-Wildlife Conservation Network
"World peace is threatened not only by regional conflicts and by injustices between peoples and nations but also by the lack of necessary respect for nature, by the disordered exploitation of her resources, and by the progressive deterioration of the quality of life. The ecological crisis has assumed such proportion as to be everyone's responsibility... greed and selfishness, individual and collective, have gone against the order of creation."
-Pope John Paul II
"Sustaining people, sustaining nature--it is one cause, inseperable."
-James Gustave Speth
"In 1908, [Teddy Roosevelt] called the governors of all the states to a White House Conference on Conservation, now often regarded as the beginning of a true national conservation movement. One breakthrough of that historic conference was to establish the protection of human health as a legitimate goal of conservation."
-Philip Shabecoff
"I am myself and what is around me,
and if I do not save it, it shall not save me."
-Jose Ortega y Gasset
"Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
-Chief Seattle
"We have traded the idiosyncratic story of our land and people for the sake of a financial transaction. This trade leads us away from quirky human history and toward the extinction of human experience."
-Peter Forbes
Lady Liuwa, a National Geographic celebrity. National Geographic has published two documentaries featuring this lioness and the history behind her isolation in Liuwa Plain National Park and surrounding Game Management Area. As has been the fate of most wildlife populations across the world in recent history, complex economic, political, and social problems arose in the latter 20th century, and regional populations of various species were extirpated or decimated. Consequently, by the 1990's, there was only one remaining lion within Liuwa Plain: "The Last Lioness." Here she is, relaxing in the shade near camp in Liuwa. As many viewers have already discovered through watching the Nat Geo documentaries, this lion developed somewhat of a familiarity with a filmmaker who spent a fair amount of time in Liuwa Plain. Without a pride of lions to return to each morning, it has been argued that the lioness developed a sense of longing for a pride, and that the filmmaker and his campmates became her de facto pride. As a result, the lioness continues to spend a large amount of time relaxing in camp, near its human occupants. I heard her calling and roaring from within camp regularly, most often in the middle of the night when I was tucked away into my sleeping bag. An electrifying experience to have a lion roar within two hundred meters from your tent!
Two years ago, two male lions were introduced to Liuwa Plain in an attempt to encourage lion reproduction in the park. Here is one of the males on a late afternoon in January.
As the sun rose on my first morning in Liuwa, we loaded up our field gear in hopes of finding the Sausage Tree pack of African wild dogs. Within twenty minutes of departing from camp, we encountered the two male lions in the plains, with full bellies, apparently having just killed and fed upon a female wildebeest.
Retreating into the shade of the woodland. We stumbled upon the male lions just after sunrise, as we were searching for one of four of the collared wildebeest. The lions appeared to have fed overnight and were moving into the shade for a post feed nap.
This picture puts predators into perspective. Lions do not chase their prey for long distances; they rely on highly developed ambush techniques and the ability to blend in with the environment. These lions were no more than forty meters away, yet only one was clearly visible. Had we not seen the visible male, we would never have realized another adult male lion (hiding in the grass on the left side of the photo) was lurking in the tall grass at such a close distance...
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