Lessons from Africa

SUBMERGED HIPPOPOTAMUS
During the two decades he raced, Mario continued to explore wildlife on his travels. And, Africa always called to him. On one of these trips, when he was almost 30 years old, he met the guide Simon Bellingham, who would become a great friend and driver of all his safaris. “He opened a wildlife travel company, and in theory, it was possible to see any mammal in the world. I said, ‘Simon, there are a lot of animals I want to see, take me there.’ And we went to see pandas in China, polar bears in Canada, gorillas in Uganda, and tigers in India.”

Once, in Mana Pools National Park, “one of the wildest places I’ve ever been to,” on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, going down the Zambezi River for seven days in a canoe, they were surprised by a submerged hippopotamus. “I was at the back of the canoe, and when I went to grab my camera, I ended up falling on top of a hippopotamus. I was like a cartoon character, almost walking on water, but I managed to get back in the canoe. Hippopotamus are the most deadly animal in Africa, besides mosquitoes – they can be very aggressive in their territories,” he explains.

As he continued to cross the skies, Mario grew tired of the race tracks. It was 2008. “Motorsport was in decline in the United States, and I thought it was time to stop,” says the former driver, who at that time lived in Miami with his wife, Ana Haberfeld, and his children, Roberto and Mariana, still babies. “I had the privilege of being with them during that phase, I was the only dad who took his kids to school. It was great, I would go to the beach, take them to the aquarium. But I found out that retiring was the worst thing I did. I woke up with no purpose,” he recalls.

It was time for Haberfeld to find a new motivation. In this search, he called his friend Simon to visit the Pantanal, a region that Mario himself hardly knew – “this is a common Brazilian flaw, that they do not know their own country,” he justifies. Arriving at the world’s largest flooded grassland, the South African guide couldn’t take his eyes off the capybaras. “Imagine if we could see jaguars here?” And he threw it out: “It’s possible to see tigers on game drives in India, lions on game drives in Africa, but you cannot see jaguars on game drives here. We need to find a way,” Simon’s words sowed in Mario the desire to do something.

FREE ANIMAL
Both Mario and Simon knew that the jaguar would be a drawcard, “protecting the jaguar would be protecting the entire forest. Nobody goes to Africa for the first time wanting to only see zebras, everyone wants to see an iconic predator like the lion. And here, they want to see jaguars,” remarked Mario. The two spent a month at the Caiman Ecological Refuge, owned by entrepreneur and environmental activist Roberto Klabin, an old friend and the owner of a 53,000-hectare part of the Pantanal. “I told Roberto, ‘This is the safest place to start, you’ve been preserving it for over 30 years.’ Roberto said, ‘I only see jaguars two or three times a year. But if you want to try, go ahead.’ I don’t know if he believed it would work, but he gave us full support,” recalls Mario.

The idea was to replicate in Brazil the Sabi Sands Private Nature Reserve model in South Africa, a region formed in the 1930s by merging some cattle farms. Just as lions threatened cattle in African savannas, in the Pantanal, jaguars were seen as enemies by farmers. Haberfeld wanted to reverse this logic and show that live animals were worth much more than dead ones, just as what happened in the Sabi Sands. Mario and Simon, along with a team of biologists, spent over a year getting jaguars accustomed to the presence of vehicles using GPS collars, motion sensor cameras, and an extra dose of patience. The goal was never to domesticate them, but to make them relaxed enough to allow observation, making ecotourism possible. In addition to getting jaguars accustomed to the presence of vehicles, they reintroduced rescued jaguar cubs into the wild. Two of them, “who had lost their mother in an incident,” were isolated in an area of Caiman Ecological Refuge and began to be fed with live prey without contact with people. “We released these first two, Isa and Fera, about eight years ago. We see both of them once a week. They have had offspring that have had cubs of their own. Scientifically, to say that the reintroduction project worked, they need to have fertile descendants. And it happened.”

Lili Rampin, field coordinator biologist at Caiman Ecological Refuge, says that when Mario invited her to the project ten years ago, she didn’t believe it would work. “I had never heard of a jaguar relaxed in the presence of vehicles, a free animal near a vehicle… without even being intimidated, I said, ‘I doubt it will work. Do you think the animal will just stand there and stare at me?’ Haberfeld insisted that she see the work up close, which had been going on for a year.” When I arrived, there was already a jaguar that was relatively accustomed to the presence of vehicles, and I saw it 30 meters away from me. I said, ‘This is for real.’ It was a little bit-by-bit job. I started with four more people on the team, the GPS didn’t even exist, we used radio signals. We traded day for night. I got addicted to lollipops so I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel and crash,” she recalls. “Things changed drastically. Caiman’s longest-serving employee says they never used to see jaguars; the animal was always driven away, considered a pest.”

At the beginning of the project, the locals’ reception of the idea was not very warm. “When a guy from Africa and another from São Paulo came to help the jaguars, which were considered enemies of their source of income, they were suspicious, of course. Today, there is harmony. Caiman Ecological Refuge has cattle farming, and the cowboys let us know when they see a jaguar. I think their mindset has gradually changed. People see jaguars differently today. They began to understand that a jaguar is worth much more alive than dead,” says Mario. He tells the story of a former employee to explain the changes in behavior he witnessed: “A guy who worked with us used to hunt jaguars with his father as a teenager. Then he became a cowboy, earning a minimum wage. Later, he trained to be a guide and now earns much more. And his wife, son and daughter all have jobs, so the family’s income has increased thirtyfold. I joke that if you tell him you’re going to hunt a jaguar, he’ll hunt you.”

Since its establishment in 2011, the Onçafari Association, in partnership with the National Center for Research and Conservation of Carnivorous Mammals (CENAP) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), has already identified over 230 jaguars, and the estimated number on the Caiman Farm is around 60, with half of them habituated. Last year was the first time that 100% of the guests spotted jaguars. “Since the implementation of the program, hotel occupancy has increased by almost 600%, promoting job creation. When the project started to show results and more and more people spotted the jaguars, I truly understood the magnitude of the work,” says Roberto Klabin. “Thanks to Onçafari, Caiman receives an increasing number of visitors, which demonstrates the value of partnerships between tourism ventures and rewilding and environmental restoration projects.” Mario adds, “The purpose of Onçafari is to show the way through ecotourism, safari, valuing animals and creating jobs. We have proven that it works and can be a powerful conservation tool.” The project is currently established in ten locations, including the Trijunção Lodge (read the box) on the border of Bahia, Minas Gerais, and Goiás, where the maned wolf is the main attraction. In the Amazon, the Thaimaçu Lodge, in southern Pará, has been working on the reintroduction of jaguars since 2019. The Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, located on the banks of the Negro River, conducts fauna monitoring but does not offer visitation activities through Onçafari.

MODEL PROJECT
When it comes to conservation, Mario argues that the more others are inspired by his initiative’s model, the more benefit it will generate. “Onçafari has this different vision of promoting conservation in general. The more the project is replicated, the better. If you ask me today what one of the biggest problems in conservation is, I would say it’s still ego. The guy wants to appear more than the animal. And that’s wrong,” he emphasizes.

The Association currently has the support and partnership of 20 brands. “Not only are entrepreneurs increasingly aware, but so are established companies. Many take ESG (an acronym used to group initiatives in the environmental, social, and governance fields) seriously. Maybe 30 years ago it would have been impossible to do what I’m doing, nobody would want to help,” believes Haberfeld. “Today, there are many people wanting to participate. Every resource we get goes to conservation.”

Onçafari is also responsible for managing an area of over 430,000 hectares, resulting from the union of farmers and entrepreneurs who created the Aliança 5P group – Pantanal, preservation, partnership, livestock, and productivity. “In three years, we have created one of the world’s largest ecological corridors on private land. There, nobody will hunt jaguars, everyone accepts the research project, and we will start ecotourism. One of the strategies today is to acquire more and more land to protect an even larger area.”

Looking back, Mario Haberfeld feels that he ran all that he ran just to get here. Offer him to drive a Ferrari in Monaco or go to the Pantanal, and there is no doubt. “It’s for nature that I’m going.”