South African Wildlife: Who Really Cares? South Africa? Me and You?

South Africa is only 1% of the world's land mass, which is quite insignificant. However, it is home to 10% of the world's mammals, birds and reptiles, now that puts South Africa on the "take notice" list.



My most favorite raptor, the Bateleur

How much does South Africa care about it's wildlife. In talking to locals like Avril who owns and operates Wylde Ride (a cycling tour company) and Sleepy Hollow Backpackers (a hostel) in Pietermaritzburg, KZN in years past wildlife was the main South African tourist attraction. From an economic point of view wildlife was on top of the list as people thronged to the game parks. Today, with the population explosion and never ending poverty the wildlife has slipped way down in priority. Which puts it at risk not only because of less funding, but more critically less protection. Protection not just of the various species themselves but their ever shrinking habitat.

However, take a look at most any advertisement from South Africa. Be it for a car or a vacation you can almost count on seeing one of the Big Five included. Pick up a South African coin or rand note and you'll see one of wildlife's beauties.

Leon, a banker and avid bird watcher, thought that with as little homage that is paid the wildlife (especially the rhino right now) maybe the powers that be need should replace these icons that better reflect current reality, "the one with the most stuff wins".

It's so easy not to care! After all the lions don't organize a strike that impacts the car we drive. Nor do the elephants launch a huge campaign that makes a difference to our pocket book. The rapidly disappearing vultures don't have the slights effect on our garbage pick up. So why care?

It took me many years to start listening to what is happening to the wildlife in South Africa and I was born in South Africa! So I can't point any fingers.

What made me care?

Nature, the marvels of it have always been the greatest source of fascination for me. As I write this sitting on the patio of our cabin in Kwalala Nature Reserve, KZN a large woodpecker size bird I'm unfamiliar with flies into the tree above me, while a small Duiker (buck) with a hoof missing (probably caught in a poacher's snare) forages below, and vervet monkeys call to each other in the jungle like forest to the left.

Sunrise found us on the beach watching sea snails, shore birds and crabs along the magnificent South African coastline. All this in contrast to our drive here yesterday through miles of hills and vales that were totally void of any natural habitiat. Sugar cane and tree farms stretched for miles interuppted by about 30 miles of rural housing dotting the hills and valleys for as far as the eye could see. Trees and vegetation was almost gone leaving little but parched earth and rough brick homes. Livestock was sparse seemingly limited to a few skinny cows and herds of scrappy goats.

Why do I care? Because so much has changed since I was a girl here more than 40 years ago. The natural habitat is shrinking much too fast and with it the wildlife. More than half of the large mammals have disappeared from the African game parks since 1970! Disappeared from the very refuges that are meant to protect them!

2002 thru 2007 found Russ and I in the Philippians. On our flight over there I read a National Geographic article that only 5% of the rain forest in the Philippines remained and that by 2010 it would be gone. The Philippines could be an absolute tropical paradise for both wildlife and humans, but it has been devasted and exploited (or eaten, every thing that moves is either eaten or strung upside down and sold on the road side.)

A friend, Brother Reyes, told us how when he was a boy 40 years earlier their were eagles in the sky and monkeys and buck in the forests. The only Filipino eagles remaining (about 120 in 2004) were in two poorly financed sanctuaries south of Manila and in Mindanau. What a magnificent creature! What a loss not to see it soaring in the skies above the Philippine Islands any longer.

That five year experience seeing the lack of understanding for the part wildlife and it's habitat plays in our lives was a fast-forward of South Africa if we don't care now.

What makes you care? Wildlife's hope for a future is you and me.

My other most favorite bird of prey, the Secretary Bird

Keep 'Em Wild or...

After an inspiring visitors' tour of the Moholoholo rehab center Brian took us behind the scenes. A couple of days earlier they'd been called out to a mass snaring. Must have been awful! An entire lion pride (six), a wildebeest, two hyenas and a vulture had been brutally caught. Only one lioness with huge neck wounds and broken teeth hung to life the rest had died a slow painful death.

We were now heading to the injured lioness' secure rehab unit. Along the way Brian gently pulled back a tarp ever so slightly to let us peek in on a jittery Brown Hyena almost fully recovered and soon to be released. He beackoned us to follow him inside this small dimmly lit corridor. He spoke softly as we approached the second cage. I was stealing myself to see this poor lioness just laying there with her horrific wound.

Roooooaaaaaaar! My heart leapt into my throat as this huge animal with glowing yellow eyes loudly hurled herself towards us. She swung around and crouched in the corner facing us with those menacing eyes. It took every bit of courage I had not to retreat and dash out the door to safety. Here before me was this beautiful creature snatched from the jaws of death. Her recovery still percariously in the balance as the gapping hole in her neck can not be stitched and needs to heal from the inside out. Staving off infection being her rescuers biggest challenge.

We lingered for the longest few minutes in recent history. What a contrast! But an hour or so earlier we'd been led past the ambassedor animal cages. We'd watched two lions languish in their camp. Watched the cheetah lay in the grass and even the leopard didn't seem terribly threatening. We'd even put on a handlers glove and hand fed the vultures. But this lioness... now she was truly fresh from the wilds! Her fear of humans was intense and her defenses were on red alert.

She can never be released to the wilds again. Why I asked? For two reasons: Her fangs are gone so she can no longer fend for herself. Her pride is dead and another would never accept her.

Her options are therefor either death or life in captivity as an ambassedor. Which would you choose? Is there a right or a wrong? This is the difficult dilemna Brian and conservationists like him face every day.

He's not that heavy!  Or ugly for that matter.