When Plans Go Wrong, Stories Get Better

Who’s on the Podcast

‍Grant Beverley – Wild Dog Conservationist

Working with Contemplate Wild and long-time carnivore conservation practitioner.
Specialist in African wild dog relocation, monitoring, and conservation technology across southern Africa.

Recorded fireside beneath a fruiting jackalberry at Raptor’s View, episode two of Sundowner Sessions finds Brett Horley back around the flames with wild dog conservationist and long-time collaborator and friend Grant Beverley, relaxed, unfiltered, and very much in storytelling mode.

Grant kicks off with a proper bush truth: the word “expert” is overrated. In conservation, experience isn’t something you claim, it’s something you earn, usually through mistakes, pressure, and situations going pear-shaped at exactly the wrong moment. And if you work long enough in the bush, even the best-run operations can turn into absolute chaos.

That theme lands perfectly in Grant’s first story: a wild dog relocation that should have been routine… until it wasn’t. Fourteen out of fifteen dogs darted successfully, the light fading, everyone exhausted,  and then the last dart goes in. The team celebrates too early (first mistake), because the drug goes subcut and the dog is only half sedated. Grant moves in quietly with a blindfold, crowd cheers, and the dog wakes up.

What follows is pure conservation slapstick: Grant in slops, one shoe failing mid-run, pants falling down (no belt… again), and a frantic shuffle toward the transport crate with an angry, half-awake wild dog trying to bite him, all while volunteers watch the “legend” unravel in real time.

“First lesson, you only celebrate when the wild dog is asleep and in the back of the vehicle… you never celebrate when the dart goes in.”

The episode then takes a sharp left into the kind of story you can’t really top: Grant’s very real “plane crash” while transporting wild dogs from KZN to Tswalu. Strong headwinds, an unexpected refuel stop on a dirt strip, a runway that suddenly feels far too short, an electric fence barely cleared, power lines looming… and then the pilot cuts power to slip underneath them, dropping the aircraft into a cornfield and sliding out onto a tar road near Frankfort in the Free State.

And in classic Africa fashion, the first person to arrive isn’t emergency services,  it’s a local who asks if they’re okay… and offers koeksisters. Then, minutes later, a farmer pulls in, casually mentions he has a jet, and the dogs end up reaching Tswalu faster than they would have if they hadn’t crashed.

“It wasn’t like the plane was about to explode… but we still had to figure out what we’re going to do with these wild dogs.”

To round out the episode, Grant explains the work of Contemplate Wild,  a conservation technology platform built to centralise ecological data (especially wild dog data) into a single dashboard, pulling from collars, sightings, genetics, and field reports. The goal is simple and powerful: turn scattered information into real-time insight, with automated alerts that help conservation managers act faster on threats.

Entertaining, honest, and properly unpredictable, this episode captures the reality of life in the bush: sometimes it’s high-stakes, sometimes it’s hilarious, and often it’s both at once.

Until next time - keep your sundowners cold and your stories wild.

Interesting Facts from the Episode

• Darts can fail if they go subcutaneous (under the skin), meaning the drug may not deliver properly, and “sedated” animals can suddenly become very awake.
  
  
• Wild dog relocations can unravel fast, even with months of planning, the rule is: "celebrate only when the animal is fully down and secured".
  
  
• Contemplate Wild is designed as a central database for conservation data, combining collar movement, sightings, genetics, life history, and threat reporting into one real-time system for managers on the ground.

Explore how Contemplate Wild is reshaping conservation.

Listen now!