For the love of Wildlife, by Chris Mercer and Beverley Pervan

For the love of Wildlife, by Chris Mercer and Beverley Pervan. Kalahari Raptor Centre, Kathu, South Africa 2003. ISBN 0620260149 / ISBN 0-620-26014-9 / ISBN 9780620260145 / ISBN 978-0-620-26014-5

'For the love of Wildlife' is an eloquent protest against the ongoing loss of wild habitat and destruction of wildlife in Southern Africa as well as an introduction to HARNAS in Namibia, written by Chris Mercer and Beverley Pervan.

Tierschutzreservat in Karoo  Chris Mercer  

Halfway between Harnas and Gobabis, which is a distance of about one hun-dred kilometres, lies a collection of huts around a telephone relay facility called Drimiopsis. A trash-littered rural store, which announced itself engagingly as the 'Katchirua Bread Shopping Centre', had served to attract the attention of sundry itinerant job-seekers, and a number of shanties had grown up around it. A school of sorts had also been established. It was the Principal of this school who received, on the Wednesday morning, a telephone call from a local farmer, one Schoombee, who related to him breathlessly how he had taken two steps out of his home that morning when his eyes had started out of their sockets at the sight of massive paw prints just outside his bedroom window. His wife was so nervous that she had barricaded herself in the house. The Principal was a radio listener and so he was aware of the search and he passed on the information to Marieta at Harnas. She radioed Nic and the team who at that time were patiently tracking the previous night's spoor a good twenty kilometres from Drimiopsis. This message was a lucky break for them because it enabled them to proceed straight to Schoombee's farm thereby saving valuable time. For time was of the essence. The radio broadcasts had also alerted the local hunting fraternity to the presence of the lion and they would also be out looking for him. Nic now decided to employ different tactics. Once one vehicle on the spoor had determined its main direction - and that direction was now to the south, towards Gobabis - the other vehicles went forward several kilometres in that direction and cast about looking to pick up the tracks. Around midday they lost the spoor and spent several fruitless hours walking and driving around before they found it again. When they did, Rudy Britz accompanied by two Bushman trackers took turns to work on it. In the late afternoon, the prints became so fresh in the rain-dampened soil that the Bushmen refused to work alone and the two of them involved in the tracking started to chatter with unnatural loudness. They had every intention of giving the lion early warning of their approach, so that they would not come upon it suddenly and surprise it. The deliberate noise being made by the two trackers frightened away most of the game animals which would nor-mally have been seen. Even in this commercial farming land, the farmers allowed small herds of kudu or eland to survive so that they could cull them for rations for their labourers, and biltong for themselves, from time to time. There were always, though, the smaller animals, the meerkats and the ground squirrels, to watch them anxiously as they passed by. Now and then, a grey hornbill would fly over with its manta-like wing-beats, emitting its piercing two-tone call. The Bushmen were now plainly terrified and began to 'lose' the spoor with such frequency that Rudy who was a skilled tracker himself, lost his patience with them and sent them back to the vehicle while he continued on his own, picking his way carefully around the formidable clumps of sickle-bush. Presently he came upon yet another fence, and although the prints were now so fresh that he could even see crushed grass stems starting to stand up again in them, he decided that without capture equipment, there was no point in getting any closer. (...)

This is an excerpt from the book: For the love of Wildlife, by Chris Mercer and Beverley Pervan.

Title: For the love of Wildlife
Authors: Chris Mercer; Beverley Pervan
Publisher: Kalahari Raptor Centre
Kathu, South Africa 2003
ISBN 0620260149 / ISBN 0-620-26014-9
ISBN 9780620260145 / ISBN 978-0-620-26014-5
Leather binding, dustcover, 19 x 26 cm, 252 pages, many colour photos, 2 maps