Adapted from an interview by Authority Magazine Editorial Staff
Sunny of nature and learned of spirit, Dr Jennifer Lalley, our Chief Conservation Officer has been a fixture in the Southern African nature scene since she packed her bags and left Syracuse, New York for Botswana.
Feet firmly on African soil, Jen threw herself into life working in ecotourism safari lodges.
“I was very fortunate to find temporary work in Botswana in a photographic safari lodge, which would change the course of my life. I stayed, took a full time job, stayed some more and eventually changed my career to wildlife conservation.”
Until that is, the academic inside her was awoken and she made the move to academic research and the field of conservation. Jen set her compass for the UK where she attained an MSc in Conservation Biology from the University of Kent before embarking on her PhD in Conservation Biogeography at the University of Oxford, a doctorate that saw her study lichen-dominated ecosystems along Namibia’s Skeleton Coast for years on end.
From here, this conservationist, who had once aspired to be a journalist, returned to Africa and embarked upon her career in earnest, working for conservation non profits, serving as a university lecturer and driving conservation strategies through her consulting company.
She became disheartened however, by the limited funding for non-profits and conservation students and by the continued struggles of communities living alongside wildlife areas. She was frustrated that funds which might have been destined for meaningful community and conservation projects were diverted elsewhere instead.
Her years in the industry had taught her one thing above all else – lip service is not enough. Africa needed a different model for sustainable conservation progress. One that could protect conservation land and wildlife, empower nearby communities and provide sustainable funding for conservation research and programmes. An ecotourism company that put purpose before profit could do all of those things, so that’s exactly what she and her co-founders created.
“My partner, Dave van Smeerdijk, and I came to the conclusion in 2010 that we needed greater purpose in our lives: we had just adopted our first child and had a rekindled interest in making Africa a better place for the next generation. As a conservation scientist, I felt that the field of conservation was burdened with disaster management and a never-ending cycle of fundraising — all too time consuming and short-term to allow for progress. Conservation is all about nature and people, so progress relies on long-term relationships, a gradual building of trust and sustainable funding.
It started with the idea of creating a non-profit ecotourism representation company that gives back, using my partner’s incredible success in the ecotourism market and my conservation direction to fund meaningful conservation programs. We decided it was too small-scale to achieve what we wanted. With a commercial ecotourism company, we could develop a multifaceted business that would attract investors, create a bigger pot of sustainable funding for conservation AND be on the ground actively protecting wildlife, land, and empowering rural communities through the development of nearby ecotourism lodges. With the encouragement of friends, like-minded investors and business partners, we created Natural Selection at the end of 2014.
From the get-go, the plan was to set aside 1% of gross revenue (total income) to conservation — an idea we borrowed from Patagonia, a brand we really admire. We were joined by two amazing co-founders, Colin Bell and James Ramsay, who came with years of experience in setting up successful ecotourism companies. They and our early investors helped make it all possible, and we even ramped up our donating ability to 1.5% of total income. We officially launched Natural Selection to the market in 2016 at which time our 1.5% donation was 40% of our profit. So our motto became ‘conservation before profit’.”
It’s now a decade since Natural Selection was launched in 2016, but even longer ago that the conversations began, over coffee, on game drives, at dinners, about a company that would give back, and maintain that ethos as its primary focus. Thus Natural Selection was born, with conservation at its core and Jen among those at its fore.
Together with her fellow founders, Jen shaped the business model in which 1.5% of booking and Conservation, Community and Reserve (CCR) fees directly support conservation initiatives. In the world of safaris, where many talk the talk but few walk the walk, Natural Selection set new standards as a legitimately conservation-focused safari operator with a female co-founder in a top job and lodges run by local people.
Natural Selection’s leadership were tested to their limits when, just four years after the company’s creation, Covid-19 hit, decimating the tourism industry. Despite the company’s future hanging in the balance, the co-founders stuck to their guns and prioritised the land and people they’d committed to.
“During Covid, we had undergone immense stress with our exco team trying to save our new business and still protect nearly 1 million hectares of wildlife land and the jobs of 700+ people across Namibia and Botswana, with zero revenue. Most of Natural Selection’s employees come from rural villages, and we became aware that these villages were cut off during Covid. On top of this, Namibia was experiencing a severe drought. We had pooled the resources we had and fund-raised to deliver food parcels to remote communities for over six months. This ensured families had food while waiting for Covid to lift or the rains to fall on crops, whichever came first. Our incredible teams on the ground made it happen and we ended up providing an estimated 800,000 meals.”
The Natural Selection team proved that they were genuinely committed to making a difference, and as the world emerged from Covid, the company was able to move forward and continue its path of growth, morals intact and with significant loyalty and support from the industry who now understood that the company would literally put its money where its mouth is.
“I personally take my responsibility to the planet and fellow humankind very seriously, and Natural Selection’s mission and operational standards mirror this in many ways. We tread as lightly as we can in our lodge operation and continually search for ways to minimize our impact even more. With our ears to the ground, we are also in a position to respond to social and wildlife needs as they arise. If we can help improve a situation, we will and that is a core value of our business and one that I uphold in my personal life.
This commitment to be of service, however, comes with great responsibility to make sure efforts and funds are used in a meaningful way. This is something I refuse to compromise on. With such little global funding going to wildlife-and now to Africa in general-every cent counts, and we are very careful about where we spend it. Too often, charitable funds are given to projects with the greatest PR potential rather than the greatest positive impact. We hold tight to our value of targeting truly impactful projects and filtering out the rest. For this, the Natural Selection Foundation has an independent board of conservation scientists to guide those decisions. Luckily for our marketing team, some of our long-term projects do carry charisma, or it would make their jobs impossible!”
The ethos of Natural Selection and the associated Natural Selection Foundation has had far reaching and unexpected effects. The founders have found their operating method to have attracted a higher quality of motivated staff, and ignited loyalty in them. It’s also helped the business stand out in the world of safaris, secure in the knowledge that Natural Selection is legitimately doing everything we claim rather than greenwashing. Further to this, the ethos has integrated the business and Foundation into a far broader network, with the directors in demand at forums on a variety of different subjects including conservation, ecotourism, business development, women’s empowerment, child welfare, education, climate change, human relations, land management and numerous other related fields.
“We measure a great deal of our success by the success of our partnerships with governments, local communities, operational partners, conservation partners, our wonderful staff and our supportive investors. It’s within these partnerships that we receive regular and valuable feedback, and whose appreciation put us on the map as leaders in conservation tourism in Botswana and Namibia. It’s also what has brought us endless opportunities for growth — we went from one lodge to 18 in the first five years.”
In her role as Chief Conservation Officer, Jen is deeply immersed in the conservation and community work we undertake, yet even she finds herself moved by its impact.
“We have several lodges in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, and one of our long-term conservation and community programs here is the Elephant Express — a fleet of 3 buses that transport school children and healthcare workers through elephant corridors. Elephants regularly move through this area and pose a threat to pedestrians, so the community was understandably intolerant of these large roaming pachyderms. After our first year of operation, I attended a stakeholder meeting, hosted by our operational partners EcoExist and the Okavango Community Trust. The feedback was unexpected. Not only had the buses dramatically reduced dangerous encounters with elephants, but school attendance had shot up and with this student marks had significantly improved. Moreover, the transport of healthcare workers to remote satellite clinics had reduced the need for elderly people to travel long distances (often by foot) to clinics and for the first time ever, pregnant women were receiving pre-natal care and assistance by midwives, which had reduced infant mortality. I was astounded! It was a lesson in how everything we do impacts others in all directions. I am very cognizant of this now and it has influenced my view on how we should move through this world and what we should fund.”
There’s no denying that Jen and Natural Selection have achieved great results already, but our CIO is motivated to do even more over the next two years, when she’d like guests to leave feeling informed and inspired to create change and staff feeling fulfilled and supported. Her biggest ambition though?
“We will be donating over 1 million USD per year to wildlife conservation and community upliftment programs.”
Just give us a couple of years.