Was the Wild Really Wilder 50 Years Ago?
The wildlife we’ve lost, the wildlife we’ve brought back, and why the next generation’s memories matter.
Do you remember driving along country roads when you were young and having to stop every so often to clean the dead insects off the windscreen?
It was practically part of every family road trip. The windscreen would become so splattered with moths, beetles and other unfortunate flying creatures that eventually someone had to pull over and give it a good clean.
When last did you have to do that?
And what about the chameleons you remember finding in the garden? The frogs calling after summer rain? The butterflies that seemed to be everywhere?
Ask a group of people what they remember about nature when they were children, and you’ll almost certainly hear someone say, “You just don’t see those anymore.”
But is that really true?
And here’s another question worth asking: Was Southern Africa actually wilder 50 years ago than it is today?
The Nature We Remember Becomes Our Normal
Ecologists have a name for something rather fascinating: shifting baseline syndrome.
It describes our tendency to judge the condition of the natural world against what we remember from our own childhood, rather than against what existed generations before us.
Imagine a child growing up in a neighbourhood where seeing a chameleon is a rare and exciting event. That child might consider one chameleon sighting a year perfectly normal.
Their parents might remember finding them regularly in the garden.
Their grandparents might remember a time before the neighbourhood existed, when the entire area was natural bush.
Each generation has a different understanding of what is normal.
And over time, we can gradually forget what was once there.
The insects on our windscreens make a wonderful conversation starter, although they aren’t a reliable scientific measure of insect populations. Vehicle design, driving conditions and the places we travel all affect what ends up on the glass.
There is genuine scientific concern about declines in many insect populations, particularly in parts of the world where long-term monitoring has taken place. But insect trends vary enormously, and we still have much to learn about what’s happening across Southern Africa.
Our memories can alert us to interesting changes. Science helps us understand whether those changes are real, why they’re happening, and what we can do about them.
But Here’s Something We Often Forget…
Shifting baselines don’t only make us forget what we’ve lost.
They can also make us forget what we’ve gained.
When we think about conservation, we’re so accustomed to hearing about threatened species, disappearing habitats and environmental destruction that it’s easy to overlook one of Southern Africa’s remarkable achievements.
Over the past few decades, enormous areas of land have been brought into wildlife-based land use and conservation.
Across South Africa, farms that once supported domestic livestock have been converted into game farms, private nature reserves, conservancies and wildlife tourism destinations.
The transformation has been substantial.
Research published in 2020 estimated that approximately 17 to 20.5 million hectares of South African land were being used for private wildlife ranching.
That’s roughly 14–17% of the country’s land area. In 1987, an estimated 6.2 million hectares of South African land were used for wildlife ranching — approximately 5% of the country.
By the mid-2010s, estimates had grown to between 17 and 20.5 million hectares, representing approximately 14–17% of South Africa’s land area.
In less than three decades, the land devoted to wildlife ranching had almost tripled — or more.
Not all of this land qualifies as formally protected conservation land, and the ecological value of individual properties varies considerably. Nevertheless, it represents an extraordinary change in how large areas of our countryside are being managed.
South Africa’s formally protected terrestrial areas have also expanded, from approximately 6.3% of the mainland in 1990 to 9.9% at the beginning of 2025.
And there’s more good news. South Africa’s biodiversity stewardship programme has helped secure 2.76 million hectares across 469 sites over the past two decades, working with private and communal landowners.
These are achievements worth celebrating.
The Wildlife Comeback Story
For much of Southern Africa’s history, large wild animals were heavily persecuted, hunted and displaced as agricultural settlement expanded.
Many species disappeared from landscapes where they had once occurred naturally.
But the growth of wildlife-based land use helped change that picture.
Wildlife began to have economic value to landowners, not only as animals to be hunted or sold, but also as part of thriving tourism and conservation enterprises.
Landowners began reintroducing indigenous game. Former livestock farms became wildlife destinations. Conservation organisations worked to restore populations and habitats.
Today, visitors can encounter antelope, giraffe, zebra, rhino and other large mammals on properties where previous generations might have seen little more than cattle.
That doesn’t mean every game farm is a conservation success, or that every reintroduction is ecologically appropriate. Good conservation requires suitable habitat, responsible management and attention to the entire ecosystem.
But we shouldn’t allow those important qualifications to obscure the bigger achievement.
Southern Africa has demonstrated that wildlife can return to landscapes from which it had largely disappeared.
And that is a story worth telling our children.
What About the Little Things?
Of course, there’s an important difference between bringing large mammals back to a landscape and restoring an entire ecosystem.
A game farm might support healthy populations of zebra and wildebeest while still struggling with degraded wetlands, invasive plants or declining insect diversity.
And those smaller forms of life matter enormously.
Insects pollinate plants, recycle nutrients, break down waste and provide food for countless other animals. Frogs help us understand the condition of aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Indigenous plants support entire communities of organisms that we may barely notice.
A healthy ecosystem is far more than the number of large mammals grazing on it.
This is why our conservation successes should inspire us to look more closely, rather than assume the work is finished.
We’ve become very good at noticing elephants and rhinos.
Perhaps the next great conservation challenge is making sure we’re paying just as much attention to the frogs, butterflies, beetles, grasses and countless other organisms that make those landscapes function.
What Will the Next Generation Remember?
When we think of the natural world we exprienced as children, perhaps the better question is
Has Nature Changed — Or Have We?
There’s another possibility we don’t always consider when reminiscing about the wildlife of our childhood. Perhaps it’s not only the natural world that has changed. Perhaps our relationship with it has changed too.
Think about how we spent our time as children.We climbed trees, explored vacant plots, turned over rocks, caught tadpoles in muddy ponds and spent hours investigating whatever crawled, hopped or fluttered across our path.
We knew where the chameleons lived. We recognised the arrival of the first summer rains by the chorus of frogs. We noticed when the butterflies appeared because we were actually outside to see them.
Now think about how many children spend their afternoons today.
Between screens, organised activities, homework and increasingly busy family schedules, there may be far fewer opportunities for the kind of unstructured outdoor exploration that was once such a normal part of childhood.
And it’s not only children. As adults, how often do we walk through our own gardens without looking at what’s living there? How often do we hear a bird calling without wondering what it is?
Could some of the wildlife we think has disappeared simply have disappeared from our daily experience?
Of course, this doesn’t mean biodiversity loss isn’t real. Habitat destruction, pollution and other environmental pressures have genuinely changed many ecosystems.
But it does raise a fascinating question.
If we spend less time noticing nature, how do we know what we’re losing? And perhaps more importantly, how will the next generation recognise what is worth protecting if they’ve never had the opportunity to discover it?
The natural world doesn’t have to disappear for us to lose our connection with it.
Have we forgotten what we have gained?
Southern Africa’s conservation story is proof that the future of wildlife isn’t predetermined. People have made decisions that brought wildlife back. People have protected landscapes, restored habitats and created opportunities for others to experience nature.
And people will continue to shape what happens next.
That’s one of the reasons we believe so strongly in the value of nature guiding.
A great nature guide does far more than identify animals or explain interesting facts.
They introduce people to a world they might otherwise never have noticed.
They turn an ordinary walk into a discovery. They help a child recognise their first bird call. They inspire visitors to appreciate not only the spectacular animals, but the intricate relationships that make nature extraordinary.
And sometimes, that single experience changes how someone sees the natural world for the rest of their life.
Perhaps the most important contribution the next generation of nature guides will make isn’t simply showing people the wildlife we have today. It’s inspiring them to care about the wildlife we’ll have tomorrow.
At Bhejane Nature Training, that’s the kind of future we want our students to help create.
Be Part of the Next Generation Shaping Our Wild Future 🌿
Southern Africa’s conservation story is far from over — and the next chapter needs passionate, knowledgeable people to help write it.
If you’d love to be part of that next generation, inspiring others to discover, appreciate and protect our extraordinary natural heritage, your journey could start right here.
Join Bhejane Nature Training’s 3-Year Advanced Nature Guiding & Wildlife Conservation Programme and turn your passion for nature into a career with purpose.
The next generation won’t just inherit our wild places. They’ll help shape their future.
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Posted on: 15 October, 2026 by the Bhejane Tribe