As a foreign correspondent for the Reuters news agency, Hartley covered Africa in the 1990s - wars in Somalia, famine in Ethiopia and genocide in Rwanda.
He is the author of The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War, which was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
In 2013 he retired from mainstream journalism to focus on private business affairs and book writing.
The conservation property is home to African wildlife species such as lion and elephant and these co-exist peacefully alongside the farm's herd of Boran beef cattle.
In 2021 he co-founded Lantern Comitas, a strategic communications advisory with corporate clients across Africa, Europe and the Americas.