Conserving what matters
Tim Neary’s story starts with being in the right place at the right time. More accurately, it starts with Tim doing what he has always done: paying attention.
Years ago, while driving through Pilanesberg National Park to record a radio interview, he noticed a group of giraffes rolling bones around in their mouths – a behaviour known as ‘osteophagia’. Tim mentioned it in passing during the interview, and someone suggested he go back and film it. When he returned with a camera, he crossed paths with a Sappi employee struggling with a technical problem while building an elephant boma – a fenced enclosure used for managing, rehabilitating or reintroducing elephants to the wild – Tim took one look, saw a simple fix and helped out.
“Come back on Monday and talk to me,” the man said.
Tim did. One conversation turned into another, then another. Within weeks, he was filming wetlands for Sappi. Within years, he had logged thousands of hours behind a camera, working across environmental projects, education programmes and conservation initiatives. More than three decades later, he is still there – not because he followed a straight career path, but because he never tried to.
Tim’s life has been defined by variety. He began his working life as a bulldozer mechanic or, as he puts it, “a heavy construction technician, if you want the fancy title”. Later, he spent 26 years in sea rescue, operating in helicopters where split-second decisions could mean life or death. Along the way he built a parallel career as a radio broadcaster and wildlife filmmaker, working with organisations like Nat Geo Wild and developing an instinct for storytelling grounded in curiosity rather than spectacle.
“I don’t have a degree in botany,” Tim says, proudly. “I’m a naturalist.”
I don’t have a degree in botany. I’m a naturalist
Tim Neary, South Africa
That distinction matters to him. It speaks to an approach shaped by observation, pattern recognition and problem-solving, all skills he honed long before he ever worked in conservation. Today, those same instincts underpin his role at Sappi, where he leads the Rare, Threatened and Endangered Species Programme, a project he co-conceptualised in 2013 with Group Head of Corporate Affairs, André Oberholzer.
The programme focuses largely on medicinal trees and plants that are under threat from overharvesting, habitat loss and climate stress. But to describe it only in scientific terms would miss the point. At its heart, the work is about people.
In many of the rural areas where Tim works, traditional healers are the primary source of healthcare. In one region alone, he notes, there are thousands of healers and fewer than a dozen medical doctors. According to World Health Organization messaging from August 2022, more than 80% of Africa’s population still relies on traditional medicine (1), and much of that knowledge is bound up in plants that are becoming harder and harder to find.
Rather than arriving with ready-made solutions, Tim and his team begin each project by listening. Workshops with local communities identify which plants are used, which are disappearing and why. Those species are then assessed against the IUCN Red List and South Africa’s protected plant databases, before being studied in partnership with scientists at Sappi’s Shaw Research Centre.
Some plants are stubborn. Certain seeds must be planted within days of falling from the tree. Others will not reproduce under stress. Some species hover on the brink of extinction, having crossed invisible tipping points where pollination or propagation no longer happens naturally. Solving those problems can take years. From identifying a threatened species to reintroducing it into a community typically takes around three.
Since its inception, the programme has distributed roughly 225,000 trees, focusing on seven key tree species and four bulb species. It works through government conservation bodies rather than NGOs, ensuring that restoration efforts are embedded within existing structures and can be sustained long after Tim and his team have moved on.
But if you ask Tim what keeps him motivated, he doesn’t talk about numbers.
He talks about patience and humility. About understanding that conservation isn’t about heroic gestures, but about incremental progress. About recognising cultural protocols – when to wear a jacket and long sleeves to meet a king, and when it’s acceptable to work barefoot in the soil. About teaching sustainable harvesting not as a rulebook, but as a shared responsibility. His ability to move between these worlds – scientific and traditional, technical and cultural – is no coincidence.
Long before he ever picked up a camera for the company, Sappi paper was part of his family history. His father ran a corrugated container business that used Sappi products as far back as 1946, just after the Second World War. Later, Tim inherited a small piece of machinery connected to that business, a reminder that his professional relationship with the company predates his birth.
“I’ve had an association with Sappi all my life,” he says. “By default, or by accident.”
Accident, in Tim’s case, is always paired with readiness: being open to unexpected turns, knowing when to step in and help, and accepting that no plan survives contact with reality.
That mindset has shaped everything from the Rare, Threatened and Endangered Species Programme to the way Tim approaches storytelling on radio. His broadcasts avoid doom-laden narratives, focusing instead on biodiversity as something dynamic, complex and worth understanding.
Now approaching 70, Tim spends eight to ten days a month in the field, visiting nurseries, running workshops and checking in on projects that will long outlast him. He jokes that he doesn’t have a large bank balance, but he does have “a hell of a large fun balance”.
For Tim Neary, trees are not abstract symbols of sustainability. They are living records of culture, medicine and memory. And his story, like Sappi’s, is not about a single moment of impact, but about showing up, year after year, and doing the work to help the world thrive.
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