By Don Pinnock - 28 Jul 2024
Helen Turnbull is CEO of the Cape Leopard Trust and her job is to navigate the organisation that helps to protect the province’s wild and free-roaming leopards. Over coffee she explained how she came to be a leopard protector.
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Helen Turnbull has a sunny warmth that would gain a leopard’s trust or charm a farmer itching to shoot one. There’s an urgent need for that second skill, especially on farms where dumb domestic animals are easy meat.
She wants to talk about snaring, but I need to first know about the road that led to Helen heading up a highly successful conservation NGO. It turns out to be a long and winding one.
Helen explains that she went to an Afrikaans school in the small Northern Cape town of Kathu, which is surprising given her plummy BBC accent, then casually drops in that as a child, she and her father, with a bunch of volunteers, renovated a steam engine. It seemed to her a natural progression to enjoy tinkering with cars. And from there to learn to work with and occasionally fly aeroplanes.
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Helen: I guess I learnt to do more boy things when I was small. When I started to drive, I was curious to understand the car’s engine and how to fix it.
Don: What did your father do that had him renovating trains?
Helen: My father was always passionate about trains. He started his career at 16 as a fireman during the steam era and went on to work for British Rail as a driver. We moved to South Africa when I was in my early teens when there was an opportunity to work with Iscor on the project to develop the Sishen to Saldanha.
We first lived in Vredenburg on the West Coast, but after a year or so a few families were asked to move to the other end of the line in the Northern Cape. At that time Kathu was a new town, with little more than a water tower as a landmark.
Helen in the Cederberg, helping with cedar tree planting. (Photo: Alicia Erasmus, Cederberg ClickClick)
Leopards mating. (Photo: Don Pinnock)
Don: So, where did you go to school?
Helen: In Kathu, in an Afrikaans first-language school where I completed my matric. There was no money for university though, and my father felt I’d be better off back in England. Very reluctantly I went back to the UK and wanted to join the Royal Air Force as an air traffic controller, but I didn’t make the cut. At the time they said I could potentially be a threat to national security because I’d grown up in South Africa.
Looking back, I think it was because the profession was male dominated. I didn’t give up on aviation though, motivated primarily by the idea that I would have access to my beloved South Africa for visits.
Don: So, what were your options – flight attendant?
Helen: I thought about being a flight attendant, but I finally got a job on the ground working for Lufthansa, first in reservations and later in flight operations using my German and Afrikaans. I considered becoming a pilot and took lessons up to solo level. I love flying small planes because you’re responsible for yourself, you’re accountable. Today’s passenger planes are different animals and, in some ways, remove the pure joy of flying.
Don: Somewhere along the line you met your husband, yes?
Helen: Jim’s a family doctor. I met him in the UK. When my son was six months old I left Lufthansa and took on contract work for Air Mauritius, Czech Airlines and Malaysia Airlines. After a 25-year career in medicine, running his own practice, Jim decided he’d had enough of being a GP and we decided to relocate to Cape Town.
Don: It seems a big jump from there to conservation.
Helen: Once back in South Africa, I set up my own company, Serendipity Africa. “Serendipity” is such a great word because its definition is discovering something wonderful by accident. The aim of the company was to enable tourism to be more sustainable, by contributing positively to community development and the environment.
(Photo: Don Pinnock)
I had the privilege of working with some of tourism’s passionate personalities such as Michael Lutzeyer at Grootbos, Wilfred Chivell of the Dyer Island Conservation Trust, Maarten Groos of Farm 215 and the South African Reforestation Trust.
It was while I was working with the Fowlds family who own Amakhala Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape at a time that rhino poaching suddenly spiked. M99, a veterinary anaesthetic drug, was being used instead of bullets. The rhinos that didn’t die would wake up with terrible injuries, it was heartbreaking.
Amakhala co-owner and wildlife vet Dr Will Fowlds set up a rescue team to treat rhinos found alive after a poaching incident and I assisted him. I would coordinate the logistics and help fundraise.
We’d get an emergency response team to game reserves across the country as quickly and as cheaply as possible, to offer the rhinos and their owners appropriate medical assistance based on the injuries of their rhinos.
Don: How did you get from rhinos to leopards?
A leopard has brilliant eyesight and can see (and see you) in one-sixth of the light required by humans. (Photo: Don Pinnock)
Helen: Quinton Martins had set up the Cape Leopard Trust in 2004 and on a few occasions I’d helped raise money for their work through an annual tourism industry fundraiser event. I could see he needed help, but at the time there was no money available.
Then in 2011 a position was advertised for a project assistant. I applied but wasn’t successful. However, a year later, Quinton invited me to join the team full time, so my consulting work came to an end. I hadn’t been there long when Quinton left to join the Snow Leopard Trust in the US.
A replacement CEO was appointed but didn’t work out, and after lengthy discussions – and despite my hesitations – the trustees persuaded me to take the job. I joined as CEO full time in 2016.
Looking back over my 11 years with the trust, I guess it’s a significant achievement, as conservation leadership has been primarily male dominated. The Cape Leopard Trust celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and I’m extremely proud of the incredibly passionate and committed team that drives the work we continue to do. DM
International Leopard Day, 3 May, is a permanent place on the global wildlife calendar, encouraging enthusiasts to promote and celebrate leopards worldwide. Find more information here.