who we are

Introduction

Almost every member of our team here at squestr has connections to safari travel and wildlife conservation.

We have been fighting to protect the wild places of Africa for decades, facing off challenges including human-encroachment, poaching, habitat destruction and climate change.

We would like to think that, over the years, we’ve managed to earn the trust of both our customers in developed countries and the people of rural Africa.

We have proved that we can work under adverse conditions, to deliver complex high-quality safari trips with extreme reliability, whilst simultaneously retaining very high levels of authenticity, intimacy and ethical standards.

The progression from safari conservation to climate action was a logical next step. Trying to protect our little patches of Africa could prove futile if global issues like climate change aren’t being simultaneously addressed.

As luck would have it, some of us were already highly qualified in the appropriate environmental fields, whilst others have been running tree-planting projects in Africa for decades. So it didn’t take much to join the dots and realise that this would be a logical progression.

Although our tree-planting and other carbon projects are all based in Africa, squestr itself is registered in the UK, since that’s where our support team is based and because we feel that it provides an element of reassurance to customers from around the world who are not used to dealing with African companies.

In this section we are simply going to introduce some of the key team members, so that you can get to know us a little better.

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Joe Welby

Joe has been going on safari since before he could walk.

He came up with the idea for squestr when he was just 16 years old, which actually isn’t that long ago.

The original intention was simply to sell carbon credits so that we could plant lots of trees.

The project really started to gather momentum when Joe realised that some of the people he knew in Africa were already running tree-planting projects. As it turned out, those projects were extremely scalable, if only we could attract the funding.

From that point, the challenge was to set up an operation that would offer high quality environmental services to companies in developed countries, in order that we could funnel funding into these projects in Africa.

The present ambition is to finance the planting of over ten million trees before 2030, but we would happily take it further if we can.

Joe is presently studying hard to get into Oxford University, where he hopes to read Biology. He is the author of a pioneering (pre-pub) paper entitled “The relative efficiency of carbon sequestration for tree plantations in different parts of the world”, which provides us with some of the core data for our projects in Africa.

He’s rarely involved in the day-to-day operation of the company, for obvious reasons, but continues to oversee the science behind the project and make sure we are getting those critical emissions calculations correct.

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Denis Lebouteux

Denis is originally from France, but has lived and worked in East Africa for so long that he is now very much an honorary Tanzanian.

His primary interest is MKSC, the oldest safari company in that part of the world and one which has an impressive reputation for modesty, integrity and honesty. Above all, it is known for pioneering empowerment and environmental strategies decades before they became fashionable.

In 2008, Denis decided that it would be a good idea to start a little tree-planting project in the Karatu area (close to the Ngorongoro Crater), where he had witnessed significant deforestation over the years. He did this simply because it seemed the right thing to do and financed it with his own money, supplemented by occasional contributions from safari guests.

When we asked Denis what he could achieve with more funds, he explained that it would be possible to start as many projects as there are suitable villages in Tanzania. In other words, there’s virtually no limit to the number of trees they could nurture and usefully establish.

When it comes to squestr, Denis is our primary advisor on how to actually make things work in Africa. With over forty years of experience to draw on, there could be no one better for the job.

With the current escalation in demand for carbon credits, it can be easy to throw good money at bad projects. The fact that we have Denis to oversee our operations is indispensable, especially given that he is personally friends with so many of the farmers, chiefs and administrators in these villages.

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Jean and Anne de Villiers

Originally from South Africa and England respectively, Jean and Anne have spent their lives working on academic and philanthropic projects in developing countries.

Since 2002 they have been based on the island of Mafia in Tanzania, where they operate a wonderfully quirky treehouse lodge, along with various conservation and social projects, notably including the protection of a very rare whale shark nursery.

We have worked with the couple for decades and know them to be rigorously honest, highly intelligent and powerfully motivated to do good, both for the environment and the lovely local people.

When we first started to realise that we might be able to create demand for lots of carbon credits, we reached out to Jean to ask if he would like to set up tree plantations on the island. He replied that it might be more practical for us to support his efforts to restore the local coral reefs, so we did.

Jean and Anne are on the ground to make sure that the projects we support are efficient and effective, delivering carbon sequestration, environmental restoration and social uplift.

We could not be in better hands.

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Greg Welby

Having worked in the safari world since the late 1980s, Greg has enormous experience of working with Africa.

In 1999 he helped to establish one of the world’s leading tailor-made safari companies. He too has with a fierce reputation for honesty and integrity.

As luck would have it, Greg also happens to be a highly-qualified environmental engineer, which came in very handy when setting up squestr.

Greg is in charge of customer-side operations, working with our partner companies to deliver first class environmental reporting and carbon certification.

When you get in touch, it will most likely be Greg who welcomes you into the fold, explains what we do and oversees your environmental project.

Next article

What we do

In this article we quickly run through the five key services that we offer, namely environmental expertise, emissions calculations, environmental reporting, carbon certification and carbon offsetting.