‘When you don’t have the knowledge, you have to use common sense, instinct and intuition and listen to people close to you who have the same passion and vision as you. ‘I believe in never stopping learning, so I started by surrounding myself with the right people, who knew about the bush and conservation – I listened to them and never made decisions on my own,’ she says.
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She is, as she puts it, ‘a foreigner, a woman, a blonde’, and had little experience in conservation – all facts that made her journey to successfully leading the game reserve even more difficult. Hailing from France and with no prior experience in conservation before working with Lawrence at Thula Thula, Françoise was thrown into the challenge of leading the game reserve when Anthony died suddenly in 2012. Lawrence subsequently formed an incredible bond with the pack, especially the matriarch Nana who still lives with her herd at Thula Thula.
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Lawrence Anthony rose to fame following the publication of The Elephant Whisperer, an account of how he, Françoise, and the team at Thula Thula rescued a traumatised and unruly herd of elephants from being shot and moved them across South Africa to a new life at Thula Thula. She established the reserve with her late husband Lawrence Anthony near Richards Bay in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa in 1999. Françoise Malby-Anthony is the co-founder, owner and managing director of South Africa’s Thula Thula game reserve.