A Visionary’s Quest for the World’s First Wild Bee Reserve
January 29, 2026
If you want to be the reason why some areas in the world get to maintain their wildness, this is a request for help. Help us create the world’s first wild bee reserve! Read on to learn about this remarkable, achievable opportunity to protect more than 17,000 acres for these essential pollinators. Visit Ujubee’s Wild Bee Reserve Fundraising Campaign to lend your support.
Photo by Jenny Cullinan
Talking with a coworker, I asked if he was concerned for his grandchildren’s future. He is about to have his third grand-baby, and his fourth and fifth in a couple of months. He said he was very hopeful, knowing there is an increasing awareness of the need for sustainability and the movement toward electric vehicles. Another coworker told me once that he refuses to recycle plastic bottles… just because. A third told me that he is not worried in the least about the environment because he is confident technology will “fix it.”
It saddens me to know most people do not understand that even if all vehicles were electric, there would still be an extinction crisis, our rivers and oceans would still be polluted from pesticides and agricultural runoff, not to mention our wild lands scarred beyond recognition from all the mining that electrification of the world would entail. How could my wonderful colleagues not take heed from one of the brightest minds, Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
By training, I am an engineer, but my heart and soul belong to the wild. During a hike several years ago, I came within 30 feet of the biggest coyote I have ever seen… could this have been a wolf? He (or she) looked straight at me and held my gaze for what seemed like forever, but in reality, was probably around 10-15 seconds. I saw a wildness in its eyes that was fierce but was also asking something of me: A request for help. Help to stay wild. I made a promise then and there that I would do what I could to grant that request.
Photo by Jenny Cullinan
If my co-workers are cause for hopelessness, my friends are cause for some hope. My friend Cathy has been supporting what she calls “small-scale visionaries.” Individuals who are intimately connected to the land and all the creatures who live upon that land. She explains, “These visionaries were not waiting for permission or funding or recognition. They were simply doing the work — responding to needs they understood from within, not from above … tenders of ecosystems, guardians of place … whose work was emergent, relational, and often invisible to conventional systems of philanthropy” (A New Vision of Contribution). One of these individuals is Jenny Cullinan, a wild bee researcher and conservationist.
Photo by Craig Matthew
Jenny has been studying wild bees in her native South Africa for almost two decades and is a formidable advocate for them. She is the executive director of Ujubee, a non-profit organization that supports a small team of researchers studying wild bee species in primarily pristine wilderness areas. Jenny knows that wild bees serve as keystone species in some of the most valuable wilderness areas around the globe. Besides the honey bee (Apis mellifera), there are many species of solitary or sub-social bees that are imperative for pollinating native plants. This is true, not just in South Africa, but also in the U.S. (see Project1100). In fact, the Americas do not have any native honey bees, only non-honey-producing wild bees. Honey bees were imported to the Americas from Europe and Africa and are forced to live in a way far from their wild nature.
Photo by Craig Matthew
Jenny studies wild bees, both honey-producing and otherwise, in their natural environment. She records their sounds, films their behavior, and listens for their secrets. She is learning what modern “beekeepers” cannot — how honey bees have been adapting for millions of years to environmental changes, such as wildfire, predators, climate, flora, even wind! Their resiliency is exceptional when left to their natural ways, but they soon lose the capacity to adapt when forced to live in crowded apiaries. This greatly exposes them to diseases, forces them to over-produce honey that they would normally only produce for their own food, and creates diminished genetic diversity conditions. Managed honey bees also drive away other, less-abundant wild bees, such as solitary bees who only pollinate certain rare flowers. The thinking that is destroying the Amazon rainforest for the sake of cattle grazing is doing the same for beautiful floral ecosystems for the sake of honey.
Photo by Jenny Cullinan
I am convinced that, as John Davis wrote: “We must preserve, expand, and reconnect all large roadless areas worldwide, and the bigger the better.” Not to “save the planet,” because it is too late for that, but to preserve what we still have for as long as we can. Because if nothing else, nature is resilient. It will come out of this, even if we humans do not.
To that end, a group of friends and I are raising funds for the world’s first wild bee reserve in the Karoo, a semi-arid plateau and basin in South Africa that is home to wild bees and many other species. Karoo is derived from the Khoisan word for “land of thirst,” and its stunning beauty will take your breath away.
Photo by Jenny Cullinan
We have an opportunity to permanently protect more than 17,600 acres of wilderness. This land has not been farmed in more than 13 years. Nature is taking over again, and there are thousands of plants and animals that call this place home — from rare succulents to the mysterious leopard, the crafty caracal, the little-known brown hyena, the wondrous kudu, and fascinating insects, reptiles, and amphibians. Rock art decorates ancient formations, as if ancestors long ago still plead for us to protect this bioregion.
Photo by Jenny Cullinan
The South African government and oil and mining companies already have their greedy eyes on this pristine landscape, and we want to take it off the table as soon as possible. For what a single-family home might cost in the U.S., 17,600 acres of wilderness can be forever protected. A sanctuary for wildlife, a respite for biodiversity.
Once Ujubee owns the land, Cormac Cullinan, an environmental lawyer known internationally for his work and Jenny’s brother, will help ensure its protection in perpetuity. Already in countries outside of South Africa, Cormac has had success in attaining legal personhood for land itself. He is now attempting to do the same with Table Mountain, an iconic landscape in South Africa recognized around the world (see www.tablemountainrights.org). Similarly, this Wild Bee Reserve could gain the right to exist as a legal entity with the humans who care for it as guardians and protectors.
Photo by Jenny Cullinan
Through her work, Jenny will continue to share her knowledge about one of the tiniest keystone species in the world, ensuring that magical places like the Karoo remain wild for my co-workers’ grandchildren to someday appreciate and love.
If you want to be the reason why some areas in the world get to maintain their wildness for wildness sake, not because they hold oil, minerals, or honey for human exploitation, you can help this dream become a reality. Learn more about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by visiting our Wild Bee Reserve Fundraising Campaign. To find out more about Jenny’s research with wild bees, watch videos and listen to presentations on her Wonderment Profile or read her blog at Ujubee.com.
Photo by Jenny Cullinan
Ruth Morlas works in the technology field by day and volunteers her time for conservation by night. She is a board member at Beavers Northwest, volunteers at Conservation Northwest’s wildlife monitoring program, and helps horses in need at Kataluna Horse Rescue. During her travels, Ruth has come to understand that, although resilient, our wilderness areas and wildlife need our protection. Not by us doing anything to nature, but by allowing her to be and by defending her right to exist without threat.