Hi, friends. As this season starts to wind down, I’m already dreaming up conversations for next season. If you’re part of a wildlife, environmental, or conservation organization and you’d like to reach curious, action-oriented listeners, I’d love to partner with you. You can sponsor a full season or a single episode. Want to explore the possibilities? Reach out – you’ll find my contact info in the show notes.

I am Crystal DiMiceli and welcome to the Forces for Nature Show. Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom you hear of these days? Do you feel like you as just one [00:00:45] person, can’t really make a difference? Forces for nature cuts through that negativity. In each episode, I interview someone who is working to make the world more sustainable and humane. Join me in learning from them and get empowered to take action so that you too can become a force for nature.

Today’s guests are two of the most influential conservation storytellers and advocates of our time: Beverly and Dereck Joubert. You probably know their films and photography from National Geographic, and in this conversation, we also talk about their stunning new book, Wild Eye—a 40-year retrospective of a life spent in the wild places of Africa.

But what I love about this episode is that we go beyond beautiful images. we talk about what they have witnessed changing over time. We get into the real “how” of conservation what happens when silence becomes complicity. We talk about conservation funded by tourism, what ethical travel can look like, and how to choose experiences that do more good than harm.

And we also talk about something many of us in this space know deeply: burnout, adversity, and how to keep going—a lesson on the latter thrust upon them after a terrible accident a few years ago.

If you care about wildlife, wild places, and practical ways to protect them—whether you work in conservation or you are simply drawn to it—this one is for you.

[00:00:00] Crystal: Beverly and Derek, thank you so much for joining me on Forces for Nature. It’s so great to have you.

[00:00:05] Dereck: Well, thank you very much. Thanks for inviting us, and thanks to our mutual friend, Jeff Flocken.

[00:00:10] Beverly: Yeah, thank you, crystal. We really do appreciate it.

[00:00:14] Crystal: So we’re here today to talk about your life’s work, but also focus in on this beautiful book that you recently published called Wild Eye, and in this new book, it’s a retrospective of the last 40 [00:00:30] years of your life and career in the wilds of Africa.

What was your inspiration for creating it?

[00:00:36] Beverly: Well, I suppose our inspiration was really those 40 years. And being inspired daily, feeling like the unknown was folding in front of us and being able to have the privilege to capture moments that people had never, ever seen before.

So to get to this point, and to look back, felt really. Important because [00:01:00] right now we feel like we’re on that cusp, on that tipping edge of losing many of these vast, beautiful landscapes and all the animals in it.

[00:01:10] Dereck: And I think that was part of the narrative in that, um, we were looking at some images of Beverly’s.

20, 30 years ago and just realizing how much it had changed. And I think that it was about documenting that change and bringing them out of the archive and analyzing some of these things. Now change is not [00:01:30] always bad. so it was just interesting to go down that journey once again.

[00:01:35] Crystal: You had said that from very early on, each of you, independent of the other, knew that you wanted a life in the wild. Where do you think that passion came from?

[00:01:46] Dereck: again, independently. We both grew up, in South Africa and, uh, our families both went off into the wild to enjoy it recreationally. And then we met in high school and straight out of [00:02:00] high school I decided to, step into the wild side and, steal Beverly away from any other warm-blooded male.

And, uh, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I realized that I thought that I was abducting her, but in fact, it was the other way around.

[00:02:19] Beverly: Truly, I definitely did abduct him. we were very fortunate when we met. we both were like-minded and had a desperate desire to understand [00:02:30] the worlds of Africa.

growing up, in cities, we were also fortunate to have our parents that always took us to national parks. So that started this incredible passion. but we deeply, Or, Fond of animals and we resonate very closely. with animals, I think we have a way of putting ourselves in their shoes and understanding that, um, they need a voice.

And so we decided we would be their voice

[00:02:58] Dereck: from a very young [00:03:00] age. Beverly, Picked up wounded birds and wounded animals, and so I think I just became a project for her

[00:03:11] Crystal: lifelong project. Just like the chapters of your book, your careers started. With awe of nature and then evolved. Was there a particular moment, a story that you can share, that you can tell us about when you decided to go from research, [00:03:30] film, and photography, to then also include speaking out and being advocates for the environment?

[00:03:36] Dereck: Well,I wonder if it was a moment or accumulation of moments. So you’re quite right. We went into the field, obviously deeply in love with each other and deeply in love with this continent. On which we were born and into which soul we were born. And, uh, the first phase of our lives, six years or so, we wandered around looking at everything and going, wow, [00:04:00] that’s amazing.

and almost ignoring some of the things that were going wrong, some of the poaching, some of the development, going into the parks and saying, well, it’ll be all right. It’s not that bad. And then at some point we went, actually. Unless we speak out about this, it is gonna be bad. And we very early on in our twenties, developed this philosophy that there’s a big difference between speaking out about something if you see it’s wrong or staying silent.

And if you’re silent, you [00:04:30] become complicit in the crime. and so we became. vocal about our advocacy and that led to action.

[00:04:38] Beverly: Yeah. and then to go into the nineties, Derek and I, were the first to understand that in the area that we were working in, in the northern part of Botswana, that the poaching had started on the larger mammals, both, rhinos and elephants.

And we alerted the military, On one of the [00:05:00] gunshots that we had heard and discovered that it was the last black rhino that had been taken out. And so from that moment on,the then,man in charge of the military was, Ian Karma, what is he? He’s brigadier. Yeah. Brigadier Ian Karma, and he straightaway poached an anti-poaching force to protect all the borders.

And, then a little later we were filming elephants along one of the borders, along the Toby River. And, [00:05:30] There was a group of poachers shooting into the hood of elephants, which we didn’t see in the beginning, but we saw them, just as the light changed. And once they saw us and we gave chase, they ran towards the river and leapt into the river.

And that’s when we knew that we needed to speak out in a big way. We needed to show our films. to the government, to the president, and to all the ministers so that they were alerted and they could make the right decisions. And from that moment [00:06:00] on, advocacy was just part of our conservation in every way.

And we became National Geographic Explorers in residence at that time. And, our big mission program was starting the Big Cat Initiative. So it almost all happened, you know, it’s sort of five years apart.

[00:06:19] Dereck: I think you’re quite right. It started with that rhino that we heard being shot.

[00:06:23] Beverly: And from that moment on, our lives were completely different and we haven’t done a film or a book since [00:06:30] then that hasn’t had some sort of advocacy message in it.

[00:06:34] Crystal: Yeah. I mean, all of the work that you have done, like the big cat initiatives, the Great Plains Foundation, your work with relocating rhinos, it’s just been, uh.Big and impactful and so important. So it’s incredible what you guys have been doing. and you also are able to do conservation through business. With the eco lodges and the tours that you [00:07:00] provide to visitors, how do these businesses give back?

[00:07:05] Dereck: Yeah. it’s interesting because the two, so we often think that we run a three ring circus, really?

So it’s media, um, the tourism side of things and the conservation. but they do work well together and at the moment we hire about a thousand people in the conservation business, in the ecotourism business. and so really and truly what it is, and the way that all started was we were deeply concerned about the [00:07:30] numbers of, of big cats and how they were falling.

To the degree, just one figure. When Beverly and I were born, there were 450,000 lions. And when we started looking at this for the big Cats initiative, there were 20,000 lions. So we had lost 95% of lions just in our lifetimes. So we knew we had to do something. We started the Big Cats Initiative with National Geographic.

but even then we were saving one lion at a time or maybe pride at a time. We realized that [00:08:00] we needed to save the land that these lions were on. And so we started buying our leases on land, and got to, we’re now at about one and a half million acres of land, but once we started that, we realized that we were gonna be bankrupt pretty soon.

We were bankrupt before, but anyway, and so we needed to fund this and so we overlaid tourism and that’s how we evolved into this ecotourism model. And today, I must say that I don’t, I don’t [00:08:30] even view it as an ecotourism model. It’s a, a conservation model that’s funded by tourism.

[00:08:36] Crystal: And wasn’t the first piece of land that you bought.

it showed immediate change because it was hunting grounds, and. And then you banned the hunting.

[00:08:45] Dereck: Exactly right. So very large piece of land, 360,000 acres that had been hunting for 50 years. we’d lived there for six years and we just saw the numbers declining, declining, declining. It was heartbreaking.

[00:09:00] In the years we were there, we saw one leopard. we saw 50 buffalo in six years. the elephants would come down to drink for, we timed them for a total time of six seconds. They would drink and run back to the forest in case they get got shot at. And so we had the opportunity to take this over and immediately stop all the hunting overlay a, a tourism model.

go from hiring about 12 people a year. for part of the year to about 150. [00:09:30] Then, and we increased the revenue to the Botswana government Economy by 2400%, in a year. And then, within one or two years I was driving from the airfield to one of the camps and saw seven leopards. In one day. And so it just flourished.

All we had to do was back off. And I think that’s the success of, tourism based conservation.

[00:09:54] Beverly: Yeah. And that’s what we, have now done right through Great Plains [00:10:00] Conservation, is we use that as our blueprint. Of success to look at other areas and not all areas are hunted. You know, some areas are working very closely with the communities, like in Kenya, where we’ve helped the community.

Protect their land instead of, uh, you know, turning it into sort of two acres of maize land that’s all fenced off and they stop the, Wildebeast from the north to being able to keep it open [00:10:30] and we pay 4,000 Masi. individual land owners and then they become part of the conservation. And then in Zimbabwe, we recently took that same Botswana model, this um, area that we, where we stopped the hunting and we are now working along the Zambezi and it’s about 280,000 acres.

Was hunted since 1956 and we stopped hunting, over the last seven years. And now, Slightly different [00:11:00] model. nature didn’t come back in abundance like the Botswana area. So we’ve now been rewilding that area and moving animals from drought stricken area in the south to the Zambezi River, which is an incredible paradise, but just doesn’t have enough animals in the area.

And that’s been a great success over the last three years.

[00:11:21] Crystal: Beautiful. Amazing. You mentioned Kenya and, and migration and, and this next question. Stems from hearing [00:11:30] that there’s a new, big name hotel in Kenya that is drawing a lot of scrutiny because it allegedly has been built right in the middle of a migratory pathway.

How can someone be sure that they’re making a choice to go somewhere that is helping more than hurting? The area. That’s a

[00:11:48] Beverly: great question. Wow.

[00:11:49] Dereck: Okay.

[00:11:50] Beverly: Yeah,

[00:11:51] Dereck: right. I hope you’ve got about three hours left here. no, I think that, so one of the great things about where we are today is that. There [00:12:00] is this knowledge available and I think that people really do need to be quite critical about making choices about where they’re going for this once in a lifetime or even repeat, experience.

I think that, first of all, a safari to Africa is probably the finest gift you can give yourself because it’s a journey that is both

[00:12:21] Crystal: I agree,

[00:12:21] Dereck: spiritual and it’s it’s physical to a degree that you want it to be. it’s a place where philosophers and poets always went [00:12:30] to, to find inspiration away from the clutter, away from the noise of New York or Washington or Tokyo.

Um. So it’s a precious moment and you really do want to research this and think about it very, very carefully. And I think for me, the right choices are made by choosing the location, choosing the ethics and the authenticity of the. Company you’re about to invest your next two weeks in. and making sure that, that there’s [00:13:00] purpose and there’s intention from that company, that it’s sustainable, that it’s not doing any harm, that it’s working with communities.

In other words, just go to Great Plains.

[00:13:14] Crystal: Agreed. Agreed. that is. Like huge on my bucket list. I had the privilege of going to the Masai Mara for just a quick 48 hours, and to this day it’s still the most magical place I’ve ever [00:13:30] been and I only experienced a moment of it.

[00:13:33] Beverly: Yeah.

[00:13:34] Crystal: Well, so I’m dying to get back.

[00:13:36] Dereck: Well, absolutely. And the other thing about it is that, these places have got quite popular and for anybody who asks us about when and where to go, we often steal ’em away. We say, go to the Maasai Mara area, go into the conservancies, whether it’s to one of our camps or not, doesn’t really matter.

go into the conservancies that are private ’cause you don’t [00:14:00] want to get caught up in the churn of all that clutter, that noise and mayhem. And if you really. Want the very best of the, of the Mara go when the wildebeest or not there because that’s when it’s chaotic and people all over the place. But there are gems outside of that migration.

The migration’s only in there for six weeks, so the Mara exists beyond the story of the migration. And I think that is when it’s shows its real colors.

[00:14:28] Beverly: Absolutely. [00:14:30] conscientious, um, tourism is vital and it needs to be ethical and we need to all have moral boundaries. And I think we do. I mean, Derek and I always have, felt that, animals have a soul and they should be respected as we would like to be respected.

But I don’t believe we are doing that on the planet today, through mass tourism. the other thing that when somebody is coming out on a safari, you really do wanna feel like you are the first [00:15:00] explorer and. The most exclusive part of it is space. And so to go to an area where it’s so congested is not giving you that space and it’s not allowing you freedom of thought and having that spiritual connection.

You know, when you see your first lion or leopard or elephant, whichever animal you find, is so magical to you. we just had an experience in India. When you see your first uh, tiger, you want [00:15:30] that connection. You want it to be the most magical. So you really do have to choose the right places.

Otherwise it won’t be, it’ll be chaotic and mayhem and you probably then won’t be touched to want to protect them. I think Derek and I are very fortunate through our life. all our filming and research from the eighties to today, we’ve, been able to be the only two people in the vehicle and [00:16:00] really, just engrossing ourselves in what’s happening in front of us.

That’s been the only way that we. Could capture what we have. We’ve seen so much that has never been documented before. we were the first to capture it before science, and it’s only because we have been silent and invisible so nature could unfold in front of us instead of us testing it just to get that growl or, whatever it is, for the camera.

That [00:16:30] is not the way we behave. That’s not the way our, tourist will see it. They will see it and have immense patience to just allow it to unfold in front of them. And that’s the magical moment.

[00:16:43] Dereck: to advance on that, I would say there are many things you should bring on safari and some things you shouldn’t.

So a good pair of binoculars, a camera, a great warm jacket. Bring those, leave behind the preconceived notions of what it should be. and most [00:17:00] of the images in this book and your images within Wild Eye are, things that surprised us that happened when we were working on something else altogether, and then we saw a leopard outta the corner of our eye.

We might’ve been trying to catch up with the lions and we saw a herd of elephants coming by. and I would say, you’ve got to give yourself over to this enormous energy that is Africa and African wildlife.

[00:17:29] Crystal: That’s so true. [00:17:30] I, I can’t tell you how many times I cried on that trip. Like first time I saw the giraffe and then the elephant.

Then the lion. Yeah. It was as magical as you say it is and can be in your 40 year career. You’ve witnessed the drastic decline of wildlife, the encroaching spread of human development, and the devastating effects of climate change. Just to name a few from your perspective, how do we get [00:18:00] into this predicament and how do you think we can get out of it?

Do you have hope that we can?

[00:18:06] Dereck: Well, there’s definitely hope. there are a couple of things that led us to this point. Three things. the first is greed. I think that, as a species we are enormously greedy and we want to consume. So we go and we shoot animals as trophies, and that’s consumptive. we, we devour land at an enormous rate.

We put [00:18:30] in up fences, we put in our livestock,we consuming. And that’s out of greed, not necessity generally. necessity is another thing altogether, which is another element of this. as human populations grow more and more people are not entirely sure where they’re gonna get tomorrow’s meal from.

And so there’s a necessity there to live off the land. But it’s still a factor. another factor is ignorance. And we sometimes do not know what [00:19:00] damage we are doing. And the way that we combat that is with education. So the ways to combat all of those things, and first is education. We need this next generation to be educated to the potential.

Nuclear level damage that, that humans can do to the planet. and we can do that by, by reaching into impoverished populations and educating and bringing them up. And we don’t have to wait an entire generational cycle to do that. [00:19:30] Children have changed. Adults minds forever think about smoking and seat belts and all of those sorts of things.

So we need a couple of years with fertile young minds to bring them across into this knowledge base. we need at the same time, to deal with poverty across the globe, in particular in Africa and in particular in places that surround these precious gems of wild places. We cannot have impoverished people sitting on the doorstep of lions and leopards and elephant movement.

[00:20:00] There will be conflict and we need to deal with that. And we need to bring those people across the table so that they become our partners and collaborators within the, protection of natural capital. Greed is a much harder thing to tackle. and I think that antidote to gre. Is the new social media generation where, the greedy of the world are gonna get caught out.

And if we just think back to Cecil the lion. So some dentist in [00:20:30] America went and shot a lion. Social media blew up. the guy even had to move apparently. But today, if you do something wrong, somebody’s gonna find out, they’re gonna film it on a cell phone and you’re gonna be exposed. And so for those reasons.

we’ve gotta work on the necessity and the, and the, I ignorance, but for those reasons, I’m very hopeful that going into this next generation, even though they’re eight and a half billion of us now, that there are also eight and a half billion people [00:21:00] who are our watchdogs dogs.

[00:21:01] Crystal: It has been a particularly turbulent time for conservation efforts between regulatory, rollbacks, financial cuts, science being discredited.

What must we do differently now to protect nature?

In this new world order?

[00:21:19] Beverly: Well, I mean, I do believe that, We can’t keep quiet. We all need to be speaking out. We all need to be the change. We can’t sit back and say, [00:21:30] well, it’s hopeless. And there’s nothing I can do.

So by all being the change, you know, whether it is speaking out on social media or getting involved in. Individuals that have major projects and help that ripple effect to make those projects a success. So for instance, and I’m just looking at Africa, but you know, this is happening all around the world.

there are people that are trying to clean up the planet, whether [00:22:00] it is cleaning up plastics and congested, rivers, Get involved, help support them, give them money. whether it is a little project that we’ve just been doing, saving animals from a drought, but giving them a second chance by moving along, you know them.

Along the Zambezi River, we managed to move 101 elephants. Those elephants now have had three years. In the area, and of course they’re having calves. we managed to move, [00:22:30] 600 Impala. recently we’ve just moved 17 wild dogs with their puppies and they’re running free over the last eight months and it seems to be an incredibly successful project.

Wild dogs were dwindling in that area, and there was very small populations and they were all in bred. Now they have a second chance, in Botswana over the last, um, I suppose it’s seven years. we [00:23:00] wanted to have an impact in bringing rhinos back to Botswana. They had been shot at. Rhinos were being exterminated in South Africa, and so what we managed to do is speak to two governments and see how we could make this happen.

So we were protecting rhinos. Some of them already had bullet wounds in them. We were rescuing them, taking them across the border, obviously patching them up and releasing them in secret locations in the Acavenga [00:23:30] delta. That was 87 rhinos. Today, 90 calves have been born in the wild. So there are incredible hopeful stories and if people could involved in these stories, I think, we would be way more successful in protecting the last remaining pristine areas, but also allowing them to come back to be the paradises that they once were,

[00:23:58] Dereck: I think also [00:24:00] the mechanism to get there, in dark times or in or happier times is to, is to understand that administrations will come and go. Naysayers will come and go. I’m part. Ancient Viking and part futurist, and so both. If I was an astronaut heading for the moon, I wouldn’t worry too much about the space clutter.

I’d be saying we, we’ve gotta go there. And I think that we all have to have in our heads that we as [00:24:30] conservationists, as humans. We have to take care of nature and repair this house, and from time to time, there’s gonna be noise from the left or the right, or somebody behind us, or somebody ahead of us.

They’re gonna be roadblocks. But all of that’s clutter. We know what we’ve gotta do. We all know what we’ve gotta do, so we shouldn’t worry too much about the ups and downs of what’s going on in politics.

[00:24:52] Crystal: Just keep your eye on the, the final

[00:24:55] Dereck: prize if keep your eye on the prize. The mission is a long-term mission.

It’s funny because it’s, [00:25:00] it’s both long-term and, and, short, immediate. Term. we need to look down at our feet as we walk in and look at the horizon at the same time. And, um, part of that is educating the people who are going to be on the horizon when we are not. And part of it is giving them enough of this planet that’s intact so they’ve got something to work with.

[00:25:24] Crystal: You use stories to tap into people’s hearts, whether through photography, film, [00:25:30] and even the choice of architecture in your eco lodges. Tell stories. Are there elements of these stories that you find to be more effective than others at eliciting a positive, actionable response?

[00:25:43] Dereck: I think that there’s an art to storytelling.

I hate formulaic storytelling, but I think there’s a structure to storytelling. so we know that 27 and a half act plays are not gonna work. it’s a three act structure or possibly a five act structure. [00:26:00] And whether that’s in the film or in the book. or in the design of a lodge or a camp, we tell three act plays and stories.

and I think that’s proven to be The stories that we have hung on to since we were sitting around our first fires as cavemen, listening to each other, articulate about their journeys out into the savannas. So stories are critical to humans. [00:26:30] We are the storytelling ape, and, there’s no doubt about that.

And the story we’ve told have evolved our brains and the brains of the listeners. to make us what we are. So stories are critical, and whether it’s, whether it’s in the decor or in the design of the lodge or in the sculpture pieces we put in these lodges or. Or in a talk we give to a few thousand people.

[00:26:55] Beverly: And I think we are very fortunate that since the eighties [00:27:00] we’ve lived these stories. So they are authentic. we feel them within the cells of our body. they have moved us emotionally. I mean, just to give you a quick example, when we were filming the last lions, we were following this lions with her three cubs.

And We became part of her pride, her little pride. And when devastation happened to her and her cubs, we felt it. And so to tell that [00:27:30] story and it became a docu-feature, and for people that were sitting in the audience to feel what we felt, they felt that pain. They really did feel the emotion, but they felt it in a way that they had put themselves.

Into her place. And they were even forgetting that they were watching a lion, they were thinking of their own lives. And so it’s incredibly cathartic at the same time. But, only a, an authentic story can do that to you. For instance, the cover of, Wild [00:28:00] Eye and the Image behind us, that is a, a little leopard that we, started following when she was eight days old.

And stayed with her until maturity and her journey was so phenomenal That, and us being with her daily and our interactions with her, even though she was a wild leopard, we felt like we were surrogate parents and she treated us as just part of her family in so many ways. Derek and I [00:28:30] would often say she seduced us in a way that we never wanted to leave her.

So for three and a half years we were filming her and then we went and edited the film, but then had to go back and find out where she was and carry on with her story. And then we, we made another film and. Everything that happened to her and to us through that time is very evident that it unfolds in front of you.

So now today, people around the world know her name. [00:29:00] they cherish and love leopards and wanna protect them, and she was actually the ultimate ambassador that forced us to start the Big Cat initiative at National Geographic. And now that Big Cat initiative is in our Great Plains Foundation. I

[00:29:17] Dereck: also think that there are techniques within the storytelling, that come across in the book and in our films and in the way we speak and in the stories we [00:29:30] tell.

and the technique is to use and to create spaces even within a sentence like this one where I invite you to. Think about it, look around, touch the ground where elephants are about to walk in a film or in your book. Blending a couple of closeup images, which are by their very nature of storytelling, are intense and [00:30:00] close.

and your mind starts racing and then turning over the page to a wired image of a lion or leopard in a tree. And it allows you to then stop, breathe, you change your breathing pattern, listen to the story that the image is telling you. It doesn’t have to be painted over with narrative all the time. And I think those are the most rewarding experiences to be through.

If you walk into a lodge, for example, you walk in and there drinks [00:30:30] and there’s, a good meal over there and in a fireplace, and you sit at the fire. And look out at the horizon as a herd of elephant passes by, and I think, I think that sort of is more valuable than the French wine or the, great cocktail.

[00:30:47] Crystal: your book does take. the reader on just such a beautiful journey. And I, I wanna get back to the book very quickly, but right before that, you both had a traumatic [00:31:00] experience with a buffalo in 2017 that nearly killed you. But rather than becoming afraid and retreating from life in the wild and a life protecting the wild, you have doubled it down.

Although, most people aren’t being speared by a horn, they might be suffering from another sort of mental or emotional or physical trauma. What advice can you offer to those who feel like their passion is beating them down [00:31:30] and burning them out?

[00:31:31] Beverly: Hmm. You know, um, that probably, was our worst nightmare.

It lasted over a period of, probably less than a couple of seconds when the Buffalo charge and hit us. but from that moment to before I got into the emergency rooms was 18 hours. And those 18 hours, were an incredible challenge. Whether it was life and death, whether I was gonna make it, [00:32:00] there were times where I pretty much did drift off and depart, and Derek had to resuscitate me and bring me back.

but through that time, we already knew that it wasn’t the Buffalo’s fault. it was a freak accident. It wasn’t our fault, but it was a freak accident. We were minding our own business, very peaceful, walking along, and, but he was a wounded buffalo and so he was irate. He was already probably full of sep he, he [00:32:30] had blood poisoning septicemia and so he was just trying to defend himself and, um.

So after that accident happened, knowing that we had already forgiven the buffalo, we didn’t want the buffalo to be shot. our journey was discussing it, on a daily basis through recovery, which was really nine months. It made us so much more determined not to be a victim, but to embrace [00:33:00] adversity and to see how we could use that adversity and be more powerful in our determination and our passion to speak out and to try and protect the areas.

And that’s really what we have been able to do. I do think that when people, Are feeling absolutely burnt out. there is a time that you need to pause and see. How you can embrace it and, speak to as many people as [00:33:30] possible, because I think that is one of the other ways, that we managed to release it is so many people, so many journalists, um, so many interviews, whatever it was.

I had seven different surgeons, so seven different surgeons trying to protect me. And of course you have to, retell the story so many different times. is all part of the recovery, but don’t roll up in a ball and be a victim. you’re not gonna win, anything by doing that.

[00:33:58] Dereck: that’s probably [00:34:00] the most important part of it.

I think from my observation of this is, um, the, the limbs, the body, these are all. Human tools, as is the mind and the emotion, and these are things that we control. We must control our mind and we must control our emotions. And if they are controlling us, we’re gonna lose a battle. And so any survivor of any horrible accident [00:34:30] anywhere, think it’s the worst nightmare.

And it is, but you’ve survived it and therefore you can push through this and we pushed through our particular nightmare. You have to give it, recognition and acknowledgement and say, that was bad. But every journey from that moment on is a journey of discovery and lesson. And what we learned from it were we could never have learned without it.

And so in some [00:35:00] ways, and it’s easier for me to say this, I wasn’t impalled, but uh, in some ways it was a gift to us to take us through that gateway from whatever we were before to whatever we are now.

[00:35:11] Crystal: Beverly, I had read that you actually went to the a buffalo herd and photographed them and sat.

With them at a distance, of course, um, to, to face that fear. Is that correct?

[00:35:26] Beverly: Yeah, that is correct. So after the nine months of recovery, so I [00:35:30] was in the, ICU and, surgical wards all over a period of. Three months. But then of course, recovery was to get my, strength back. My arm, the shoulder was, shattered.

I had broken 27, bones, so there was a lot of recovery that needed to happen and rehabilitation. And of course, my one lung had collapsed, so I wasn’t allowed to fly anywhere. And so all of that came back, but when we went back nine months later, Our purpose [00:36:00] was to return to the place exactly where it happened and to really understand the energy there.

And as Derek said, he wanted to touch, um, the soil and ask forgiveness and ask if we welcome back. I felt that I needed. To be very close to a buffalo herd. And I wanted to photograph the horns in an artistic way because that was the horn that impaled me, went underneath my, armpit through my [00:36:30] chest, into my face, and then he ran off with me.

and so I wanted to understand the animal, but in the beauty of the animal, and to understand that horn had been in my body. I believe it was a very powerful thing to do because I didn’t sit there with fear. I embraced it more than was trembling. And from that moment on, I still respect every [00:37:00] single animal out there.

I, you know, they’re wild animals and we shouldn’t be challenging them. And we still don’t, even before we didn’t challenge them and we don’t now. But it was important to just release any, I suppose you would call it PTSD syndrome. and I don’t think Derek and I have, extreme PTSD syndrome, I’m saying.

Extreme because we are writing our memoirs. [00:37:30] And Derek would sat here at five in the morning, trying to tell that story, and he said it was the hardest thing to do because he would relive it in a way that. He had to try and save my life, whereas I didn’t have that side of it. And so I think I managed to release the anxiety quicker.

But I think right now we are both [00:38:00] pretty much, don’t have it. And of course we don’t have fear for, the animals out there.

[00:38:07] Crystal: Oh, such an inspiration. I wanna pivot back now to your book. Can you pick an image from the book that best captures the lesson you most want the world to learn right now?

[00:38:19] Beverly: Wow. That’s a hard one.

[00:38:22] Crystal: That’s, that’s a hard one because, I, every image is just spectacular.

[00:38:26] Beverly: Yeah. I’m going to actually, because I have already spoken [00:38:30] about the cover.

like a edema being such an inspiration and our eyes are giving us compassion. and I do believe that if we live side by side with animals, We can, have compassion towards them and they can have compassion towards us. But I think I would like to choose red alerts. Red alerts is that rhino that has the red scarf wrapped around her eyes.

And that is purely because we are in a place today [00:39:00] that we do need to be part of the solution. And the solution was then to protect that female. She was darted by vets. the red scarf is purely so that she’s not gonna be traumatized by the whole experience, so she’s not watching what’s happening and she doesn’t hear it.

and then she’s darted, she’s put in a crate and we transported her to Botswana. And then of course, the next magical moment was her being released running free. [00:39:30] Shortly after, about a couple of months later she gave birth. so that whole image, rarely shows that, we can be a huge part of the change.

[00:39:44] Dereck: So just by the way, with that red scarf is interesting. because it’s in black and white and red. The only color is red. And, um, the red is, symbolic, in two ways. The first is in the far east China, [00:40:00] Vietnam, Malaysia. red is a symbol of prosperity and wealth and even love. Uh, you know, brides are married, married in red dresses, and so there’s this great reverence of that color.

And that’s the biggest market for Rhino Horn. And to generally, that implies red of a different kind. So rhinos are slaughtered and killed and there’s a splash of red on the ground below them when that happens. And so we use that red scarf [00:40:30] visually as a don’t impose your prosperity and your values of prosperity on our rhinos That have been slaughtered for you? I think my favorite image in the book, am I allowed one?

[00:40:46] Beverly: You’re allowed

[00:40:46] Dereck: One. Okay. Um, is, uh, there’s an image of, and I don’t know what it’s called, but, it’s a it lake. With a single elephant in the middle of the lake, shot at sunset with gold, it’s Golden Ripples.

Or [00:41:00] maybe it’s called, I think

[00:41:00] Beverly: it’s called Golden in

[00:41:02] Dereck: it’s a damn good name for it. Um, and I think what’s important about that for me is that the ripples stem from this elephant and come out all the way across this lake and even like a mile away or, or washing up on the shore symbolic of that, we, each one of us, creates a ripple and we can choose whether it’s a good one or a bad one.

[00:41:27] Crystal: Thank you. I like to [00:41:30] leave the listener with action tips on what they can do regarding the things that we talked about today. What do you hope that people will see and act upon after reading your book?

[00:41:42] Dereck: we’ll, each have different versions of this, I think, but, um, the philosophy of, of our lives has been to speak out when we see something going wrong.

And I think that the era of silence has passed now. The [00:42:00] stakes are too high. And I would urge people whether they’re flipping through beautiful images of elephants in lakes or rhinos with scarves around them to think about their own ripple effect and speak out and do something about it. And if nothing else, if the viewer, audience of this book puts it down and says, these images are inspiring to me, I want to.

I want to become a photographer, like the renowned and beautiful and young and inspiring Beverly [00:42:30] Joubert. do something about it. If I want to become a conservationist, like the young and inspiring, beautiful Beverly Joubert, do something about it. Get up and do it. And I think that our message is.

Speak out, do something. The stakes are too high to just be a, an audience member.

[00:42:49] Beverly: And then of course, um, just to add to that, we do have a platform where people could collaborate with us and I think, too [00:43:00] often. It’s too hard for everybody to create their own foundations or their own programs because they’re not in that situation.

I mean, they might be,incredible lawyers or bankers. That actually, actually the, the lawyers could be fighting for the environment and the bankers could be creating finance for the environment. So we all have a means to be able to connect, and I think that collaboration is vital. but with our great plain foundation, we, [00:43:30] we so open, to have these discussions and to talk to everyone and see how they wanna get involved.

do they merely wanna. Get involved in a way where they do donate? Or do they wanna say, I wanna be supporting a family in Kenya that is in dire need of education? Or do I wanna be assisting, our Solar Mamas, who. Or putting power back to a community. But when I say back, [00:44:00] that’s the incorrect word, because they’ve never had power, they’ve never been on the grid.

So they’re actually giving these people light and power for the first time in their lives. And right now, through our foundation. these Solar Mamas have been able to erect over a thousand solar panels, and some of them are even on grass hunts. But now the people, have been advanced into the 21st century.

we all take it for granted that we have power. They never have had power. So there’s [00:44:30] so much that we are doing. In fact, we’ve just built, houses for the destitute, but out of recycled glass bottles that have come out of all our camps. And so there’s a way of recycling, make it sustainable and giving back to the destitute as well as getting involved in the conservation of the wilderness areas and relocating animals back to the wild.

[00:44:55] Dereck: And so as we go about our daily work with the foundation, we [00:45:00] look at this combination of things, the tourism we spoke about that generate some of the money we need, the communities that we are working with that live around these wild places and conservation. and it really does have to be a handshake between the three for everything to work.

a really good example is at the moment, I’ll get to stats wrong, but I think we feed about 18,000 children a day.

[00:45:22] Crystal: Oh my goodness.

[00:45:23] Dereck: And somebody might say, I don’t care about rhinos with red scarves on them. I care about children in [00:45:30] Africa. And so we have a vehicle to assist those people who wanna do something for kids as well.

[00:45:35] Beverly: In fact, over three years, we’ve given out,

[00:45:38] Dereck: 8,

[00:45:39] Beverly: 8

[00:45:39] Dereck: and a half,

[00:45:40] Beverly: 8.4 million nutritious meals.

[00:45:43] Dereck: Yeah. and I think that’s on the back of storytelling. It’s the back, on the back of being authentic and true to yourself. And just trying to wake up every morning and saying, no matter what, Buffalo runs across our path.

We want to do [00:46:00] something good.

[00:46:01] Crystal: Beverly and Derek, this has been such a special conversation for me and the listeners. Thank you for your time today and thank you for all that you do. You are making a difference.

[00:46:15] Beverly: Thank you, crystal. We really do appreciate it. Thanks for wanting to talk to us.

[00:46:20] Dereck: What a great conversation. Thank you.

 

Before we end, I want to zoom out for a moment. Beverly and Dereck have spent decades doing something many of us struggle to do consistently: paying close attention—then turning what they see into action. That is part of their legacy, and it is also an invitation to the rest of us.

If you care about wildlife and wild places, the question is not whether you have a role—it is where you will use your influence. Speak up about what matters, support an organization or project you trust, or make an intentional choice with your time, money, or platform. And if travel is part of your life, treat it as a vote—because where you go, who you book with, and what you normalize can either help protect nature or quietly harm it.

If you want to spend more time with Beverly and Dereck’s work, their book Wild Eye is a powerful reminder of what is still worth fighting for—and why connection to nature matters.

If this episode resonated, share it with one person, and I will see you next time.

Don’t forget to go to forces for nature.com and sign up to receive emailed show notes, action tips, and a free checklist to help you start taking practical actions today. [00:34:30] Do you know someone else who would enjoy this episode? I would be so grateful if you would share it with them. Hit me up on Instagram and Facebook at Becoming Forces for Nature, and let me know what actions you have been taking. Adopting just one habit could be a game changer because imagine if a million people also adopted that. What difference for the world are you going to make today?