‘No Typical Day’: On the job with conservation's unsung hero at Addo Elephant National Park

Addo Elephant National Park Conservation Manager Anban Padayachee (left) with his longtime colleague and friend Dr Dave Zimmermann, SANParks Senior Veterinary Manager, Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape, on 20 May 2025. (Photo: Julia Evans)

By Julia Evans

23 May 2025

Growing up on the coast and spending time in St Lucia and Richards Bay, spotting red duikers, hippos, and crocodiles, Anban Padayachee’s first love was marine biology. But apartheid-era restrictions closed that path. ‘Then someone mentioned that conservation was more practical and hands on — something that could lead to game ranging. And I never looked back,’ he says.

No two days in Anban Padayachee’s life look the same — or can be predicted.

On Tuesday morning, Addo Elephant National Park’s conservation manager was inside a boma by 8am, helping his team wrestle a five-ton buffalo. Alongside SANParks veterinarians and park rangers, Anban “Guy” Padayachee was overseeing routine disease screening before the animal’s sale at the Kirkwood Wildsfees auction.

By lunchtime, he was standing in front of journalists at a press conference, explaining how his team had successfully translocated 42 elephants to another section of his park for ecological balance the previous week — a major logistical feat requiring careful planning and calm coordination as a family of elephants scattered 2km during the capture operation.

Read more: Inside Addo’s elephant translocation and the challenge of fragmented wild spaces

Later that day, he was back in the bush, in the Kabouga section where he began his career at Addo 23 years ago, scanning thickets to check on the elephants’ resettlement.

“There’s no typical day,” he said. “As much as we want to plan things and have meetings — you wake up and there’s a burst pipe, an animal that needs rescuing, a fence that needs fixing.

“So there’s no typical day, and to be honest, I prefer it that way. Otherwise it’d be just like a normal profession where you go to the office. It keeps us on our toes.”

After 30 years, he’s learned to always keep a spare pair of boots in the car.

“He lives for his job,” says Johan Swart, one of the founders of the Kirkwood Wildsfees, who has worked with him for two decades. “He’s a good speaker, disciplined. He knows what he’s talking about. I’m very glad he climbed the ladder to where he is today. He deserves it.”

Addo Elephant National Park Conservation Manager Anban Padayachee searching for the newly translocated elephants in the Kabouga section of the park, Eastern Cape, on 20 May 2025. (Photo: Julia Evans)

Padayachee (right) helps position a sedated buffalo for blood tests as part of the standard disease screening before it is sold at the Kirkwood Wildsfees auction, inside the boma at the park, on 20 May 2025. (Photo: Julia Evans)

In 1994, the year of South Africa’s first democratic election, Padayachee became the first qualified Indian game ranger in the country.

“At the time, to be honest, it didn’t mean much,” he recalls. “I was too busy trying to prove myself and show everybody else that I actually belong there. But as the years go on, it certainly means a lot.”

And for someone who now manages the conservation of the most biodiverse park on the continent, his place isn’t in question.

Padayachee proudly explained that Southern Africa is divided into seven vegetation biomes, and Addo covers five of them — Albany Thicket, Forest, Fynbos, Nama Karoo, and the Indian Ocean Coastal Belt.

“We also range from the semi-arid Karoo all the way down to the coast, where we protect the largest and least disturbed sand dune system in the southern hemisphere — the Alexandria dune fields,” he said.

“Beyond that, we manage seven offshore islands, including Bird Island, home to 110,000 pairs of Cape Gannets, an endangered species.”

A family rooted in nature

Padayachee’s passion for conservation runs deep in his family. He grew up on a sugarcane farm in KwaZulu-Natal, where his grandfather worked as a foreman.

“They (the owners) took a liking to him — they used to take him to places like Sabi Sands and Mala Mala, where he hunted alongside my uncles,” Padayachee recalls.

“On my mother’s side, which is also from the farm, at least one cousin in every family was connected to nature — whether in agriculture, veterinary work, or even pet shows. So I’ve always had some kind of link to the natural world.

“I just loved animals and wanted to do something with them,” he says.

Growing up on the coast and spending time in St Lucia and Richards Bay, spotting red duikers, hippos, and crocodiles, his first love was marine biology. But apartheid-era restrictions closed that path. “Then someone mentioned that conservation was more practical and hands on — something that could lead to game ranging. And I never looked back,” he adds.

Rangers driving through Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape, on 20 May 2025. (Photo: Julia Evans)

Padayachee (left) with his longtime colleague and friend Dr Dave Zimmermann, SANParks Senior Veterinary Manager, Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape, on 20 May 2025. (Photo: Julia Evans)

He began studying in 1990, the year Nelson Mandela was released, and started working in 1994, the year of South Africa’s first democratic elections. He studied at what was then Cape Technikon (now Cape Peninsula University of Technology) and has built a career spanning more than 30 years in conservation — 23 of those at Addo Elephant National Park. Here he has lived in the coastal Wood Cape section, setting up penguin shelters on Bird Island to boost the breeding success of endangered African penguins, and launching Addo’s first Marine Protected Area in 2019.

“If you say ‘23 years at Addo Elephant National Park’, people think, ‘That’s a long time — surely a person must get over it,’” he laughs. “But I’ve been very fortunate — it’s definitely not the same park I started at.”

When Padayachee arrived, lions had yet to be reintroduced, hyenas weren’t there, the Nyathi section was undeveloped, and the marine protected area didn’t exist.

Like many SANParks staff, the Padayachee family lives on the park grounds. His daughters have had a rare upbringing, fully immersed in wildlife.

That morning, as Padayachee helped his team wrestle a sedated buffalo for blood samples, his eldest daughter, Leah, stood calmly nearby with a clipboard and measuring instrument, recording data. Later, she sat in the back of his bakkie, scrolling through his phone that was tracking the collared elephants they had translocated earlier that week.

“Leah just took to it naturally,” he says. “She was two weeks old when she had her first elephant encounter — one walked right up and sniffed her car seat. She’s been with me through everything since. This is her third elephant capture, and she’s been involved in rhino captures too. Before Addo, I worked in the marine section — she’s helped with seal pups and penguins. No doubt, she’s done it all.”

Colleagues who become friends

Dr Dave Zimmermann, SANParks’ senior veterinary manager in the Eastern Cape, met Padayachee more than 20 years ago when they were trying to control a fire in one of the lion bomas at Addo.

“I just remember he had a working-for-fire shirt on and he wanted me to take a photo of him fighting the fires with this chainsaw cutting the boma,” he said, saying this was still something that later became a bit of a joke.

“At the time, I thought he was a little bit arrogant, but I didn’t get to know him properly until afterwards. Then I realised he was just really passionate — he had worked in firefighting before and was always ready to get stuck in.”

Zimmermann and Padayachee have worked together for more than two decades, and became friends as well as colleagues — and in that time he has found him to be deeply passionate about conservation, and helping others.

“That’s another thing with him. If you ever need a helper, he would be the first person there offering to assist you.

“He would go out of his way to assist anyone. I think he would go out of his way to help people. He’s got empathy for for animals and people, as well.”

Padayachee isn’t without his quirks. Zimmermann explained that Padayachee was deaf in one ear, and sometimes you’d see him running into the bush in the wrong direction.

“Everyone else is going to where the animal is, and Anban and his children are running off in a different direction,” he joked. “He’s enthusiastic. He wants to be up ahead.”

Padayachee has long supported the Kirkwood Wildsfees, a community-run wildlife festival and auction. Every year, animals from Addo, Mountain Zebra and Camdeboo are selected for “offtakes” — an ecological strategy that mimics migration and eases population pressure.

The proceeds from the wildlife auction are split — money goes back to SANParks for vital conservation projects like vulture conservation, while the rest is invested directly into local communities — to buy computers for schools, provide food parcels, and sponsor soccer and rugby teams in towns like Kirkwood, Colchester and Paterson.

“Anban was there from the beginning,” says Johan Swart from Kirkwood Wildsfees. “When he started as a veldwachter in Kirkwood, he got involved with the auction and never missed a year.”

When asked what challenges there were to being a park manager, Padayachee reflected on the huge commitment to the job.

“People don’t realise what sort of commitment it is — you almost marry the job. You don’t get to shut down at five and just be a father or husband. You’re always a conservation manager — even on leave. Your phone is on. Your laptop’s there.”

But Padayachee wouldn’t have it any other way. DM

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South Africa

A family rooted in nature

Colleagues who become friends