Ten Years of Matetsi: When Conservation Becomes a Legacy

Just over ten years ago, the Matetsi landscape bore the scars of poaching and illegal hunting, its wildlife scattered, its future uncertain. When Matetsi Victoria Falls opened in 2016, the goal was never just a beautiful safari lodge. It was to heal 136,000 acres of Zimbabwean wilderness and give wildlife room to thrive again. A decade later, that healing is no longer a hope. It's measurable, visible, alive.

Restoring a landscape starts with infrastructure, not animals. Over ten years, more than 500 kilometres of road network were re-established for wildlife monitoring and anti-poaching patrols. Nineteen solar-powered boreholes secured vital water sources, a 60-kilometre radio network connected ranger teams, and conservation and anti-poaching unit vehicles strengthened rapid response. None of this is visible when a guest watches an elephant herd at a waterhole. But it's the quiet architecture behind every sighting, a story of protection and patience, built one day at a time.

As protection took hold, the wilderness answered back. Matetsi Private Game Reserve is now home to thriving herds of elephant and buffalo, prides of lion, elusive leopard, and endangered wild dog. Some species needed a helping hand: in 2022, fourteen waterbuck were translocated from Hwange National Park, reintroducing a species that had vanished from the area. That population has since almost doubled clear evidence the ecosystem is regenerating, not just surviving.

In 2021, the Amaganyane Anti-Poaching Unit was founded, named for the African wild dog. Its rangers patrol, monitor wildlife, and clear snares and perform great work that has included extraordinary rescues of snared and injured animals. Along the Zambezi river, Amaganyane scouts have removed more than 17,000 metres of illegal fishing nets, protecting fish, hippos, and the river itself.

This is conservation at its most human, people choosing daily to protect something bigger than themselves.

Protecting wildlife, it became clear, couldn't happen apart from protecting people. That realisation gave rise to the GRACE Foundation, working toward a Zimbabwe where communities and nature flourish together through community development, education, water, and livelihoods across Northern Matabeleland. When people and nature thrive together, conservation gets stronger.

Over the years we have celebrated many firsts and milestones, including in 2025 when the first-ever aerial wildlife survey was complete across Matetsi Private Game Reserve, creating a scientific baseline for future conservation decisions. Results confirmed thriving elephant, buffalo, and impala populations, striking growth in the reintroduced waterbuck herd, and encouraging signs that leopards are thriving once more. The numbers matter and sometimes the clearest proof is still what you see with your own eyes.

Regenerative tourism is what make the story of Matetsi Private Game Reserve so distinct: conservation aligned with hospitality. Every guest becomes part of a larger story, one that sustains the people and protection keeping this wilderness alive. The luxury is in the experience; the legacy is in the land.

It's in the elephant herd crossing safely, the returned waterbuck, the leopard moving through the woodland, the APU scout on patrol at dawn, the river running free of illegal nets, and a child from a neighbouring community seeing new possibilities ahead.

Over ten years ago, Matetsi Private Game Reserve was a landscape in need of healing. Today, it's a thriving wilderness connected to the greater KAZA landscape built one patrol, one waterhole, one rescue, one partnership at a time.

As Matetsi Victoria Falls marks a decade of welcoming guests, it celebrates more than exceptional hospitality; it celebrates proof that tourism can truly be a force for good. And the most hopeful part is that this story isn't finished. It's only the beginning.