The “Great Work” of Africa, the greatest achievements of the peoples of Africa, are the intact wilderness areas that still remain on this wild, primordial continent. Just 200 years ago most of this vast landmass was a never-ending wilderness protected by teeth, claws, tusks, horns and fangs. A patchwork mosaic of forests, lakes, deserts, mountains, deltas, grasslands, rivers, woodlands, swamps, valleys, shorelines and basins that had not yet been explored, mapped or tamed by the controlling hand of man. Africa is the cradle of humankind, the birthplace of our human existence, and should never be taken lightly or exploited.
Giraffe reflections by Mario Moreno. Photographed in Moremi, Okavango, Botswana. (www.mariomorenophotography.com)
Mother leopard and cub, by guide Chad Cocking. “Nthombi leopardess and her cub share a cuddle in some long grass on an island in the Nhlaralumi Riverbed.” Photographed at Motswari Game Reserve, Timbavati, South Africa.
Dr Steve Boyes and Gobonamang Kgeto on a recent research expedition across the Okavango Delta… (Paul Steyn)
As those original hunter-gatherers over 100,000 years ago we were all born of the wilderness and died in it. Today, we cannot help but feel drawn in by Africa’s vibrant, somewhat intoxicating, sometimes scary, yet strangely familiar rhythm. Just listen to the “wild heart of Africa” – the heartbeat of the universe – and Africa’s greatest treasure, and you will learn your place on this blue planet. The African wilderness, most especially the Okavango Delta, introduced me to the way the natural world is meant to be and gave me something to dedicate my life to. These experiences moulded my belief system, focussed my ambitions, and taught me to always live in wonder of the wild.
Giraffe herd, by guide Andy Biggs. Photographed in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. (andybiggs.com)
Bloodied wild dog. Photographed by Edward Peach guide of Ivory Tree Game Lodge, South Africa. “One of the Pilanesberg’s wild dogs waiting for a response from the rest of the pack after calling them to share the impala that two of them caught.” (Edward Peach)
Hunting lioness , photographed by Ken Dyball in Etosha National Park, Namibia. (purenaturesafaris.com)
This National Geographic Live presentation shares some of my experiences working with the local baYei people in the Okavango Delta and showcases our work to save Africa’s most endangered parrot by restoring the forests they depend upon with local villages. I did my PhD on Meyer’s parrot in the Okavango Delta, spending 11 months of the year in the bush. These years nurtured an obsession that drives me today. I am obsessed with protecting and, maybe naively, restoring wilderness. Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) put forward that: “Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow… Creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible.” We have destroyed so much that we need to believe that we can fix what we have already done. Our work in the Okavango Delta is a celebration of life, diversity and “wildness”.
Steve poling past a large pod of hippos near Mombo Camp in the heart of the Okavango Delta. Just look at this place! (Paul Steyn)
“Swimming the gauntlet”, by guide Matthew Copham. Lions do not like crossing the water, where they relinquish their position as the alpha predator. The look in their eyes says it all. Photographed at Wilderness Safaris Duba Plains, in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. (Matthew Copham / safarifootprints.com)
“Rhino greeting”, by guide Matthew Copham. (Matthew Copham / safarifootprints.com)
Henry David Thoreau’s (1817-1862) had the insight: “In wildness is the preservation of the world”. The wilderness is the birthplace of religion and all science. It is where Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, and Buddha, went to find spiritual enlightenment and learn the secrets that would save humanity. Some of these secrets were lost in translation and we made up our own. Nature is the only place where ego and worldly worries cannot join you. Notice that a person that arrived for a wilderness experience clean and neat, more often than not emerges unwashed and rough at the edges, unaware of their appearance and happier than ever. Outward Bound and the Wilderness Leadership School curate wilderness experiences that connect people with the wilderness and each other. Friendships are made for life in the wilderness. Our expeditions across the Okavango Delta each year are, in effect, pilgrimages that deliver participants to a place physically and mentally that manifests profound personal experiences, leaving them with a new set of priorities, a new way of interacting with the natural world, and a renewed confidence in their abilities.
Steve and Chris Boyes in the deep Okavango wilderness… To be in wilderness areas like this is to travel through time back to a place untouched by man, a place that is connected to eternity… (Giles Trevethick)
Elephant tussle, by Craig Young, photographed in the Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Elephant and water droplets by guide Matthew Copham (safarifootprints.com)
Competition, by guide Lee Whittam of Essential Africa Guided Safaris, photographed at Wilderness Safaris Mombo Camp, Botswana. “These youngsters were part of a large pride of 27 lions that had just brought down a wildebeest. Typical of any kill scene with lions there was a lot of competition between them which made for some interesting shots.” (Lee Whittam)
We are planting South Africa’s national trees, the yellowwoods, to save our national parrot, the Cape Parrot (See: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130615-cape-parrot-endangered-south-africa-science). People and politicians cannot plan decades into the future. Grants and conservation projects have a 2-5 year life expectancy, after which the researcher or conservationist is congratulated on a job well done. Have you ever watched an indigenous tree grow? Things happen very slowly in nature because there is no room for mistakes. We are planting slow-growing trees to restore and establish forest patches that can support Cape parrots and other forest endemics like the Samango monkey, Amatola toad, and Hogsback frog. This has to be a multi-generational effort that installs local communities as the stewards and custodians of the iziKhwenene Project (“iziKhwenene” means “Cape parrots” in isiXhosa“). We work very hard with government to establish new forest reserves and set up effective management systems for these protected areas.
Cape parrots number less than 1,000 in the willd and require urgent conservation actions. We need to restore degraded forest habitat and provide temporary solutions to existing problems like nest boxes to to supplement the availability of suitable nest cavities. (Rodnick Clifton Biljon)
Steve Boyes taking a blood sample from a Cape parrot in 2010. This research demonstrated that we were in the grips of a beak and feather disease epidemic that could threaten the local population. (Anja Joubert)
Cape parrot with advanced symptoms of Pssitacine Beak and Feather Disease (PBFD) infection. We tried to catch this poor guy, but failed. Nighttime temperatures went below freezing a few nights after this photograph was taken. There was not much chance of survival. We never found a carcass and never saw this youngster again… (Steve Boyes)
An adult female Cape parrot that was rescued after being found unable to fly in a swimming pool. She spent 3 months in a warm box on anti-biotics and supplements, and another 3 months in rehabilitation before being released back into the wild. She was to become known as “Alice”. (Steve Boyes)
We need to believe that we can rescue the natural world from the damage we have already inflicted. The Cape Parrot Project is our way of doing that. We believe that our work over the the next 25 years and beyond will restore forest ecology and protect important refuges for endemic species that have nowhere else to go. The Cape Parrot project is a story of people and parrots over many generations. We need to invest far more in developing the science of restoration ecology to better enable ourselves to rehabilitate defunct and ruined ecosystems. Society needs to celebrate the true wildernesses we have left and work hard to restore as many of our wild landscapes as is possible. We need to bring the “wild” into our cities, gardens and homes, learning to live for and with nature. We must stop sterilizing, poisoning, sweeping, killing and enclosing everything around us. If the majority of people on earth cannot live with wildlife and human-wildlife conflict continues at current levels, we have no future on this planet. The First Nation peoples of North America understood the human experience in the wilderness and lived in perfect harmony with nature. In 1854, Chief Seattle made this profound statement:
Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
Cape parrots are endemic to South Africa and with little food left in their natural habitat they are struggling to bring back population levels since a collapse in the 1980s. (Rodnick Clifton Biljon / Cape Parrot Project)
Nic Armstrong (Project Horticulturalist – in red in front row), David Nkosi (Percy FitzPatrick Institute – far left), and the Hala/Gilton Village planting teams at the site of our first Cape Parrot Orchard made up of 1,000 wild plums and wild olives. (Steve Boyes)
Steve Boyes with one of the first batches of 2,000 yellowwood saplings ready for planting into indigenous forests that need them… (Chris Boyes)
The first of over 800 indigenous trees planted on the University of Fort Hare campus as part of the “Green Campus Initiative”. These wild olives and wild plums will bear fruit within the next 7-10 years and make the campus an important feeding site for local Cape parrots. (Nic Armstrong)
Hala Village in the valleys below Hogsback Mountain where Cape parrots used to feed on yellowwood fruits, Celtis fruits, wild olives, and wild plums before they were chopped out by greedy colonists or burnt under communal land ownership. We have now planted thousands of indigenous fruit trees in “Cape Parrot Community Orchards” in several villages, fencing them off to protect them from livestock and paying local communities to care for them as the custodians of these forest plots. We have also launched a micro-nursery program that builds small tree nurseries for ten households in the village, which are stocked with yellowwood seedlings that must be grown up to planting size. These partnerships are all going from strength to strength. (Steve Boyes / Cape Parrot Project)
The Sompondo Village growers for the iziKhwenene Project. Each of these community members represents a household with a micro-nursery with 100 yellowwood saplings. As you can see they are excited to be forest custodians. (Nic Armstrong)
The “Big Tree” in Aukland Forest Reserve near Hogsback is one of five “forest giants” remaining on Earth. Hundreds of such trees used to be scattered across these mountains. (Steve Boyes)
Technology will help us be more efficient and accommodate a few more billion people, but a deep acceptance by all that the environment and nature are the priority is the only sustainable way forward. We need a “World Environmental Organisation” that gets more funding and power from the United Nations than the World Health Organisation (WHO) and World Food Programme (WFP). The current United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) depends on voluntary support from member nations and gets only 4% of total budget from the United Nations itself. The WHO receives a total annual budget in excess of $4 billion, ten times more than UNEP. We need a massive paradigm shift to happen and it seems on a global cataclysm will bring this about…
Giraffe under Acacia tree, by Andy Biggs. Photographed in the Serengeti National Park (andybiggs.com)
African elephants moving across a dry and dusty floodplain in the Mombo area. Breeding herds are very protective of their new borns, preferring to stay on smaller islands where there are less lions and hyenas. (Steve Boyes)
Notch and sons, photographed by Ken Dyball. “We had the choice of going to a cheetah mother and four little cubs or sitting with five very lazy, sleeping male lions. We picked the lions…. and it looked like they would sleep until dark. A strong wind came up so they all got to their feet. One of the sons was a bit aggresive towards Notch (the father on the right). The other three sons were by Notch’s side wanting to join in at anytime! This was a time of testing each other out: a few of them had some recent and deep puncture wounds. Photographed in the Masai Mara, Kenya. (purenaturesafaris.com)
The concept of a spherical Earth dates back to ancient Greek philosophy in the 6th century BC over 2,500 years ago, but remained a matter of philosophical speculation until the 3rd century BC when Aristotle and Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the earth as a physical given. It was, however, not until 1543 when Nicolaus Copernicus published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and later in 1610 when Galileo Galilei published Sidereus Nuncius in support of Copernican astronomy and the heliocentric theory, that the idea became mainstream. Galileo was found guilty by the Roman Catholic Church of being “gravely suspect of heresy” and sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. It had taken 1,000 years to accept what we now consider a basic truth. Global warming, widespread environmental pollution, frequent natural disasters, water shortages, global unrest and famine are all signs of the impending collapse. We must heed these warnings and act now as we do not have the luxury of time in the 21st century. Our only hope today is to invest in better, cleaner technologies and find a way of supporting economic growth, development and prosperity without harming the environment and slowly chipping away at our last-remaining wild landscapes.
Lindanda sunrise by Mario Moreno. “We drove past this tree as the sun was slowly rising and stopped to make the best out of a beautiful sunrise not knowing that this elephant that was on the wrong side of the road would walk into the frame at the right time becoming the star of the moment.” Photographed in the Kruger Park, South Africa. (southcapeimages.com/ mariomorenophotography.com)
“Dancing baboons” by guide Calvin Kotze. Two baboons playing at sunset in the Kruger Park, South Africa. (Calvin Kotze / sabisabi.com)
Aardvark testing the air, by guide Etienne Oosthuizen. “The aardvark stopped from his feeding to investigate our scent as the wind turned. This winter in the Karoo has yielded the most amazing daytime aardvark sightings.” Photographed at Samara, Karoo, South Africa. (samara.com / photographicafrica.com)
The wild heart of Africa is weakening…
After centuries of exploitation Africa now faces a tipping point after which we will see the continent change forever. The coastlines of Africa have carried names like the “Slave Coast”, “Ivory Coast” and “Gold Coast” – each named for the resource being pillaged by a foreign power. African leaders are desperate to develop their economies and move away from the model of debilitating humanitarian aid in exchange for trade agreements and resource extraction rights. Like China Africa is prepared to do anything to develop as rapidly as possible. China is Africa’s top trade partner with Sino-African trade volumes now nearing $200 billion per year, and direct investment now exceeding $50 billion, The “Forum on China Africa Cooperation” is a buzz of activity as China establishes a foothold on the continent. If we are to save what we have left… If we are to save the “wild heart of Africa” and some of the planet’s most important wildernesses, China needs to support better quality of life for the desperate and uneducated in Africa, thus building on lessons learnt during their own rapid rise to superpower status. African politicians and the development partners they choose must work within a framework acknowledging that future generations care more about the environment than they do about jobs and economic development. For them the old Cree Prophecy will be a reality:
When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
We are just about to pull the trigger on the last true wilderness areas in Africa. Wild landscapes with people and wildlife that self-regulate, migrate and live in natural balance and abundance are under threat of disappearing. Communities with verbal histories that span centuries and belief systems built around their interactions with the natural world are vanishing with their languages every year. These 21st century wilderness areas are those last places that, for whatever reason, have remained unchanged by modern man and connected to an eternity of slow, plodding change towards this balance. As soon as we plough the last grassland, burn the last wild woodland, and cut down the last primary forest on the continent, the wild, beating heart of Africa will be dead. Those wild coastlines and inaccessible interiors filled with rich, green “bush”, drum beats, rattles, cries, laughter, thunder and the surreal, unexpected silences that echo in your soul will be gone forever…
Go to: http://intotheokavango.org/ and follow our actual footsteps as we travel 220km across the Okavango Delta…
Also to: http://www.okavangofilm.com/ and find out how to help us stimulate positive change for the Okavango Delta…
A selection of National Geographic NewsWatch blogs on the Okavango Delta:
Crossing the Okavango Delta for World Heritage Status: Celebrating Botswana’s Wetland Wilderness: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/22/crossing-the-okavango-delta-for-world-heritage-status-celebrating-botswanas-wetland-wilderness/
Walking with a Spear: Experiences Living alone In the Vundumtiki Wilderness… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/01/18/walking-with-a-spear-experiences-living-alone-in-the-vundumtiki-wilderness/
Latest “Top 25 Photographs from the Wilderness”: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/18/top-25-photographs-from-the-wilderness-17/
2010 Okavango Wetland Bird Survey: A Wilderness Worth Saving… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/04/2010-okavango-wetland-bird-survey-wilderness-worth-saving/
A Tale of Water Lilies, Hippos and Explorers… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/15/a-tale-of-water-lilies-hippos-and-explorers/
Best Photographs from the 2013 Okavango Expedition… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/08/best-photographs-2013-okavango-expedition/)
No More Hunting of Any Kind in Botswana! http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/15/no-more-hunting-of-any-kind-in-botswana/
Working For Water: The Bangweulu Wetlands are Africa’s Shoebill… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/07/working-for-water-the-bangweulu-wetlands-and-africas-shoebill/
No More Trophy Hunting in Botswana and Zambia… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/22/no-trophy-hunting-in-botswana-and-zambia/
Do We Support the Sale of Stockpiles of Confiscated Rhino Horn to Save Rhinos? http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/13/do-we-support-the-sale-of-stockpiles-of-confiscated-rhino-horn-to-save-rhinos/
What is “Wilderness” Why Protect it? Mission For the Future… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/28/what-is-wilderness-why-protect-it-a-mission-for-the-future/
Bush Boyes on Expedition: Community and Leaving Vundumtiki… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/08/bush-boyes-on-expedition-community-and-leaving-vundumtiki/
A selection of National Geographic NewsWatch blogs on the Cape Parrot Project:
Upholi” want a Forest: Rescuing Africa’s Most Endangered Parrot: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/16/upholi-want-a-forest-rescuing-africas-most-endangered-parrot-from-extinction/
South Africa’s Cape Parrot: A Story of People and Parrots Over Many Generations… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/13/south-africas-cape-parrot-a-story-of-people-and-parrots-over-many-generations/
iziKhwenene Project : Establishing Local Communities as Forest Custodians to Save the Cape Parrot… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/04/the-izikhwenene-project-establishing-local-communities-as-forest-custodians-to-save-the-cape-parrot/
A Doomsday Virus for Endangered Parrots? http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/18/a-doomsday-virus-for-endangered-parrots/
Please watch this video on the Cape Parrot Project by National Geographic Missions Media: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/specials/in-the-field-specials/boyes-cape-parrot/
Please read this great article by National Geographic on the Cape Parrot Project: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130615-cape-parrot-endangered-south-africa-science
Please join the Cape Parrot Project group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/capeparrotproject/
South African Broadcasting Company: Efforts Underway to Save the Cape Parrot… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/04/efforts-underway-to-save-the-cape-parrot-news-broadcast-for-sa-television/
First ever footage of Africa’s most endangered parrot feeding in the high canopy: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/02/day-2-first-ever-footage-of-africas-most-endangered-parrot-feeding-in-high-canopy/
Please read this informative article about our community-based conservation projects within the Cape Parrot Project: http://www.cepf.net/news/top_stories/Pages/Scripting-an-Avian-Survival-Story.aspx
State of South Africa’s National Forests: An Open Letter to the President… http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/03/state-of-sa-national-forests-open-letter-to-the-president/
To donate to our work at the Wild Bird Trust go to: http://www.wildbirdtrust.com/donations/