Having already walked away with the 2023 PURE Award for Creativity for their Onduli Ridge luxury camp, Ultimate Safaris has once again made the finals of the PURE Awards, this time in the conservation category with their 'Protecting the Living Landscapes of the Doros Joint Management Area in Namibia' project.

The PURE Awards, which have been hosted since 2014, aim to find the leaders in experiential travel, culminating each year at the PURE Life Experiences travel show in Marrakech, Morocco, where tourism leaders and innovators meet to network, learn, and find new ways of working that benefits their guests, but also the communities and environment in which they operate.

Long the subject of a land ownership dispute, Ultimate Safaris’ Conservation Travel Foundation, as well as NGOs such as the Namibia Nature Foundation and Save The Rhino Trust, worked with the Doro Nawas, Sorris Sorris, and Uibasen Twyfelfontein Conservancies, to create the new, 28,000 hectare, Doros Joint Management Area, which will become the single largest registered communal land leasehold in Namibia once registered.

The introduction and development of Communal Conservancies in Namibia is one of the most successful recent conservation ideas, with the financial and technical support provided to local communities by tourism ventures in their area, helping them to develop strategies to enhance the protection of the area and its inhabitants. The Doros Joint Management area adds to Namibia’s existing conservation success story as it is the first time in the country’s history that three conservancies have joined forces to register a large tract of land for conservation.

Communities bordering this area live alongside free-roaming wildlife, including black rhino, and have come to see that the benefits of them doing so due to tourism, far outweigh the potential risks. The establishment of the Doros Joint Management Area will go a long way to increasing these benefits.