Conservation Force
A Force for Wildlife Conservation
Danene van der Westhuyzen
Danene van der Westhuyzen grew up in Namibia and began hunting with her father at an early age, and one of the lessons that she remembers most about those early days in the field is her father’s respect for wildlife. Danene learned as a child that hunting and a love of nature and animals was congruous, and that hunting was a very effective form of wildlife conservation.Now, years later, Danene has become one of the strongest and loudest voices for hunterbased conservation efforts, both in her home country and abroad. Even though she is a certified optometrist, she has devoted much of her life to hunting. For more than a decade she has worked as a professional hunter, and in 2012 she obtained her dangerous game hunting license—the first woman in Namibia to do so. Today, she operates Aru Safaris in Namibia and serves as the president of the Namibian Association of Professional Hunters (NAPHA). She also serves on the Namibian Conservation Board, the Dallas Safari Club’s Conservation Advisory Board and on the Board of Directors of Conservation Force while serving as the CEO of the Operators and Professional Hunting Associations of Africa.
Many people would ask me why I hunt, or how I came to be a hunter. And usually I would tell of how I was brought up in Namibia, where hunting is second nature and part of our existence and our way of life. But to be honest, the answer is actually very simple. My dad loves hunting, and I love my dad.
You see, my father didn’t hunt only for the pursuit of wildlife or to pit himself against their territory. He hunted because he didn’t have a reason not to go; with an open mind, in other words. And I found that he was repaired and restored by the experiences; the medicine of such a wild wilderness seemed endless. “The secret to life, I learned it there,” he said once. “Which was?” I wanted to know. My father sat for a long time before shaking his head and looking at me amused. He replied and said: Danene – you already know that answer.
I hunted, also because I didn’t have a reason not to go. I immersed myself with literature, which vividly retold beautiful stories on the beauty and experiences the veld has to offer. Of close encounters and long, slow nights around small fires and paraffin lamps. Having grown up in this setting, I felt already an environmentalist. But as my hunting expanded, I found a new and compelling narrative about conservation and its relationship with hunting. I am sure it is a narrative with which many hunters can associate with.
Some of the common representations will sound familiar: hunters are the original conservationists and the driving force of the conservation movement; hunters contribute the bulk of funding to conservation coffers; and that hunters are the “true” conservationists, the ones who care more about wildlife than anyone else.
These narratives were inspiring to me as I found a place in a new community and felt pride in a set of collective values and achievements. They provided a source of inspiration to me, and many others, and contain some important elements that should unify us in humble pride for our contributions.
But it’s incomplete
It’s not that I disagree that hunters were there at the beginning, put in the hard work and are dedicated conservationists who contribute substantially and care deeply about wildlife. I think we miss a more important aspect of hunters’ involvement in conservation, and this other aspect should be a source of even greater pride for our community.
I think one of the most important defining features of the hunting community is our capacity for cooperation with other groups to safeguard wildlife and wild places.
It is not contentious to say that hunting both sprouted from and has been watered by a deep capacity for cooperation. Hunting with friends, family and that favorite, dependable hunting companion is part of what draws many of us to the veld. Cooperation is, literally and figuratively, in our DNA as human hunters and it is an intrinsic part of the social fabric of hunting cultures.
A capacity for cooperation is the evolutionarily embedded quality that allows us to develop close, organized, supportive communities.
Rather than evolving as hunters, we evolve into hunters. Being able to organise ourselves and work together toward a shared goal that, ultimately, has a substantial benefit in what has defined our history as successful hunting cultures.
That we are able to come together, in person today, from different cities and even countries, provides meaningful reason to celebrate this. Never again should we take this simple gift of in-person camaraderie for granted!
The last two years will always be remembered as the time the world changed, and precious little of it was for the better. The Covid pandemic has left a trail of lost lives, and devastated industries in its wake.
At first it was easy as hunters to focus merely on lost opportunities for adventure, yet a far more dangerous threat began stalking the world’s wildlife and our now hobbled community as surely as a lioness closing in on her prey.
Our international hunting industry, due to crippling travel restrictions, changed overnight. Added to this is the continuous onslaught on our basic human rights, our heritage and our way of life. It is understandable that hunting, any kind of hunting, is not acceptable to many, probably to most, urban people.
People living in the big cities of the world are out of touch with all things natural. So, how can they possibly know what hunting is all about?
Have they ever sat silently for a long time, thinking, – sat as people had for thousands of years, around a fire that lit a very small place in a very great dark?
Everyone who goes on safari feels like they never want it to end. It’s an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime experience for most people. They see and do things they’ve never dreamed of, and think they’re living on the edge of danger and excitement.
But someone else has set it up, invested in it greatly, is there to keep them safe and make sure they’re comfortable. Someone else has made the dream into a reality for a short time. I’ve never come across a tourist who could put up with the real grind of it all.
There’s more in Africa than a man can ever see with his eyes, a lot more than he can ever hope to understand.
Which means that “behind the scenes” there are people trying to make a living, and usually under very tough conditions, which unfortunately also brings about alternative use that everyone enjoying nature would not always agree with. The point is — the pressure is on…
Dissipation and the decay of values happen during oppression or the lack of visibility or respect. We are currently living in an unnatural situation, we are in a place where we are not heard or seen, we debate about the present and the future, but who listens? Not those who rule. We feel we are in the shadows.
But despite the seemingly overwhelming difficulties our community, our exco and our office have faced, our shared goal, and our ability to work together towards this goal, have gathered us all here yet again.
NAPHA is about the higher purpose, it is about our heritage, and our future. It is about ensuring that hunting will be around for another 1000 years as a force for the better of conservation. I believe in unity. I do not believe in individuality, I believe in a singular collective purpose. I believe in a community where ethics and morality still means something. Where resources are utilized to the benefit of the many, the destitute and the discouraged, instead of the few. And that is why I am here, and I know that is the same reason why all of you are here today – our community, values and culture.
Community is the fact that we work towards the same goal, that we accept our respective roles in order to reach it.
Values are the fact that we trust each other. That we love each other.
And culture – culture is a tricky one. To me culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit. Most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.
They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.
In Africa, when the sun clips the top of the trees to the west, we usually start to light the paraffin lamps. Then all of a sudden, the light drops, the way it does in southern Africa, everything turns magenta, orange, a riot of violet and pink, and then just as suddenly dark. There’s no gentle dusk, no nautical twilight, no soft evening. You’re either ready for it, or not. One moment the sky is suffused with a vivid pulsing sunset, it looks as if it’ll go on forever; and the next moment it’s a black and moonless sky, sword-pierced with stars.
Nothing prepares you for the sudden darkness of a southern African night, even if you’ve never known anything else. It’s always as if the light had been smothered rather than gently slid behind the horizon. But it prepares you for certain endings, such a leap from painted skies to night. By which I mean definite endings. With the influence of international decision makers on Africa, the sun sets slowly on Africa.
Sometimes it feels as if the people of Namibia love the fact that the climate is so inhospitable, because not everyone can handle it, and that reminds me of our own strength and resilience as hunters. May we light those paraffin lamps soon enough…
Why We Hunt - "Run Towards the Roar"
Danene van der Westhuyzen
The hum of the little plane went right into my bones. Every vibration felt magnified, every bump in the sky another reminder of how fragile we humans really are when the ground disappears beneath our feet. My husband sat at the controls, calm and steady, as he always is in the air, on the hunt, and in life.
I, on the other hand, gripped the seat so tightly my nails dug into the fabric.
Breathe, Danene. Just breathe.
Flying is my private battlefield. Each flight unleashes a storm of panic in me ‒ the spinning what-ifs, the pounding heart, the raw knowledge of just how unforgiving gravity can be. And yet here I was, forcing myself into that cockpit, because beyond the flight lay a hunt I dreaded but knew I had to face: a tuskless elephant cow.
I pressed my forehead against the cool Perspex window and looked down. The African bush stretched endlessly, a mosaic of thornveld and sandy veins, harsh and beautiful, unforgiving and alive.
Tuskless elephants are not just any elephants. They are legends, whispered about in camps and around fires. Unpredictable. Aggressive. Quick to charge. I had hunted dangerous game before, but this was different. This was Zimbabwe, and I was not licensed to guide here. For once, I was not the professional. I was a guest, reliant entirely on the PH, Keith, leading us. For someone used to carrying her own authority ‒ and my own rifle ‒ the vulnerability was crushing
“Hunting is at once raw and exalted, both primal and profound. It draws us back into the rhythm of the natural order, where life and death are not abstractions but realities woven into every step, every breath. Out there, stripped of distraction, we move closer to animalistic ‒ alert, vulnerable, alive.”
THE WEIGHT OF FEAR
There is a particular kind of fear that takes hold when your mind and body refuse to agree.
Every second in that seat was an act of war with myself.
Rationally, I knew the plane was safe. Rationally, I knew the PH had the skill, the team, and the experience. Rationally, I knew the risks were calculated, that we were prepared. But fear doesn’t listen to reason.
Fear lodges in the body. It clamps your chest. It steals your breath. It whispers the same poisonous words again and again: You can’t. You shouldn’t. You won’t survive this.
And yet, beneath the fear, something deeper stirred. A recognition that this was not about planes or elephants at all. This was about life itself ‒ about choosing whether to keep shrinking from the things that terrify me or to move towards them and claim the clarity waiting on the other side.
Another voice rose up inside me ‒ one I had learnt to listen for in moments like this: Run towards the roar.
AFRICA’S DEMANDS
We landed on a strip of earth that looked more like a suggestion than a runway. Dust billowed, and the air hit me like an oven door opening ‒ thick, dry, merciless.
Some things in this world defy description, where language falters against the weight of experience and the complexity of emotion. Africa offers little middle ground. Its landscapes demand huge acceptance, to the extent that one would lose oneself, willingly and at times unwillingly. The vulnerability of it all steers us toward either elation or defeat. A love-hate relationship, which you either can’t endure, or the charms sink deep into your bones, never to leave.
And so, throat parched from dry air, I stepped into the bush. Hunting is at once raw and exalted, both primal and profound. It draws us back into the rhythm of the natural order, where life and death are not abstractions but realities woven into every step, every breath. Out there, stripped of distraction, we move closer to animalistic ‒ alert, vulnerable, alive.
The true gift of hunting is not only in the taking of game, but in the way it sharpens our vision for what lies beyond the obvious. It teaches us to see landscapes not merely as scenery but as stories waiting to unfold ‒ shaped by hidden tracks, fleeting signs, and the promise of unexpected encounters.
NAKED WITHOUT A GUN
I carried the client’s rifle, far heavier than mine, its strap biting into my shoulder until it burned. Each day we walked farther than I thought possible, the sun punishing us relentlessly. My mouth dried until my tongue felt like leather, every sip of water rationed, savoured, and never enough.
And then there were the flies. The tse-tse and mopane flies descended in persistent swarms, biting with needle stings, crawling into ears, eyes and nostrils. They seemed designed to break your spirit as much as your skin.
The veld became a crucible for body and mind. Every nerve screamed: Turn back. This is too much. You don’t even have your own rifle. I felt naked without a gun of my own. Exposed. Stripped of the small thread of control I usually held. My survival was in the hands of another man, and my only choice was trust. That kind of dependence does not come easily. But in the bush, pride means nothing. You walk, you endure, you submit.
THE ENCOUNTER
We tracked through dust and thorns, over ridges so steep and rocky I never imagined an elephant could climb them. The ground crumbled underfoot, the thorns tore at my shins, and each step felt heavier than the last. My legs turned to lead, my shoulders throbbed beneath the unforgiving weight of the sling, each step driving the burden deeper, as if the rifle meant to fuse with bone.
The tracks teased us again and again, drawing us on through shimmering heat until hope frayed thin. Time after time we came upon cows with dependent calves ‒ impossible. Other times the spoor ended at elephants with long ivory glistening in the sun, forcing us to circle back, to start again. Futility gnawed at me ‒ thirst rasped in my throat, sweat stung my eyes, the drone of tse-tse flies a merciless torment. Once, a young bull burst from the mopane scrub, mock-charging with a trumpet that split the air. He pulled up short, dust flying, but my heart slammed to a dead stop.
It was on one of those endless days ‒ when the sun sank too slowly, dragging out our exhaustion, and the dwindling path back to the truck twisted through suffocating jess ‒ that it happened. A massive cow, calf pressed tight to her side, stepped out ahead of us.
In that instant, the world changed.
The air grew thick, almost liquid. The bush went silent, sound sucked away until I could hear only my pulse hammering in my ears. She loomed there ‒ massive, restless, her hide grey and cracked, eyes glinting with a hot, unsettling fire.
This is it. You have children. You have responsibilities. You can’t outrun her. You can’t outfight her.
I felt smaller than I had ever felt in my life. Stripped bare. No authority. No weapon of my own. Just raw exposure, the heavy borrowed rifle biting into my shoulder, and the steady silhouette of Keith beside me. My life reduced to his judgment, his steadiness, his trigger finger.
Then the charge came.
The ground shook as if the earth itself recoiled from her fury. The air rushed forward, carrying her dust and musk, the guttural rumble of her rage.
Keith’s roar cut through it, his voice hurled like a weapon at the oncoming mass. It rolled out thunderous and desperate, yet threaded with a strange tenderness ‒ almost a plea, almost a prayer.
But she did not slow. She did not fear. She did not listen.
My chest locked. My heart battered my ribs so violently I thought it might burst free. My legs twitched to run. Every instinct screamed: Turn. Flee. Survive.
Don’t miss. Dear God, don’t miss.
Ten paces. Dust boiling in the air. My husband at my side, calm as stone. Me, lungs burning, every muscle strung tight between fight and flight.
Fear had never been louder.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF GIFT
And yet in that moment of terror, something broke open inside me. It is impossible to describe fully what it is like to stand in that space between life and death. The air itself is thicker. Every sound sharper. Every thought distilled into a single truth: you are alive. Terrifyingly, magnificently alive.
And in that moment I understood something I had only half grasped before: fear was not my enemy. Fear was my teacher. It stripped me to the essential, burning away the trivial and leaving only the raw, undeniable gift of presence.
It sharpened my awareness and left me face-to-face with the truth: life is fragile, fleeting, sacred.
I did not conquer fear that day. I carried it. I stood with it. And because of that, I walked out of the bush alive, whole, and strangely renewed.
THE AFTERMATH
When it was over, when the dust settled and the elephant moved away, I found myself shaking ‒ not with weakness, but with release. A laughter bubbled in me, shocking and bright, as though my body had to spill the excess of adrenaline somehow. Keith and my husband looked at me with quiet nods and small smiles.
I came back elated ‒ not because I was fearless, but because I had leaned into fear with every fibre of me. I had trusted where I could not control. I had walked through exhaustion, thirst, swarms of flies, and the crushing weight of doubt, and still I had come out on the other side.
I am embarrassed by my fear, yes. Humbled by it. But I am also grateful. Because it reminds me of the stakes. It reminds me that hunting, like living, is not about control. It is about surrender. About stepping into the roar, again and again, and finding in the chaos a kind of order that only the heart can recognise.
Fear had not left me, but I had carried it ‒ and it had carried me.
WHY IT MATTERS
We live in a world that tells us safety is the ultimate goal. Stay home. Stay comfortable. Stay alive. But in the veld, comfort has no place. The sun burns. The thorns pierce. The elephant charges. And in those moments, you are reminded that the only thing worse than dying is not really living. To live fully is to embrace the unknown. To accept that death awaits us all, but that life is a gift only if we dare to live it vulnerably, fiercely and with faith.
We explore the marvellous reality of life and the unapologetic chances that we are not meant to fear, but bravely embrace. One which serves a purpose of connection.
Running from the roar may feel good at that moment. It may give you the illusion of safety. But in truth, it robs you of the chance to grow, to feel alive, to honour the dreams planted deep inside you.
I am not fearless. I am afraid. Often. Afraid in the cockpit. Afraid in the veld. Afraid when the beast turns and eyes lock on mine. Afraid when I walk kilometre after kilometre in the blistering sun with my shoulder burning and flies biting until I bleed.
This is it. This is madness.
And yet, another voice always answers: Move forward anyway.
Perhaps you have felt it too. Standing at the edge of something vast and uncertain, you have heard the roar and longed to run. And if you dare to step forward ‒ trembling, heart pounding, but unbroken ‒ you may discover, as I did, that fear is not the end of the road but the beginning.
Because you chose to run towards the roar