Danielle Terblanche
Bio: Danielle Terblanche is a first-year at UNC from Hilton, South Africa and is majoring in neuroscience. She shared her insights on her personal relationship with nature and her community’s attitude towards environmental preservation.
Did you grow up around nature when you were in South Africa? What kind of exposure did you have to nature?
Hilton, the place where I grew up, was starting to become more urbanized as I grew up. But in terms of nature specifically, we used to go to Krueger National Park, which was a 7-8 hour drive away, and camp there. We’d go there once every year. So I definitely grew up around nature – even Hilton itself is known for its mist and natural beauty, it’s surrounded by farms and midlands and stuff.
Judging by that kind of commitment I’m guessing your parents had a lot of commitment to being in nature?
Yeah – Krueger is a big game park so we’d get to see lions, cheetahs, leopards, and all that stuff. My parents are still really into it.
Did people around you do similar things? Was that the normal experience of someone in Hilton?
If you’re talking in terms of the parks, our neighbors and us would often go there together. So I guess we surrounded ourselves with like minded people that also cared about nature. But not necessarily everyone went to those national parks, or had seen a lion, for example.
Was there an attitude towards helping and protecting the environment in Hilton?
People didn’t have a lot of respect. There was littering and pollution everywhere, and Hilton wasn’t great with its recycling. It’s kind of a farmland place, so I suppose there’s some general respect for nature, but people definitely don’t act on it.
Why do you think that is?
People do have respect, but it’s just not to the magnitude that it should be. I think part of it could be personal priorities, part of it is just selfishness. People say, “As long as I’m fine, none of this really matters.” And they turn a blind eye to, for example, kids in another neighborhood not being able to go to school because there’s so much smoke from trash fires. And those kids would live 20 minutes away, but people didn’t care.
A lot of the poorer townships had more litter and disregard for nature. Because for them, when they’re living in such poor conditions, that’s just not their priority. They don’t have a lot of reasons to care that much.
Fast forwarding to your life here at UNC, do you think that people’s attitudes towards the environment are different here?
I’d say there’s more of a respect for the environment here. There’s hardly any litter, I don’t see trash just lying around. There’s recycling bins in so many places. At least within the people I surround myself with, a lot of them like to take hikes and be in nature. But there’s definitely overall more respect, perhaps because the infrastructure is set up for it.
Do you think growing up with exposure to nature has changed how you intend to live your life in the future, or how you are living your life already?
I think nature has always given me a close, stable home. My family would go to the national parks, and we’d set up our tents and everything, and then get in a car and game-watch for hours and hours. So we’d just be sitting there in a car together. And that definitely made us closer, being around each other like that, and we have a lot of fun family memories from it.
Going forward, I know I don’t want to live in a city. I want to live around nature. Part of me also wants to take a one- or two-year detour and just go do something with animal conservation, because I definitely have a passion for it. But it’s also really opened my eyes to the different aspects of conservation – for example, a lot of people condemn hunting, but in reality, culling is necessary to keep the health of any ecosystem. And with the amount of money that foreigners bring in to shoot one animal is so substantial that a lot of conservation parks run entirely on those funds, saving rhinos and other animals. I don’t like trophy hunting, but the money it brings in undeniably helps preservation efforts.
Last question – do you have a dream place that you want to live in the future?
Well, I do miss home and I know I want to live in a natural place, somewhere close to all the parks and where they speak Afrikaans. But at the same time, South Africa’s jobs and economy aren’t in a great state, so I can’t say that for sure. Especially with my degree – I’m doing neuroscience – I feel like I’d have to be near a city. And I don’t know how to feel about that. My parents just bought a ranch in the middle of literally nowhere, and it’s absolutely beautiful – you can see all the stars. Somewhere like that would be ideal, but we’ll see where I end up.