This book is the never-before-told story of the dream to set up camp in a vast African wasteland and return it to its former glory as one of the world’s premier wildlands.
Outdoor writer Mike Arnold takes us on an impressionistic journey through Coutada 11, a once again magnificent natural area in Mozambique’s Zambeze Delta. Mike leads us from its poached-out days as a source of bush meat for starving villagers and civil war military troops to the arrival in the early 90s of hunting outfitter Mark Haldane and his partners, on their often perilous, sometimes hilarious, travails to take the defiled and uninhabitable place and make it whole again.
Through Mike’s encounters with Haldane and his crew of scientists, guides, and motor-cycle-riding poacher patrols; with local villagers who were an integral part from the beginning; and, of course, with the apex predators, birds, and game animals that 30 years ago no one could have imagined thriving in this locale, this book serves as proof that a small group of dedicated people can make all the difference, and dreams can come true.
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What you’ll experience in BRINGING BACK THE LIONS
I had never heard a louder noise in my life. (And I was once inside a house while a tornado lifted the roof.) As the leopard charged, the roaring reached a crescendo and did not lessen as the lead dog, Pistool, grabbed him by the back flank, turning the charge with only four feet to spare between the furious cat and where Coenraad, Poen, and I stood frozen in our tracks. I watched as the leopard streaked by, almost seeming to be in slow motion. Poen’s rifle barrel was swinging with the cat, but he had no intention of using it. Scientific research, not trophy hunting, was the goal of this leopard hunt.
Some thirty seconds later, the real object of our search—the female leopard—leapt from the same tree recently vacated by the huge male. None of us knew she had been in the tree with the male. With the dogs occupied with the male, she could have brought her charge home, but instead tore into the surrounding thornbush. We looked at one another and shook our heads. We needed this female alive and GPS-collared. I also needed to start breathing again and get my heart back into my chest. It was understandable, but not comforting, that the two leopards wanted to attack the people who were—in their eyes—tormentors. We would face their anger again shortly.