Tracker Manual: A practical guide to animal tracking in southern Africa, by Alex van den Heever, Karel Benadie and Renias Mhlongo

Tracker Manual: A practical guide to animal tracking in southern Africa, by Alex van den Heever, Karel Benadie and Renias Mhlongo. Penguin Random House South Africa. Imprint: Struik Nature. Cape Town, South Africa 2017. ISBN 9781775843351 / ISBN 978-1-77-584335-1

Tracker Manual: A practical guide to animal tracking in southern Africa, by Alex van den Heever, Karel Benadie and Renias Mhlongo, has been developed with the help of some of southern Africa's few remaining traditional trackers, drawing on centuries-old wisdom acquired in the field.

Preface by Alex van den Heever

The Tracker Academy is a training division of the SA College for Tourism, which operates under the auspices of the Peace Parks Foundation. We train unemployed people in traditional animal-tracking skills for employment in the conservation industry. Most of our students come from rural villages near wildlife areas in southern Africa. Through donor funding we offer training bursaries to 16 candidates per annum, to study our formally accredited Tracker Skills programme. Tracker Academy's overarching vision is to restore indigenous knowledge in Africa. Our aim is to contribute to the current knowledge of tracking by unearthing new discoveries. Many of the 'tracks and signs' descriptions contained in this field guide are verbal records from Karel Benadie and Renias Mhlongo, the Academy's two principle trainers. Further contributions from these and other expert trackers are anticipated, as we aim to create a living repository of indigenous knowledge. Tracker Academy is the first specialist tracker school in South Africa to have its training programme formally accredited by CATHSSETA (Culture, Arts, Tourism, Hospitality, Sports Sector Education Training Authority). With 1,000 hours on foot practising their tracking skills and about 120 encounters with large animals, our students develop a high degree of tracking competency during the year. This sets the Academy apart from many other short 'bush skills' courses. Since inception of the Academy in 2010, some 90% of our tracker graduates have been successfully deployed in permanent jobs across the eco-tourism, wildlife protection and research sectors of the conservation industry. Very few skilled trackers remain in Africa, and the few who do possess these traditional skills are disappearing fast. It would be an indictment of modern conservation to lose this important indigenous knowledge.

AN ANCIENT SKILL

Traditional tracking skills evolved in Africa thousands of years ago for reasons of survival. However, with rapid urbanisation, people no longer required the services of traditional hunter-gatherers so that, over the past 60 years, tracking skills have disappeared at an alarming rate. That said, there are still a few exceptionally talented trackers among us, working at private game reserves and national parks, tracking animals daily for the benefit of guests, or to monitor game or conduct anti-poaching patrols. This is relatively intensive tracking - the original hunter-gatherers would not have tracked lions, for instance, with anything like the same frequency and determination - and has resulted in the emergence of some uniquely skilful practitioners. Tracking requires one to be physically fit and able, to have good eyes, an imagination, a good memory and the ability to think rationally. The best trackers in the world have something extra - the ability to assimilate, in an instant, all the evidence around them and to combine this with their intimate knowledge of local wildlife. Interestingly, many expert trackers are also excellent mimics of both animal and human behaviour, which gives weight to the idea that they are particularly keen observers of behavioural traits. The most talented trackers are always inquisitive, constantly learning, and steadily honing their skills over many years. Tracking an antelope, for instance, for hours in the heat of the day is tremendously difficult. The tracker must seek to understand the nature of the animal being pursued: What does it eat? [...]

This is an excerpt from Tracker Manual: A practical guide to animal tracking in southern Africa, by Alex van den Heever, Karel Benadie and Renias Mhlongo.

Title: Tracker Manual
Subtitle: A practical guide to animal tracking in southern Africa
Author: Alex van den Heever; Karel Benadie; Renias Mhlongo
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Struik Nature
Cape Town, South Africa 2017
ISBN 9781775843351 / ISBN 978-1-77-584335-1
Softcover, 15 x 21 cm, 312 pages, throughout colour photos and images