A note from Dare to Explore, Africa.
This is an extraordinary time for our planet. As we sit indoors, fearful of exposure to nature’s wrath, nature seems to be relishing our absence. We hear reports of coyotes on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, deer grazing near the White House in Washington, boar coming down from the mountains in Barcelona and Bergamo, wild peacocks in the streets in Bangor Wales, even swans and dolphins returning to the canals of Venice. But while wildlife seems to be flourishing in the developed world, almost counter intuitively, the situation in developing countries is quite different. As economic activity grinds to a halt in poorer countries, funding for the conservation of wildlife dries up. In the Serengeti and Masai Mara, nature reserves are struggling to pay rangers due to the sudden drop in tourist revenue. All across the developing world, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, illegal logging, poaching and mining has increased as local people become desperate for income, and monitoring is cut back. At Dare to Explore, we have spent almost two decades ensuring that our impact on the habitats of Africa is nothing but positive, nourishing and supportive. And as we sit behind closed doors during this downtime, we are hard at work refining the ways in which we can even more effectively direct the lifeblood of responsible tourism to the people and places that need it most. Much of our time has been spent moving tours out to next year, postponing rather than cancelling, updating databases, fine tuning our itinerary building system, finally finding time to refine all the aspects of our business that will help us serve you better in future. But we’re also staying connected to our industry and monitoring the state of this beautiful continent through Zoom updates, keeping a weather eye on developments and helping keep things on track where we can. Because while we’re longing to get back out onto the savannas and into the bush because we just love it so much, we’re also aching to get back into the heart of Africa because she needs us (needs all tourism) so much. Our team is strong, united and as positive as ever, ready to return when the time is right. And we urge you keep dreaming of Africa, to dare to imagine not just where you might explore, but what good your being there might do, not just to feed your own soul, but to sustain some of the world’s most spectacular and unspoiled vestiges of wilderness. Angie Karan
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