If there was no animal library for Lion King and Disney had to make them all up, the mountain bongo would be the first created.
Larger than a deer, it’s as cuddly as a panda. Huge spherical eyes drip with love. It walks delicately through deep forests like a water thrush, its wiggly nose forever sniffing flowers. But what puts it on the ToysRUs shelf is its gorgeous thick chestnut coat with pure white stripes like icing over candy.
When I was a young safari guide, we almost always saw bongos. Today they’re all but extinct, but! The news at the moment is exceptionally good!
This weekend the world’s largest big game hunting 
Mountain gorillas love wild celery. It’s their favorite food. They learn early on that it grows best at forest edges. So they often forage forest edges hoping to find patches of wild celery.
Another two tourists 
One of the most important elephant organizations in the world, Cynthia Moss’ 
Clarity on how badly elephants may be declining is at hand. Wednesday scientists began the “2017 Selous-Mikumi Large 
There’s no more beautiful place now than Kenya’s Maasai Mara. Sweeping landscapes of dramatic hills and jagged mountains; valleys lush with acacia, fig and muratina forests and so many clear-running streams and rivers – it’s impossible to beat.
A good safari is an adventure, and an adventure takes effort. I keep thinking of the phrase, “No Pain – No Gain.” Sure, we can end the day at an unbelievably luxurious place with bubble bath and champagne. But just take a look at a successful safari traveler stepping out of her vehicle at the end of the day:
As usual for this time of year it was bone dry. Mornings were still and cold. Saturn twinkled above in the ink blue predawn sky almost as brightly as the half moon which had set in the middle of the night. The sun rose as a giant orange ball behind a charcoal grey curtain of dust and the first breezes tossled the fields of dead, blonde grass. By noon dust devils twisted across the veld. By afternoon strong winds obliterated the cloudless sky with layers of dust.
Politics are changing lightning fast and climate is changing lightning fast, and now it seems that wild animal behavior is also seriously changing.
Why are professionals from zoo directors to scientists – much less you! – less interested in the lion decline than the elephant decline? Why are you donating to Save The Elephants but not Save the Lions?
NPR’s fuzzy wuzzy reporting in the last few days about the northern white rhino is high school journalism. I’m not suggesting that this story needs the due diligence of Jared Kushner’s Russia contacts, but what is an important battle between science and performance NPR has reduced to a smiling emoticon.
After a decade of successful recovery by a worldwide effort to save wild dogs they are threatened once again.
I hate to say it, but lions are climbing trees more than ever before. I’ve got to figure this one out.