Flying For The Environment

The Bateleurs, a non-profit company, provides a flight support programme for conservation and the environment. In operation for 20 years, this unique organisation has a membership of about 220 pilots and has conducted numerous conservation missions across Africa. Keri Harvey reports.

- Keri Harvey

The Bateleurs, a remarkable organisation that celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, coordinates diverse flying missions throughout Southern Africa in support of environmental issues.

The non-profit company exists because of the late Nora Kreher, who dedicated her life to wildlife and nature conservation. Her close friend, the late Dr Ian Player, described her as follows: “Without question, one of the really great heroines in the conservation struggle. She was a woman of indomitable courage, highly intuitive and deeply motivated to save the little wilderness left in South Africa.” Kreher was involved in the so-called battle for St Lucia, along with Player, other conservationists, and former president Nelson Mandela, to halt mineral mining on the dunes of the eastern shores of Lake St Lucia. The area is now protected in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, the result of their successful petition.

This event provided the spark that ultimately led to the founding of The Bateleurs, named after the well-known raptor.

Player arranged for journalists to fly over the eastern shores of St Lucia to see areas that were claimed to have been rehabilitated, and Kreher saw the power of an aerial perspective in action.

Later, she and her husband, Roland, visited Alaska and observed the work of Light Hawk, a US organisation whose pilots volunteer their time and aircraft for environmental and conservation work. Kreher loved the idea and wanted the same conservation tool for South Africa. She set to work, and The Bateleurs – ‘Flying for the Environment in Africa’ – was born on 8 September 1998.

Until her death in 2008, Kreher worked tirelessly, arranging all the missions for The Bateleurs. She knew all the pilots and was fondly known as the Red Baroness, though she was never actually a pilot herself.