An hour-and-a-half flight from Johannesburg, in northwest South Africa, sits the country’s largest private nature reserve. It’s a remote 441-square-mile tract of the Kalahari, where red soil rolls for miles into shrubland, savanna and low, rounded mountains that carve into the powder-blue sky. Despite the unforgiving landscape, this area has been the subject of an intensive restoration process for nearly three decades. What it lacks in abundance, it makes up for in rare wildlife, such as meerkats and pangolins. And endangered and threatened species are slowly starting to thrive—the desert black rhino and white rhino populations have quadrupled here since the animals were reintroduced 15 years ago.

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Locations: Johannesburg, South Africa