From wetlands to the desert

Andrew Zaloumis wasn’t even looking for a job. But the corporate headhunters wouldn’t stop calling.

“Back then, I didn’t even know what a headhunter was. I didn’t even have a profile on LinkedIn,” says Zaloumis, down a crackly video call from the small town of Al Wajh on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia.

“Back then” was in 2019 and Zaloumis — as founder of the Wild Equity Africa Foundation — was head-down on a project to establish a world heritage site on South Africa’s Wild Coast, focused on the sardine run.

Zaloumis is no stranger to setting up conservation projects on a grand scale. He had pioneered conservation and community development in northern KwaZulu-Natal, driving the creation of what would become the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a remarkable conservation success story which would also, in 1999, be listed as South Africa’s first Unesco world heritage site.

After almost 20 years as founder CEO of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority, in 2019 Zaloumis left to pursue a master’s in sustainability leadership at Cambridge University, before turning his attention to the Wild Coast. But then the headhunters came knocking, looking for someone to drive a bold new conservation project in the fast-modernising kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

At first, Zaloumis wasn’t biting.

“Eventually, they flew me out, and ... it was a bit of a surprise for me,” says Zaloumis. “I was a canoeist in my youth, and here I had come to a country where there’s not a single flowing river. But I was absolutely taken by the landscape.”

Stretching across more than 24,000km² — Kruger National Park, by comparison, is about 19,000km² — the reserve runs from the remote volcanic peaks of the Harat mountains, across dramatic desert gorges and rare water-filled wadis to the crystal seas and vibrant coral reefs of the Red Sea. Though it accounts for only 1% of Saudi Arabia’s land, and under 2% of its marine area, it lays claim to more than half of the country’s biodiversity, including coastal mangroves and rare Nubian ibex.

“When you come from a place of absolute plenty like iSimangaliso, with 2,500 plant species, into the desert the land seems naked,” says Zaloumis. “But in that nakedness, there’s a beauty, and you realise the desert isn’t all sand. And you discover the rarity of things. You’ll go into a valley and there will be just one flowering plant, but the whole valley will smell of that plant. This land is living, and the simplicity of what you’re looking at — the beauty, the colour, the change of the light — it eventually hooks you.”

That landscape was the nascent Prince Mohammed bin Salman Royal Reserve, one of eight royal reserves in Saudi Arabia. And it is not hard to see why Zaloumis was so taken.

Spellbound by the beauty of the desert, Zaloumis also recognised something else: an opportunity.

As with the political will and pivotal moment in South Africa’s history that helped to make iSimangaliso a success, “there is real leadership here, which was the second lightning strike”, says Zaloumis. “I didn’t think I’d have a second opportunity like this in my career, to make a difference for conservation at such scale, and really develop a new conservation industry.”

Turn the clock forward six years, and today Zaloumis leads a team of about 250 rangers and conservationists in rewilding a corner of Saudi Arabia hailed as a standard bearer for community-focused conservation in the region.

The reserve is notable for its ephemeral “wet” wadis — the Arabic word for river valley — that provide vital biodiversity in this desert landscape. That water has helped support human settlement here for 12,500 years, visible in the Nabataean architecture and thousands of petroglyph sites in the reserve.

For Zaloumis part of the appeal was the opportunity to start afresh, applying a start-up mentality, honed in South Africa, to kick-start the project while creating baseline studies and integrated development plans.

“Because we’re working on a blank canvas, a greenfield, we were able to bring in new technology as well as our experience from the past, learnings from other ecosystems such as iSimangaliso.”

Zaloumis is particularly proud of their work with griffon vultures. The reserve is home to the most northerly breeding colony of griffon vultures in Saudi Arabia. Using advanced satellite tagging they have observed the vultures reaching heights of 5,000m, flying tens of thousands of kilometres and traversing five countries.

“When they’re here we can look after them, but when they hatch and migrate, they leave your area of control. Griffon vultures don’t need passports, and we’ve been working hard on conservation partnerships so that we can work on conservation at a regional level.”

That’s important because the reserve is in a key geographic location within Saudi Arabia, bordered by some of the country’s modernisation projects: AlUla to the east, Neom to the west and the Red Sea project to the south.

“As a piece of land the reserve is the fabric that holds them together,” says Zaloumis. “We’re the piece in the middle. In the centre, Mr Venter.”

That places it at the heart of a vast conservation area — at 72,000km² — more than twice the size of Belgium.

That scale is essential for true ecosystem-based conservation, says Zaloumis. “When you re-establish populations of animals like leopard and ibex, they migrate, so you have to look at scale. They have corridors and routes, and that’s part of getting ecosystems back to where they should be. By working with our neighbours in a larger conservation area we can start to make a real impact. We can create populations that become globally significant, and they become viable.”

Ibex and leopard are two flagship species for the reserve, where five species new to science have been discovered. But the animal that has generated the most excitement in a continuing process of rewilding is the little-known Persian onager.

Islamic frescoes dating back centuries show these wild asses of the desert being hunted in the region, and they have been locally extinct for nearly a century. Today fewer than 600 remain in the wild, of which seven — translocated from Jordan — are found in the reserve.

It’s one success story in a long road for conservation in the region. Another is the formation of local ranger teams, including the first all-women field ranger team in the Middle East.

“Women rangers make up 34% of our ranger team,” says Zaloumis. “Globally it’s recognised you need women rangers to make conservation more sustainable. By having women rangers, you get community access that you wouldn’t otherwise have, so it’s given us a better conservation solution on the ground, and pioneered a whole new industry here.”

With conservation work hitting its stride, Zaloumis’s focus is now on leveraging the tourism potential of the region, using sustainable tourism to create economic opportunities in the area and ensure the reserve generates at least a portion of its own income.

“Your conservation values tell you why the reserve has been established, but it needs to balance with economic development and community participation,” says Zaloumis. “In my approach to conservation, I use the word ‘balance’, but balance doesn’t mean equal.”

While Zaloumis has leant heavily on his South African experience, and a number of African conservationists, his focus has always been on local empowerment and skills development to ensure longevity for the reserve.

“At the moment 94% of our staff are Saudi. And even more important is that 85% of our staff are born and live in the reserve,” says Zaloumis. “That [local involvement] is something I learnt in South Africa and something we have brought into new conservation practices here.”

Which prompts the question: how long until his attention is piqued by another conservation challenge? Though Zaloumis has introduced more than half of the new species he intended, he’s still thrilled by the prospect of seeing red-necked ostrich, Cape hare and Asiatic lion roaming free once more.

“It is a long-term project, and each time we do the next level, I get more hooked,” says Zaloumis. “For me the question is always, ‘What value are you adding?’ I often get interesting conservation projects coming my way, but right now I feel like I still have value to add.”