Les Carlisle is probably the CC Africa staff member that those crazy about wildlife would most like to meet. This is because, as group conservation manager, he is in charge of implementing the model at the core of the company's endeavours: sustainable conservation, which benefits the land, its wildlife and its people.
As Carlisle puts it: "Our objective, from day one, was to see if we could change the reliance of conservation areas on fickle grant and donor funding." In short, CC Africa wanted to make conservation pay.
This is something the company set out to do long before the catchphrase "triple bottom line" was coined.
Carlisle, who is based in Mpumalanga's White River, has a background in professional game capture and game reserve development. He was employed in 1991 by CC Africa cofounder Dave Varty to export the Varty family's Londolozi model to Phinda in northern KwaZulu Natal.
"Because it was still the apartheid era and we had sanctions, there was no funding for wildlife conservation," he recalls. "So it was opportune to try to find a new way of making it sustainable."
The key was making sure benefits flow to the communities that either own or influence most of the wildlife real estate in Africa. "These were traditionally forced out of or excluded from, say, the national parks system," says Carlisle.
"Crucial, too, was proving to the communities - largely farmers, white and black - that wildlife as a form of land use is more viable than cattle."
When it came to Phinda, in those days a rag-bag of farms bounded by parks that belonged to the old Natal Parks Board, CC Africa also had to have the legislation changed.
He describes the early days as involving "a huge PR exercise, because we had to engage with our neighbours - some tribal - to persuade them that the reintroduction of buffalo, lion and elephant, all of which are no-nos to cattle farmers, would eventually benefit them."
He remembers waiting eight hours to see a chief, who he had asked to advise him on establishing a boundary. "Eventually, he marked it out with a stick for me. It was based entirely on trust."
The upshot is that Phinda has grown from being 7 500 ha of struggling farmland to 22 000 ha of Big-Five game reserve - and, after Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, its accommodation is CC Africa's biggest drawcard. More important, its communities are the beneficiaries of numerous upliftment programmes, most of them flowing from the Africa Foundation, of which Carlisle is a trustee.
Among Carlisle's personal successes at Phinda were the introduction of predators; the first concession to introduce elephant from Zimbabwe; and the renegotiation of protocol with SA Veterinary Services, the outcome of which was to allow buffalo on private land.
And the successes keep on coming. For instance, Phinda recently introduced a leopard-monitoring system and a black rhino range expansion project.
Carlisle is also "engaging positively" with the local communities involved in land claims on Phinda.
Carlisle has also been involved in duplicating the CC Africa model wherever the company operates. "It's as successful in Tanzania. And though we don't own Kwandwe in the Eastern Cape, we still deal with the communities around it."
Carlisle, who has given talks all over the world about CC Africa's model, says that showing international guests what has been achieved - out of pride and, of course, in the hope of donations - is rewarding. "It's quite emotional for some of them. And though we don't do any hard-selling, apart from putting the Africa Foundation brochure in their rooms, 5% of them put their hands in their pockets."
