Rewilding the World

Elephant wranglers outside of Tiger Tops Tented Camp load a howdah onto one of their domesticated animals. As they try to fit the saddle rope under the elephant's stomach, they order her to inhale, so that they can tighten the rope.

 

Visitors to Chitwan National Park, where Tiger Tops is located, can only traverse the park's swamps safely by elephant-back: The park's highly endangered greater one-horned rhinos fear humans, so approaching them on foot is dangerous. The elephant's scent masks the loathsome human odor.

 

Chitwan is part of Nepal's Terai Arc Landscape, a conservation initiative originally launched by WWF-Nepal, that aims to reconnect protected areas across the Nepalese-Indian border, providing secure and connected habitat for rhinos, wild elephants, and tigers.

Kevin Wallace (holding croc) and Audrey Deteouf-Boulade take a urine sample from a young crocodile. The Okavango Delta Crocodile Research team has been collecting critical data on the crocodile population of the Okavango Delta--its size, health, and reproductive capacity. Surrounded by a hostile populace who often burn crocodile nests and kill individual crocs, these impressive reptiles have fallen on hard times, allowing catfish to overrun the Delta, leaving locals and sports fishermen frustrated. So the Croc team works to educate people about the value of crocs and how best to avoid conflict with them.

Cape Buffalo heading to a borehole on the Ngala Reserve, just outside of Kruger National Park, South Africa. Private reserves like Ngala create a buffer zone for wildlife, expanding the functional size of Kruger, which is also gaining territory through the massive Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area, expanding the protected zone for wildlife into Mozambique and, eventually, Zimbabwe.

This rock hyrax is part of the extraordinary profusion of species on Table Mountain, the geological formation that looms above Cape Town, South Africa. This area and the Cape Peninsula contain over two thousand plant species. Much of the vegetation is "fynbos" or fine bush, with leathery leaves designed to discourage the kind of voracious predation demonstrated by the hyrax.