The escalation of illegal poaching and wildlife trafficking over the last decade has placed the conservation industry in crises. Conservation managers find themselves with a new professional landscape to navigate where daily challenges lie far outside their existing skill set. As a result, there is a need to understand the disparity between what conservation managers have been prepared for and what they now face in order to inform training and capacity building interventions. Using the South African conservation industry as a case study, the research will address this Praxis Gap by gaining a deeper understanding of the nexus within the academic literature; investigating the key performance outputs and competence shortfalls experienced by protected area managers and developing a new framework or model that may identify the most important competencies required by contemporary protected area managers in the South African conservation industry.