 at-risk rhinos from South Africa by airplane to Botswana in 2014, the GEOS Foundation assisted with some of the funding. Jason (like Matt), an entrepreneur with a farm in The Plains, was already planning a trip to Mozambique, the epicenter of rhino poaching, and Matt joined him.

On other first day in Mozambique, close to the South African border, their group intercepted poachers. Their journey included gunfire, living in a concrete Quonset hut, sleeping in tents on patrol in the bush, and 100-degree temperatures. It was a gritty hand-to-mouth existence, embedded with ten special forces rangers from Mozambique.

The grimmest horror encountered was a gruesomely wounded rhino in utter agony.

“They shoot or dart them, spine-slice them, cut their faces off (for their horns), and leave them to die,” Matt said. “If the baby rhino comes back to the mother, they take his horn, too.

“A major problem is we sanitize the horror of things like war, crime, poaching…and as a result, sometimes become complacent. It’s very dangerous work, and the Rangers who do it every day for low pay and in brutal working conditions are the real heroes.”

Jason and Matt also wrote personal checks, raised funds from donors at home, worked pro bono, and applied their financial and business acumen to man-age the planning and personnel needed for their counterpoaching operation.

Matt Sheedy out in the bush.

This led to a highly strategic association with Col. Lionel Dyck, the legendary founder of Dyck Advisory Group (DAG) Conservation Trust, an all-African nonprofit focused on anti-poaching, security, explosive disposal, de-mining, and wildlife conservation.

Under Dyck’s leadership in 1990, the Rhino Rescue Trust’s anti-poaching mission in Zimbabwe resulted in a 50 percent reduction in poaching in just a threemonth period. Applying a similar tactical plan, “Early Detection, Rapid Re-action,” Dyck and GEOS operated on a lean annual budget of $600,000, resourc-ing funds effectively to provide boots, uniforms, weapons, communications equipment, dog tracking teams, Ranger training and, most importantly, helicop-ters.

From 2015 to 2016, they reduced rhino poaching by almost 75 percent in their 180,000-acre area, though their “sphere of influence” reached beyond that to the entire Greater Libombos Conservancy (600,000 acres).

Their work caught the attention of another extraordinary forward-thinking global organization, Peace Parks Foundation. Founded in 1997 to facilitate the establishment of peace parks, or Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa, Peace Parks engages with governments, private citizens, and a score of agencies to secure and connect vast swaths of conservation land straddling the borders of two or more countries. Their mission: re-establish and protect an-cient migratory routes, preserve genetic diversity of species, and re-wild areas decimated by war, poaching, and mining.

Werner Myburgh, CEO of Peace Parks for 14 years, spearheads an organi-zation of more than 200 employees and 250 contractors (park rangers and seasonal workers), while partnering with 130 donors.

“We’ve integrated Col. Dyck’s and GEOS’s antipoaching model and pro-tocols, expanding it from approximately 60,000 acres. to eight million acres in four areas in Mozambique, two areas in Malawi, and two in Zambia,” Werner said.

Peace Parks will launch its own rhino translocation project this year, re-introducing two species of critically endangered rhinos to Zinave National Park in Mozambique. Locally extinct for more than 40 years, it’s a colossal undertaking, but essential to offset poaching for profit of rhino horns.

Most of the world’s remaining rhino population, about 16,000, remains in South Africa. Werner is optimistic about the species survival elsewhere because of similar projects.

“Peace Parks’ work is the most incredible largely untold story in conservation,” Matt said. “Their upperlevel stuff is the key going forward, so much more than our boots on the ground.”

Said Werner, “We believe we are doing something in Africa that will have a far-reaching impact on the world.”

For more information, go to http://geos.foundation/ contact-us/.