A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a university field trip to South Africa (yes, they do field trips to Africa now. They’ve got to justify that nine grand somehow.) It was difficult to believe it was all a part of a module that I’ll have to sit an exam for come May. Among the research practicals and assessed discussions, it was an indulgence of abundant and unusual wildlife. On top of the ever-impressive elephants (still a favourite since childhood), black rhinos, lions and buffalo, there were the curious looking bontebok antelope with their gaunt, badger-striped faces; the barking cacophony and merlot-red wing flashes of the Knysna turaco; the most perseverant work efforts I’ve ever seen from an animal in the unique flightless dung beetles; the almost Godzilla like revelation of size when I saw my first giant kingfisher (as big as a crow); and many, many more.

But beyond the plain childhood excitement of just seeing these animals, the serious conservationist in me was intrigued to get over to this country in order to see their unique way of providing space for a large human population alongside a vast suite of wildlife, that includes numbers of megafauna that would’ve been wiped out thousands of years ago in most parts of the world.

Saying that though, in a depressingly familiar tale, most of South Africa’s large animals were wiped out upon the arrival of the European settlers. You know all about the Serengeti wildebeest migration, but did you know similar numbers of zebra, black wildebeest and bluebuck (now extinct) used to do the same down there? Just one spectacle never to be seen again thanks to Homo sapiens.

Continue reading →