Tales of a game ranger
Struggle to save wildlife, writes Alan Peter Simmonds
IN THE 1960s I lived in Kenya. Travelling around East Africa and further afield on the continent, I marvelled at the richness of the game and the symbiotic relationship enjoyed between teeming herds, winged wonders and local inhabitants.
I enjoyed 20 000 Thomson’s Gazelle at Nakuru, 400 000 wildebeest trekking across the Serengeti and, of course, the Big 5 – including a memorable 2 000 elephant gathering in the Nile near Murchison Falls, Uganda.
Alas, today in South Africa, as in those magnificent places I once visited, it is now warfare.
Poaching of every kind is prevalent; the snare, gun and poison will soon reduce all but a few protected areas to barren wastes, where not a roar, bellow, snort or song will be heard.
If that is what mankind wants, so be it. But fortunately there are some who see things from a different perspective.
Mario Cesare, game ranger extraordinaire, curator, innovator, tireless fighter and compassionate friend of all things furred and feathered, stands like a rock against the powers of evil.
An amazing life story sees him learn his trade at Timbavati and Mala reserves to the Olifants River where, bordering the Kruger National Park, as warden, he fights an incessant daily battle on behalf of the Big 5, with ruthless poachers.
Saving rhinos has become a mission – it is neither an easy or pretty tale he recounts in his third and latest book
What I like most about this fascinating work is it can be opened at any of the 32 chapters, or stories; each a compelling account of something vibrant, alive (sometimes dead), all in his beloved Limpopo bushveld.
One tale I appreciated (probably no less than the rest) was how the author described a rogue elephant being dissuaded from raiding (gardens) by the introduction of bee hives – tuskers are not partial to bees. Cesare’s earlier memoir,
became a best seller about lessons on conservation, followed by a testimony to man’s best friend.
The tenor of the work becomes clear in the introduction where Cesare says, “…I have become a streetfighter… to mix it with brutal killers spawned in the gutters of humanity…”
Throughout, defeat and disaster, frustration and futility vie with achievement, pride, success and hope; there is no real winner, so finely balanced is the battle with those who would destroy to satisfy ignorant beliefs and gargantuan greed.
The author devotes a chapter to an allwomen anti-poaching unit – the Black Mambas and space to the training of a Belgian Malinois (like a German Shepherd) dog named Saba – now an expert in the art of tracking poachers and the forerunner of canine units bred and trained for that specific purpose.
To Cesare the most precious reward is the saving of an animal; no praise can be enough for such a humanitarian.
Readers will be sad then exult, cheer, then weep – no one says it’s a fairy-tale read – Cesare wouldn’t have it any other way.