African Wildlife & Environment Issue 78

ECO HERO

Doing what he loved PETRI VILJOEN

Edited by: Lynn Hurry

From the Kruger National Park to Botswana and China conservationist and wildlife expert, Petri Viljoen spent his life dedicated to and enticed by nature. On 23 October 2020 Petri was part of a 4-man team conducting an elephant census in the Lower Zambezi National Park, when their four-seater Cessna 182 light aircraft went down. Two days later the wreck of the plane was located in a heavily wooded section in the Chewore North Safari Area. There were two survivors but tragically Petri was not one of them. One of Africa's most experienced wildlife experts, he had spent some 8,000 hours doing aerial survey and monitoring work in numerous parks and protected areas; thus ended the remarkable life of Petri Viljoen, doing what he loved best. Numerous people from around the world have paid tributes to this Eco Hero.

Zanne Viljoen - Petri was born in Bloemfontein on 6 January 1950. He grew up there and attended Jim Fouché High School. After completing his BSc Hons at the University of the Free State, he moved to Pretoria and started working for the Transvaal Provincial Administration in Nature Conservation and it was during this time that I met him. He lived in a small flat in Arcadia and did field work for his Master's thesis on Oribi in the Amsterdam/Piet Retief area. It was also at this time that he saved enough money to get his private pilot’s licence at Wonderboom. Later, he was transferred to the Lowveld, living in the Klaserie Nature Reserve.

While gathering stories from a variety of sources for this Eco-Hero account of Petri’s life I was struck by the common threads that ran through them all. His passion for the environment; the attention to detail that characterised his every activity; his boundless energy and his enthusiasm for trying out new experiences were just some of the traits that defined who he was. While the memories of Zanne Viljoen his wife and best friend of 38 years have best expressed who Petri was, a number of his colleagues and friends have written tributes and I have tried to include the essences of their writings here. I trust that I have done them all justice.

51 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 78 (2021)