Innholdsfortegnelse for Back to your wild future i BACK TO YOUR WILD FUTURE

THE AIR FALLS silent. The sky is dusted with clouds of smoke. It is 20 August, the end of the fireworks ceremony celebrating Hungary’s national day. Spotlights of colour dance across the clouds etching the Citadel, a 19th-century fortification on top of Gellért Hill, part of the UNESCO World Heritage site in Budapest. Colour patterns and textures are forever changing. It is spectacular, viewed from the pavilion of stairs at Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, the National Museum for the history, art and archaeology of Hungary. The patterns of pastel colours create diverse images. It was fitting, I thought. The afternoon was spent listening to scientists from all over the world talking about landscape heterogeneity making biological diversity! Yeah, right, you think – they’ve inhaled some of that smoke from the fireworks.…

HUNDREDS OF TOWERING, rock-hard granite hills rise above the mystic fog that covers the radiant miombo woodland blooms of northern Mozambique. They keep watch over the comings and goings of people in the valleys below, valleys that are laced with rain-filled rivers and streams. These people are rural and have exquisite facial features. They have aristocratic cheekbones, healthy, smooth skins and eye colours of all shades. The presence of history fills the atmosphere. One can sense the aura of past kings, chiefs, African princesses, slave masters, explorers, hunters and adventurers in the genes of their descendants. I sit back, intimidated by the granite guards. My local colleague and I have just finished talking to an old lady, grey with age, but with experience showing in her eyes as the sun…

JC BRASSERIE & Pub buzzes vibrantly at the foothills of Table Mountain, close to District Six. It is pub-quiz night. Every Wednesday is pub-quiz night. Cape Peninsula University of Technology students from across the street pit their knowledge against one another – or perhaps against that of the quizmaster, dressed in black jeans, a T-shirt (also black), and a smart dark blazer. A coupe hat adorns his bush of curly hair. “Which snake is the fastest in the world?” he thunders question 17 over the speakers that still play ‘We’re not gonna take it’. Quizzes may be largely like Trivial Pursuit on steroids – and booze – but they remind me that people embrace knowledge if they can understand it. This book began when Erika Alberts, publishing editor of Wildlife…

THE NIPPY BREEZE freshens my warm skin, cooling and soothing it in the November heat. In the distance, the moonlit, ghostly peaks of the Cederberg and Roggeberg flank the Tankwa plains – dry and dusty, as I discovered during the past few days. There is no humidity here. Just crisp dryness and, as far as the eye can see, not a single human source of light from my perch on top of the tower of a castle-style farmhouse – some years ago, a Tankwa farmer was creative with the abundant slate of the region. The sky is alive. I want to reach up to pluck out of the air one of the thousands of stars, like fireflies, that feels so close. I want to feel the wonder of a night…

HEATWAVES SHIMMER ON the tarred acres at the Harry Mwanga Nkumbula International Airport. In the distance, a cloud of white mist rises from the earth – it is raining upwards! A Cessna 206 six-seater aircraft is parked on the other side of the tarred plain. I hear a constant rumble from the direction of the rising cloud. Mosi-oa-Tunya is speaking, the Smoke that Thunders – later called Victoria Falls by David Livingstone when he listened for the first time to the thundering smoke in 1855 – is thundering. We walk briskly through the heat radiating from the tar. In the distance, a squadron of military aircraft is lined up. A ground controller directs us along the marked walkway to where our Cesna 206 is parked. I point to the military…

IT’S HOT; DECEMBER is always hot in Bilene. I sip the necessary Mozambican rum and raspberry; R&R was the order to Cornelio. The sun blazes over a large blue lake streaked by the wakes of jet skis, the buzz matching the clamour of local shops and bars perched on the edge of the water. A carpenter’s rhythmic knocking nearly matches the musical beat blasting from Cornelio’s bar. Disturbances are everywhere – noises, but also new areas being cleared of bush for fresh beginnings: new shops, houses and bars. These disturbances may change lives. It is ironic that disturbances have always changed people’s lives, and often in ways not always expected. Development, like mining, commercial farming and big shopping malls always has a great impact on a location: bush with animals…

THE STEAM FROM my cup of coffee fogs up the window. But a brief wipe with a jersey sleeve makes a hole to see through. A vague view of a male lion fills the frame in the fogged-up window. Cold is forgotten and I wind down my driver’s window. It hits me with explosive surprise: first the fumes of a running vehicle; then the shock of being surrounded by other cars. There is the noise of cars running, idling and waiting in line for the view of a big cat. My coffee’s aroma is now infused with exhaust fumes. I sit back. It will be a while before this lion-jam is done. How many hours does a car have to run for people to watch lions? I have time…and then…

“I KNOW MY farm. There should be at least 100 eland,” booms the bolstering voice of Oom Manie. It is awkward. Oom Manie is selling his game farm to be part of a formal conservation area. And Oom Manie is hoping for a good profit because he expects 100 eland. That is what his farm’s stocking rate says he can have. And that is what Oom Manie hopes the helicopter count will confirm for him. “Only 27 eland! How can that be?” The disbelief hangs in the air. “Count again!” And off we go, to find 26 this time. The trouble with wildlife is that they do not read the ecological theories and know very little about man’s ideas of the balance of nature. That is an age-old idea −…

DARK, DARK, DARKNESS cloaks an owl calling in the distance. A nightjar answers the whoo-whoo with a stuttering staccato sequence of whistles. Silence follows. Only a small swish unsettles the silence. Softly, as a displaced breeze dances across the acacia treetops. Suddenly, the night explodes into a cacophony of squeals. I fumble with the remote in my hand. Pressing ‘skip’ ignites a small red light in the distance. Reindeer bleat loudly into the African night from the remote speaker. My fingers keep on toggling – the flickering red light provides the only invasion into the darkness. Eventually, a buffalo calf in distress calls. The call-up technique for attracting lions fitted with satellite transmitters two years earlier is now formally in progress. I simply want to see what this pride is…

THE ROLLING RHYTHM of the inboard engine matches the runabout swaying on the waves. Little Barrier Island looms in the distance – 40-odd nautical miles off New Zealand’s coast. The breeze is lightly north-east, just off the port side of the bow. Every once in a while a swell breaks over the bow, light spray reaching me sitting at the stern! In the distance, gannets swarm, diving and bombarding a shoal of fish boiling the water white towards starboard. Our progress is slow, about eight knots given the current and breeze. It will be another two hours before we reach Little Barrier Island. Suddenly, several dark shapes break up the boiling white water as common dolphins dart in and out, feeding. Gannets and common dolphins are invading that shoal of…

THE OVERWHELMING BUZZ of Shenzhen Airport greets my jetlagged body as I walk into the transit hall. All kinds of people are on the move – some fast, some slow. Some are jetlagged, like me. West Africans are draped in colourful dashikis, along with a group of older Indian men wearing sarongs. Modern businessmen – jacket and tie – together with women in elegant skirts, rush past me. I desperately need a coffee and my eyes search frantically, across the mess of colours, moving with people and the flashing of advertisements. Suddenly, something I know! A large signboard has a rhino on it, knee-deep in grass, with flat-top thorn trees in the background. I look around and wonder how many West Africans, Indians, Bangladeshis, Australians and Brazilians – yes, all…

THE LATE-AFTERNOON DUST flares in my nostrils, aromas of elephant dung lingering in the nearing twilight. There is a rumble, soft but close by. I see the shadow first, edged against a clay bank dotted with fluttering carmine bee-eaters. A looming shadow appears, tailed by a smaller one. Then the presence is there, the matriarch leading her herd. The rush begins as the thirst of the day overwhelms elephants of all sizes and ages, and they surge forward to the promise of an enriching quenching in the cool, blue waters of the Chobe River. The soul-enriching symphony of the day’s end receives a stuttering contribution: two Toyota Hilux 4x4 vehicles and a Land Rover Discovery. They are kitted out with gear of all kinds: power lifts, some rusted, strapped to…