Draft:Sharon Haussmann

Sharon Haussmann

Sharon Haussmann
Born	(1970-05-12)May 12, 1970 South Africa
Died	May 31, 2025(2025-05-31) (aged 55)
Occupation	Nature Conservationist
Employer	Greater Kruger Environmental Protection Foundation

Sharon Haussmann (12 May 1970 – 31 May 2025) was a South African nature conservationist. She served as CEO of the Greater Kruger Environmental Protection Foundation from 2019 until her death in 2025, and Chair of Balule Nature Reserve prior to that.

Early life

Haussmann was born into a farming family in the Lowveld, South Africa. She was awarded a scholarship for women to study engineering in Pretoria. After graduation, Haussmann returned to the Lowveld and earned a license to fly light aircraft, becoming the second woman in South Africa to do so. Before becoming involved in conservation professionally, she ran a successful macadamia propagation nursery with her husband, and later a clothing retail business. In 2004 she was named South Africa's Female Farmer of the Year.

She had visited Balule throughout her life, as her father had purchased land there in the 1960s. In 2011, she permanently relocated there with her family.

Balule

After permanently relocating to Balule, which is composed of many privately-owned parcels of land, Haussmann learnt that the legal classification and zoning of many of them was still for agriculture. As mining and farming are allowed on agricultural land, which posed a potential threat to the cohesive conservation area, she began the process of declaring the region a formal nature reserve, a process which would take seven years.

Through this process, Haussmann became increasingly involved in the reserve's governance, and joined the Balule management committee in 2016. She was elected as Chair in 2017, at a time when rhino poaching in the area was at an all-time high and the conservation system was under significant pressure.

Notably, she was responsible for ensuring Balule signed the GLTFCA Cooperative Agreement in December 2018, a landmark agreement between 15 conservation areas and reserves, including the Kruger National Park. This was considered a turning point for Balule as it positioned it within a network of protected areas, ensuring aligned standards on management, conservation, and security practices.

Haussmann advocated for dehorning (the removal of a rhino's horn under anaesthetic, which grows back over time) as an emergency measure to disincentivize and deter poachers. Dehorning is a controversial practice as rhinos' horns are natural tools used for defense, foraging, and establishing territorial dominance. There is evidence that removing them alters social structures and behaviour, particularly in the more territorial black rhino. However, despite significant financial resources being spent on more conventional anti-poaching measures such as tracking dogs and artificial intelligence cameras, rhinos were still being poached.

Consequently, Haussmann spearheaded a collaborative study between reserves and scientists to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of dehorning compared to other interventions. The study analysed data from 11 reserves in the Greater Kruger region between 2017 and 2023, and found that dehorning reduced poaching by 78%.

Balule's efforts to conserve their rhino population were documented in the TV mini series, The Reserve, in which Haussmann featured.

GKEPF

Haussmann was appointed CEO of the Greater Kruger Environmental Protection Foundation (GKEPF) in 2019. Her mandate was to bring diverse stakeholders together, including private and public nature reserves, government, and local communities bordering the reserves, to support collaborative conservation efforts. SANParks stated that Haussmann played a key role in establishing many of the relationships that their Vision 2040 plan—a long-term strategy that reimagines conservation as a force for social justice, economic growth, and job creation where both nature and people thrive together—aims to strengthen.

As CEO, Haussmann secured funding and coordinated the translocation of 120 rhinos to the Greater Kruger area. In 2023, African Parks purchased 2,000 southern white rhinos from John Hume's Platinum Rhino breeding program. The effort to translocate and rewild these rhinos, representing 15% of the world's white rhino population, to nature reserves throughout Africa over the following 10 years was called Rhino Rewild. In June 2024, the GKEPF member reserves received 120 rhinos, the second batch to be translocated.

A significant concern for the Rhino Rewild project was how the rhinos would fare when removed from their highly secure breeding environment and introduced to the wild. By January 2025, four of the 120 rhinos had died of natural causes, and one had been poached. Two calves had also been born. These low mortality figures are largely attributed to robust anti-poaching and direct interventions, such as veterinary treatment, by GKEPF.

JMF

At the 19th Annual Kudu Awards in November 2025, SANParks posthumously awarded Haussmann the CEO Special Kudu Award, in recognition of her establishing GKEPF as a strategic partner to SANParks and the Kruger National Park.