For the past few years, I’ve been homeschooling children in a remote game reserve—teaching everything from reading and math to wildlife ecology, often with the soundtrack of elephants rumbling in the distance. But something shifted. Teaching facts wasn’t enough anymore. I found myself craving a deeper connection between conservation and human experience.

So, I began to listen more. To stories—those of the land, the communities surrounding the reserve, and the unspoken ones children carried. Slowly, I began writing them down.

I now find myself transitioning into the world of conservation storytelling. Not as a biologist or scientist, but as someone deeply embedded in the human side of conservation—where values, beliefs, and lived experience shape how we relate to the natural world.

In a reserve where community members once relied on poaching to survive, where some staff are adjusting to salaried life after years of subsistence, and others are adapting to a life far removed from the corporate world they left behind—it’s the stories that make it all make sense. They help us see the whole picture, and one another.

This is an invitation to fellow conservationists:
What stories are you carrying?
And how can we use them—not just to inform—but to connect?