What Brooke and Corby Robertson are Building In Zambia's Luangwa Valley

Brooke and Corby Robertson are a Texas-based family with a long history of community and conservation work, a commitment to giving back to cherished communities that has been passed down for several generations. Since 2023, they have embarked on one of the most active private conservation and community efforts in the Luangwa Valley, funding work they believe in, building relationships with the organizations doing it best, and investing in the communities whose futures are inseparable from the wildlife that surrounds them.

Chibembe Wildlife Reserve

In 2023, Brooke and Corby Robertson acquired Chibembe Wildlife Reserve, an 800-acre titled property on the Luangwa River across from South Luangwa National Park, Zambia. The reserve carries deep historical significance. Its documented history as a safari camp dates to 1932, and it is closely associated with Norman Carr, the British conservationist whose pioneering work in the 1950s established the walking safari. Government records from 1955 and 1961 document safari operations and the pioneering of Wilderness Trails tourism directly from the Chibembe reserve. Phil Berry, Robin Pope, and John Coppinger, three of the most celebrated guides in Luangwa Valley history, all guided from this ground. In 2025, after two years of demonstrated commitment to the Mwanya community, Chieftainess Mwanya and the CRB granted Brooke and Corby a 2,500-acre lease on an incredible wildlife area that connects directly to Chibembe. The reserve is being restored as a walking safari heritage site with a focus on ecological protection, community partnership, and conservation impact.

ON THE FRONTLINES OF CONSERVATION

Brooke and Corby Robertson fund anti-poaching patrols inside Chibembe Wildlife Reserve and have built a game scout house in the Mwanya community, supporting the scouts whose daily presence protects wildlife across the broader Mwanya chiefdom.

Conservation South Luangwa (CSL) has installed a radio communications tower on the Chibembe property that is connected to Chibembe's solar power, extending CSL’s operational reach across a stretch of the Luangwa River that is critical to their anti-poaching and wildlife monitoring network.

Brooke and Corby work with other leading conservation organizations operating across the valley that support wildlife monitoring and field research. Two such organizations contribute to the long-term protection of South Luangwa’s predator and giraffe populations. They also work alongside the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) as part of the broader collaborative conservation framework operating in the valley.

In 2025, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation conducted a collaring program on the Chibembe property, darting and fitting GPS collars on Thornicroft’s giraffe — the subspecies endemic to the Luangwa Valley. The data from those collars contributes directly to the scientific understanding and long-term protection of this population.

EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES IN MWANYA CHIEFDOM

Brooke and Corby Robertson’s community work in the Mwanya Chiefdom is carried out in close partnership with Chieftainess Mwanya and the community leadership.

Brooke is a consistent presence in the Mwanya community. She organizes and delivers food programs, runs puppet shows for children, and sources educational materials for the local schools. When a teacher house was completed, funded by the Robertsons to attract and retain qualified teachers  in a remote area that would otherwise struggle to keep them — Brooke was there for the ribbon cutting alongside community leaders. These are not headline events. They are the steady, unglamorous work of showing up.

One of the most practical investments the Robertsons have made in the valley is a road grader they purchased and operate themselves. Every year during the rainy season, the road deteriorates to the point where many vehicles cannot pass, effectively cutting the community off from markets and commerce. And, in a medical emergency, this can be the difference between reaching help in time and not reaching it at all. So, they send the grader on this long route every May to open up and maintain the main road from Mfuwe to Mwanya. The same grader also maintains several roads inside South Luangwa National Park for tourism and elsewhere across the valley. It is the kind of infrastructure investment that does not make headlines but changes lives, and keeps changing them, year after year.

They also own a bore hole drilling machine they shipped over from the U.S. that operates across the Luangwa Valley, drilling both community water bore holes that provide clean drinking water to villages and wildlife bore holes, creating permanent water sources that support animal populations during the dry season. The machine works across multiple chiefdoms and communities throughout the valley, not just in the Mwanya area.

The Robertsons' support also includes direct and casual employment in the the Mwanya area, through the operations at Chibembe, through the bore hole work, and through the community programs they fund. In a remote area where formal employment is scarce, that economic presence matters as much as any donation. Their community work reflects the same principle that has guided conservation in the Luangwa Valley since Norman Carr first articulated it in the 1950s: that wildlife and the communities who live alongside it are inseparable. One cannot thrive without investing in the other.

THE ZAMBIA WILDLIFE AND COMMUNITY FOUNDATION

Brooke and Corby Robertson established the Zambia Wildlife and Community Foundation (ZWCF @ zwcf.org) as the formal vehicle for those who want to add their support to the long-term conservation and community work across Zambia that Brooke and Corby are already doing on their own.

This 501(c)(3) foundation operates within Zambia’s land use conservation framework, supporting programs along side its partners' work across the Game Management Areas that border Zambia’s national parks. Its founding principle is simple: by creating stronger communities, there will be more wildlife. This approach across many African countries has a proven history where the most durable conservation outcomes are those built in partnership with the people who live alongside the wildlife being protected.

A COMMITMENT THAT IS ALREADY UNDERWAY

Brooke and Corby Robertson’s work in the Luangwa Valley is not a program or a project. It is a sustained personal commitment, funded from their own resources to a specific place and its people that won their hearts decades ago. The Zambia Wildlife and Community Foundation exists for others who want to contribute to that work, but the work continues regardless.

Their conservation and community commitment at Chibembe and across the Mwanya Chiefdom is part of a broader set of investments and commitments Brooke and Corby have made in the Luangwa Valley, investments that together reflect a long-term belief in the valley’s wildlife, its people, and its future. "Stronger communities means more wildlife," states Corby emphatically - and that ultimately is their long term goal.

The Luangwa Valley has produced some of Africa’s most committed conservationists, people who came for the wildlife and stayed for everything else. Brooke and Corby Robertson are among them. They have joined the many other stewards of a valley and its people that they love.

Zambia Wildlife and Community Foundation: zwcf.org

Chibembe Wildlife Reserve: South Luangwa, Zambia