An Interview With Dereck and Beverly Joubert

What To Expect From This Interview:

Beverly & Dereck Joubert are two of my wildlife heroes & have had the pleasure to get to know them & work with them over the last few years. I sat down with them recently over zoom in between their edit for an upcoming series for National Geographic, where they are busy updating & remastering some of their classic films. Their connection with National Geographic is a long lasting & impactful one, including over 25 films & the launch of the Big Cat Initiative. They are award winning storytellers but also relentless conservationists in the work they do to protect wild animals, spaces & the communities that rely on these spaces in the land that they love so passionately - Africa.

Our wide ranging conversation covers what Africa means to them, how they stay motivated after all this time & also what they see as successful conservation. They are the real deal & as always it was a fascinating chat.

A snippet of the conversation between Jules, Beverly and Dereck:

Julieoldroyd introduction: So I’ll kick off by saying that you are truly two of my wildlife heroes. I greatly admire your commitment in terms of everything that you do to not only protect the kind of wild spaces in Africa but more importantly, I think, not only the animals but also the communities that are part of those spaces as well. And I think if I was to look at your work, it really falls into three areas that we'll talk a little bit about today- it's the visual space, the science, and then the conservation.

On the visual side you've been working in the field for over 30 years you've made over 35 films for Nat Geo and 12 books and, in fact, I have one of these here, that is a prized possession.

This book, I think, was where I first kind of got to know you and your work, with this book (Eye of the Leopard) documenting the leopard Legadema and the beautiful documentary that you also made that that told her story.

And you know I’ve been very privileged to work with you on some of your more recent projects, one of those being Jade: The Blue Eyed Leopard. So we'll talk a little bit more about your visual work in a moment.

On the science side in 2009 you establish the Big Cats Initiative with National Geographic. And I mean how many grants is it around about 100?

Beverly Joubert: Over it's over 150 now in 28 countries and, most of those countries, are in Africa, and I think there's only two that aren't.

Jules Oldroyd: Yes and then most recently, you establish the Great Plains Foundation which has a mission to protect wild spaces in Africa, but also a commitment to protect the environment of the animals and the communities, and I know the communities, in particular, are very, very important to you and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, so.

Jules Oldroyd: A tremendous breadth of work, but I just want to sort of start very beginning and you've been described as true children of Africa and I want to ask you, what does Africa mean to you both?

Dereck Joubert: Well, Africa was the place that we were born in, and so we are children of Africa, but it's got many nuances and faces.

Dereck Joubert: You can end up in Cape Town in the French Riviera of Africa and never really know Africa, and so, for us, Africa is that place where man was born, where we were born & many animals were born. But it’s that edgy harshness where you look into the mirror of your soul. Africa is that place, that thing & there are not many continents that are like that.

Beverly Joubert:  Yes all of that… but to add to that you know once you do a deep dive what we have been doing in Africa, the writings of Carl Jung springs to mind & he wrote that “Africa was one of the continents that still had a soul”.  And looking at why did he felt that & for us going in to discover the wild places of Africa, we felt that keeping the wildlife areas alive, vital, having migrations happen, having the predators out there was one of the key reasons & the other key reason is that the cultural differences across Africa area so vast & are celebrated by each other instead of this constant battle to have everyone the same.

And so those are the two added aspects that I can give on Africa.

Fintech TV

Beverly did an interview with Pat Mitchell for Fintech.TV - Dangerous Women: Leading Onward.  Pat asked Beverly questions around conservation in the pandemic, Project Ranger and the re-release of their films on big cats on Nat Geo WILD.  The current importance of the Big Cat Initiative was also discussed.

Project Ranger

To date Project Ranger has raised enough funds to pay 152 rangers’ salaries across 8 countries and has 16 project partners.

On World Ranger Day Dereck and Beverly put focus on all the front-line workers/grantees they are supporting through PR through the pandemic.  presented for the Global Biodiversity Festival.  They presented alongside Dr. Samuel Wasser and Nir Kalron, investigators in the illegal wildlife trade.

Links to more: 

To view the full collection of Beverly’s Fine Art, please see her website: https://beverlyjoubert.com

Great Plains Foundation: https://greatplainsfoundation.com

Big Cat Initiative: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/big-cats-initiative

Beverly’s Instagram

Dereck’s Instagram

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