Natural Selection

Natural Selection offers remarkable experiences in wild, untouched places. We are not your typical safari company. We’re about conservation first, proudly protecting wild spaces for the future and supporting the communities living in and around these wild areas.

Our founders, Dave van Smeerdijk, Jennifer Lalley, James Ramsay, and Colin Bell, all began their careers as guides in the bush, and for the last 30 years they have been pioneering safari experiences across Southern Africa’s least explored places and spaces, carrying out wildlife research, or changing the conservation landscape.

In 2016, united by the desire to help reshape the role that conservation and nature-based tourism play in conserving and protecting wilderness areas around the globe, they started Natural Selection. From the outset, building strong partnerships with like-minded property owners, communities, and conservation groups has been a cornerstone of our approach to making a positive impact.

Today we are a conservation-driven tourism company offering a collection of 26 family-owned and community joint-venture lodges and camps in remote wild places in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Our group employs over 1200 people, looks after 1.6 million hectares of wildlife land, and contributes significantly to conservation and community upliftment.