wisdom
stitching together
the intangible threads
of the ecosystem’s story
With two campuses in South Africa, the Academy now welcomes students from Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, and beyond. Since 2024, Singita Lowveld Trust has supported four scholarships per year. Each new tracker carries knowledge into another landscape, forming part of a network dedicated to understanding, sharing, and protecting Africa’s wild places. The tradition is evolving, too. In 2025, the Academy launched its first all-female tracking class, opening the field to a new generation of women and showing that knowledge passed down through generations need not remain fixed in the same shape. In this, the Academy is more than a way of preserving precious indigenous knowledge. It’s a means of keeping that knowledge alive by giving it renewed relevance in a changing world. One not driven by individual survival, but by collective care for all life.
By creating opportunities for people from rural communities to build livelihoods from what they know, it fosters a deeper ecological understanding of the landscapes around them — and, in turn, a greater sense of care for them. This understanding extends beyond the trackers, reaching the communities who live alongside wildlife and the travellers who come to experience it. “The main reason we’re here on Earth is to plant seeds that will grow into trees,” says Ruel. “Tomorrow, even after we’re gone, these trees will bear fruits that can feed those who can’t feed themselves.” Ruel and his peers are doing just that: passing on what was given to them, so that others can carry it forward. Knowledge becomes livelihood, livelihood becomes connection, and connection becomes care — new generations learning to read the wild, to look back, honour what was, and draw from it to move us all forward.
Right That we are separate from nature is a story we tell ourselves. And stories can be rewritten.
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