Jim Green Footwear 🐸

Not every reserve is built around tourism🦏 At UmPhafa Nature Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, the focus is on restoring ecosystems, training future conservationists, and protecting wildlife. There are no luxury lodges or sunset game drives. Instead, students learn in the field while rangers patrol a landscape still recovering from decades of farming.🌍 Since becoming reserve managers, Amanda Warren and Anthony Smith have overseen the reserve’s formal declaration as a protected area while continuing the slow work of ecological restoration. Alien plants are being removed, habitats restored, and species reintroduced. In 2024, cheetahs returned to UmPhafa Nature Reserve for the first time, while the reserve also provides a temporary home for African wild dogs before they’re translocated to protected areas across Africa.🐆🐕 The reserve’s 12 field rangers are the people making this possible. During the second quarter of this year alone, they covered more than 4,500 kilometres on foot, checking fence lines, monitoring wildlife, and responding to illegal activity.📍 “We’ll get there,” Amanda says of the restoration work. “Probably not in my lifetime.” One of the biggest challenges isn’t snares, but organised dog poaching. Rangers patrol known hotspots day and night, supported by vehicles and thermal drones, while reliable equipment helps keep them moving across steep hills, thick bush, and rugged terrain.🥾 We are proud to support the UmPhafa team, restoring a landscape one step at a time.👏 The #BootsForRangers initiative is a collaboration between Jim Green and the @The_GRAA Read more about UmPhafa Nature Reserve in our latest blog!🤓 #JimGreen #MyJimGreens #BootsForRangers #Conservation

A borrowed pair of African rangers that was never taken off🥾🐆 At the time of our call, Nambiti conservationist Leanne Deetlefs was watching the clock. A vet was due any minute to check on a cheetah. 🩺 A morning might begin tracking African Wild Dogs, then go on to checking a cheetah cub’s stitches, reviewing camera trap footage or preparing for a rhino dehorning. And yes... there’s plenty of admin too. “Never thought there’d be so much admin,” she laughs. 💻 “If it’s got a horn or sharp teeth, I’ll work with it,” she says. “If it’s growing leaves, don’t ask me.” 😂 Leanne is also determined to show the side of conservation social media rarely captures. “Everybody sees the glorified picture,” she says. “You see the Instagram photos where you’re touching lions or tracking animals.” What you don’t see are the long days, the digging, the waiting and, sometimes, the heartbreak. 💚 As one of Nambiti’s conservationists, she’s also helping challenge outdated ideas about who belongs in the field. “What the guys do is exactly what I’ll do,” she says. 💪 When Jim Green boots arrived at Nambiti through the #BootsForRangers initiative, Leanne borrowed a pair from one of the rangers. Nine months later, they’re still her everyday boots. “I wear them day in and day out,” she says. 🥾 Read more about Leanne in our latest blog, now live! 🤓 #MyJimGreens #JimGreen #BootsForRangers #Conservation

The Largest Rhino Rewilding Project Ever Attempted 🦏 When African Parks took over the world's largest captive rhino breeding operation in 2023, it inherited more than 2,000 southern white rhinos and one of the biggest conservation challenges ever attempted. The goal was to return them to secure, wild landscapes across Africa where they can help rebuild populations.🌍 Every translocation takes months of planning, involving vets, pilots, logistics teams, law enforcement, and rangers working together to ensure each rhino has the best possible chance of thriving.✈️🚛 "Rewilding is about moving rhinos from a managed environment into large, functioning ecosystems where they can behave naturally," says African Parks' PR and Marketing Manager, Helen Hancock. Every release site must be carefully assessed for habitat, security, long-term funding, and community support before a single rhino arrives.📍 One of the biggest operations so far saw rhinos travel by road across South Africa, aboard a Boeing 747 to Uganda, then onto a C-130 aircraft before finally reaching Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's conservation on an extraordinary scale.🛫 But moving the rhinos is only half the story. Once they're released, ranger teams become their first line of defence, carrying out anti-poaching patrols, monitoring, and rapid response across vast protected landscapes. "Without professional, well-supported ranger teams on the ground, rewilding at this scale would not be possible," says Hancock.🤝 Through the #BootsForRangers initiative, @AfricanParks Rhino Rewild law enforcement team received Jim Green boots, helping ensure every ranger has the equipment they need for the job.🥾 We’re proud to support the people working to return rhinos to the wild, one landscape at a time.🦏 The #BootsForRangers program is a collaboration between Jim Green Footwear and the @The_GRAA . Read more about Rhino Rewild in our latest blog! #JimGreen #MyJimGreens #Rhino #RhinoRewild #AfricanParks #BootsForRangers