Mario Cesare - Heart of a Game Ranger: Stories from a Wild Life

I n my first book, Man-eaters, Mambas and Marula Madness , I focused on sharing my passion for the African wilderness and its myriad life forms by taking the reader into the bush with me. From my earliest youthful recollections I tell of a passionate journey as an aspirant young ranger through to my experiences as warden of Olifants River Game Reserve, where my feet are now firmly planted. In my second, The Man with the Black Dog, I tell of the extraordinary relationship between me and my dog Shilo, and our lives and adventures in the bush together. Heart of a Game Ranger continues in a similar vein with an added sense of profundity. I also like to believe that a growing maturity cuts through some of the blinkered infatuation with life in the bush and delves into the depths of some of the challenging circumstances facing nature conservation today; a precursor to the focus that has inexorably shifted, shaping the broader mind-set of the modern-day game ranger.

Although this book can be picked up and opened at any chapter, or read through in sequence, essentially there are three gently interwoven yet broadly defined parts. My experiences on Olifants have provided unique conservation challenges in a rich life full of situations that have been anything but routine. There are stories of general interest as well as those I have selected from the numerous unpredictable situations that involve other wildlife in conservation-related situations. This is the nature of my work in Big Five country and is what makes it so worthwhile being a game ranger. Essentially its all about beautiful days that end in exhausted satisfaction and achievement, balanced by those that inexorably leave us in utter despair and frustration.

Being part of a huge open system that includes the greater Kruger National Park, we face the same threats to our wildlife as the rest of our countrys national parks particularly as regards rhino poaching. There is no clear-cut definition: rhino do not live and die in isolation; they share the stage with numerous other wildlife, including a number of lesser-known but equally threatened species.

Much has already been written that delves into the detail of the criminality, the nameless middlemen, syndicates and end users, even conjecture of high-level political involvement in rhino poaching. There is also the ongoing debate around the pros and cons of trade versus no trade. My intention is not to regurgitate the plethora of facts already out there, but rather to give the reader a deeper insight, a personal take on the situation as a conservationist, seen through my eyes and spoken from the heart.

My aim is to take you along as we get up close and personal, recounting some hair-raising incidents and the personalities involved at the core of the fray, in day-to-day life on the front line, to show what we are up against and our endeavours to tackle the specific poaching problem on our reserve.

Delving deeper into the realities, you will concur that Queensberry Rules simply have to take a backseat at times: combating rhino poachers is an adaptive style of brawling born of necessity. To this end I have become a street fighter in order to effectively mix it with brutal killers spawned in the gutters of humanity. Its an ugly conflict, a deadly game of hit and run played out on some of the most beautiful battlefields in Africa. Invariably these incidents comprise small forays, most of which we lose, losses that are made endurable by those times we put poachers to flight using both hi-tech and lo-tech methods followed by disruptive action. I will also attempt to share with you the heartbreak and sense of utter helplessness when we lose a rhino and the euphoria of success when we save one. Of course there are also the rarer, bittersweet occasions that culminate in the apprehension and arrest of poachers, so be prepared for a roller-coaster ride through some emotional ups and downs and surprising twists of excitement.