“The three most important things a conservationist requires: data, data and data”
Victor Harley is not the kind of person who sits still for long. Over more than three decades, he has roamed southern Africa as a field guide, conservation scientist, environmental consultant, lecturer, artist, knife-maker, ceramicist, coffee entrepreneur, and gallery owner. Often several of these at once. The thread running through all of it is an insatiable need to understand how things work, whether that’s a lion population in the Kgalagadi, the firing temperature of a clay glaze, or the geometry of a folding knife blade.
He started his working life leading multi-day hikes through Big 5 country and managing a private desert reserve in Namibia, and somewhere along the way picked up a passion for the science behind what he was observing. That passion took him through a National Diploma, a B.Tech, and an M.Tech in Nature Conservation (winning the S2A3 Medal for best thesis along the way), and has since led him to a PhD at the University of the Free State, where he is digging into the history and methodology of wildlife counting in the Kruger National Park.
Between the fieldwork and the academia, Victor has trained wildlife census teams in Tanzania, conducted rabbit counts on Robben Island, assessed habitats for buffalo and white rhino on private game farms, reviewed the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve for UNESCO, and co-founded a Vietnamese coffee import business. He has also published peer-reviewed research, written a memoir, exhibited his paintings internationally, and taught everything from biostatistics to trails guiding.
He used to be based in Betty’s Bay on the Western Cape coast: dramatic fynbos, cold Atlantic water, and enough quiet to paint, think, write, research and make the occasional knife for people who appreciate that kind of thing. Currently he lives a nomadic life, going where work and adventure happens to take him.