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05 April 2019

Wilderness Holdings Announces New Group Sustainability Manager

By Wendy Ngcobo, Wilderness Safaris

Wilderness Holdings is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Neil Midlane as its new Group Sustainability Manager as of 1 April 2019. This appointment reflects the company’s ongoing vision to conserve and restore Africa’s wilderness and wildlife through high-end ecotourism, and to ensure that its 4Cs sustainability ethos of Commerce, Community, Culture and Conservation underpins all of its operations.  

“Sustainability has been the core tenet of our business for over 35 years and remains the key driver of everything that we do”, commented Derek de la Harpe, Wilderness Chief Sustainability Officer. “As a veteran of the ecotourism industry, an academic and an accomplished field conservationist, we welcome Neil back into the Wilderness fold. With a PhD in lion conservation and in-depth knowledge of biodiversity conservation as a whole, combined with his background as a Chartered Accountant, we are confident that he will be an excellent addition to our Sustainability Team”.

Neil’s connection to Wilderness goes back to 2010, when, with the support of the Wilderness Wildlife Trust and Wilderness Safaris’ camps in Zambia’s Kafue National Park, he founded and ran the Kafue Lion Project. He spent three years in the field working on his thesis, which earned him a PhD in Zoology through the University of Cape Town.

In his role as Wilderness Holdings’ Group Sustainability Manager, Neil will not only oversee the Group’s experienced Sustainability Team and 4Cs Coordinators, but also interact with all the other elements of the business, particularly operations, to ensure a cohesive approach to sustainability across the business. He will also be directly responsible for the Group’s Biodiversity Conservation strategy and implementation.