anybody who spent time under the stars
like us in Botswana really understands
anybody who’s listened to this call and
knows it we’ll know why we fell in love
with Africa and if the night sounds go
quiet it won’t only be the leopard and
the Lions that we will be losing it will
be pretty much everything all wildlife
and a huge part of our own soul so this
is a pivotal moment in time and sadly
the battle is against ignorance and
greed in Africa this battle is going to
be fought around three major species
elephants that we’re losing at a rate of
five an hour lions that are losing at a
rate of five every day and the Rhinos we
lose the one every six point three hours
every day when these animals I think
people will stop coming and indeed the
communities for suffer in fact all
economies will go down so what we like
to face on is the beauty John Keats
wrote that beauty is truth and truth is
beauty and that’s what we embody in all
our work in our films and the empathy
that we have when something unfolds in
front of us and this little scene
happened a couple of months ago two
lionesses wanted to cross the river with
their cubs but of course they saw the
ripples of a crocodile going bar and you
could feel the tension and then of
course a little later
hippos came by so this really freaked
the little Cubs out and they didn’t want
to go but the lionesses we’re determined
they needed to get across and so they
managed to get in the water and they got
some of the Cubs to follow with them and
straight away the little Cubs dodged to
their side of the bank again this took
12 hours the whole day and eventually
the lionesses got the Cubs to go in but
only when they were midway did they
realize that only four cubs were with
them but they had to keep going forward
and so they went forward got to the
opposite side of the bank deposited
those
so only two here on the other side the
other of calling and so they had
to recon front that crocodile-infested
River and go back again and of course
the Cubs on the other side were thrilled
to see their mothers and wanted to play
but the Cubs the mothers now heard the
other Cubs on the other side and so they
were in a deliver and they had to try
and sort this out they crossed it seven
times that day and eventually at dusk
they crossed that one last time and as
they crossed the one last time the two
little Cubs refused to go and they had
to leave these two Cubs on the other
side and they went and obviously the
tension in the vehicle between Derek and
I was extreme so it was now gonna go
into a 24 hour journey for these Cubs
and we waited and they waited and at
early dawn the two lionesses came back
but this time they were almost glued
together for their own protection and
they were so silent and this is what
happened
so we use beautiful stories like this
sometimes to get our message across and
in this case we tweeted this we used
Instagram we used it on Facebook it went
out to two million people immediately
because everybody was just engaged with
this we realized just the other day that
something quite magical has started to
happen and in fact people are now taking
to the streets this is a march for lions
a global March that takes place in 32
cities across the globe right now who
would ever have thought that something
like this could ever even happen
so Beverly was talking about the
ignorance and greed something that
happened in Kenya recently is really
fighting ignorant as we stood at these
powers of ivory been burned we stood in
silent memory of the elephants that
we’ve known and the ones that we will
never know and I think it’s important to
know that inside these piles of ivory 11
piles of ivory was a lot of confiscated
big cat skins lions leopards and cheetah
what’s happening to elephants is
happening to the cats and then who would
have thought that the military would be
working with us to protect rhinos to
relocate them to a safe haven in
Botswana so the goal is to combat greed
and to secure large protected landscapes
with a big cat work we’ve had the
opportunity to really focus on what
works and what doesn’t work and we’ve
come down to the notion that there are
four major causes of declines
25% of the declines on the cats is
habitat loss so it’s ultimately
important to protect wild landscapes
poaching is another major pillar of
these declines and so we spent four and
a half months paddling up the river from
the Okavango to the northern river
systems in the northern part of botswana
checking on poaching the good news is
this is the highest density of elephants
in the world and the perch is very low
the bad news is they weren’t always
happy to see us
so we’ve spent the last 35 years forming
and focusing all our attention on the
Bearcats protecting these magnificent
creatures how can you not be in all how
can anybody not be in awe of this
amazing line but they’ve led us on a
journey so six years ago we were shocked
when we discovered that we were losing
95% of all these cats in just 50 years
that’s alarming and so that’s where we
co-founded the big cat initiative was
National Geographic and as you can see
we now have great progress we have 91
projects in 27 countries many of them
are right through Africa we’ve managed
to give out over 3 million u.s. dollars
in grants so all our goal is to now
protect these lost living and thriving
bear cats we need to be successful one
of the other big pillars of decline is
hunting so we stole these 660 largely
male lions a year to the hunting
industry and a lot of that comes into
the USA 1.2 million trophies in the last
10 years in to the United States so
we’ve reached out and we’ve tried to do
whatever we can in this regard and we’ve
spoken to governments around the world
we’re already starting to see some very
very interesting things at this
crossroads the US government has has
announced that they will be restricting
lion trophies coming into the United
States similar conversations are
happening in Australia in Netherlands
the European community everything is now
starting to close down we spoken to
Airlines we started this conversation
with Airlines there are 42 Airlines
today that refuse to carry hunting
trophies so that we are having quite an
impact and that’s what we so pleased
about and then we need to look at the
successes in Africa
there has been some policy changes in
governments but Swan has stopped all
lion hunting
and then in 2011 stopped all leopard
hunting 2014 they decided no hunting
completely shut down
Uganda followed in the footsteps of
Botswana and this topic had hunting and
now all hunting South Sudan followed and
they have now stopped all hunting a
little different with South Africa South
Africa’s put a moratorium on leopards
for a year but that shows that we can’t
be complacent
we need to drive forward the fourth big
pillar of course is communities that I
love next to these big wildlife
populations and are in conflict with
them we have a number of grantees that
are working with communities largely to
reduce the conflict with cattle
communities like the Messiah for
instance one particular innovative
project that we came across is in the
redirecting the this young warrior
instinct to go out and to kill a lion
and we’re trying to find with them new
ways to direct that energy even though
it’s a very very ancient activity
so this is a race against time what we
have to do is stop all killings we have
to stop all conflicts and we need to
mount a major campaign to stop all the
trade in animal parts for us to be
successful who would have thought that
within a year of Cecil the lion in
Zimbabwe been killed there would be
marches in the streets there would be
governed policy’s being changed
there would be airlines stopping trophy
hunting and so for us there’s never been
a time when the pass in those crossroads
was been clearer
you
like us in Botswana really understands
anybody who’s listened to this call and
knows it we’ll know why we fell in love
with Africa and if the night sounds go
quiet it won’t only be the leopard and
the Lions that we will be losing it will
be pretty much everything all wildlife
and a huge part of our own soul so this
is a pivotal moment in time and sadly
the battle is against ignorance and
greed in Africa this battle is going to
be fought around three major species
elephants that we’re losing at a rate of
five an hour lions that are losing at a
rate of five every day and the Rhinos we
lose the one every six point three hours
every day when these animals I think
people will stop coming and indeed the
communities for suffer in fact all
economies will go down so what we like
to face on is the beauty John Keats
wrote that beauty is truth and truth is
beauty and that’s what we embody in all
our work in our films and the empathy
that we have when something unfolds in
front of us and this little scene
happened a couple of months ago two
lionesses wanted to cross the river with
their cubs but of course they saw the
ripples of a crocodile going bar and you
could feel the tension and then of
course a little later
hippos came by so this really freaked
the little Cubs out and they didn’t want
to go but the lionesses we’re determined
they needed to get across and so they
managed to get in the water and they got
some of the Cubs to follow with them and
straight away the little Cubs dodged to
their side of the bank again this took
12 hours the whole day and eventually
the lionesses got the Cubs to go in but
only when they were midway did they
realize that only four cubs were with
them but they had to keep going forward
and so they went forward got to the
opposite side of the bank deposited
those
so only two here on the other side the
other of calling and so they had
to recon front that crocodile-infested
River and go back again and of course
the Cubs on the other side were thrilled
to see their mothers and wanted to play
but the Cubs the mothers now heard the
other Cubs on the other side and so they
were in a deliver and they had to try
and sort this out they crossed it seven
times that day and eventually at dusk
they crossed that one last time and as
they crossed the one last time the two
little Cubs refused to go and they had
to leave these two Cubs on the other
side and they went and obviously the
tension in the vehicle between Derek and
I was extreme so it was now gonna go
into a 24 hour journey for these Cubs
and we waited and they waited and at
early dawn the two lionesses came back
but this time they were almost glued
together for their own protection and
they were so silent and this is what
happened
so we use beautiful stories like this
sometimes to get our message across and
in this case we tweeted this we used
Instagram we used it on Facebook it went
out to two million people immediately
because everybody was just engaged with
this we realized just the other day that
something quite magical has started to
happen and in fact people are now taking
to the streets this is a march for lions
a global March that takes place in 32
cities across the globe right now who
would ever have thought that something
like this could ever even happen
so Beverly was talking about the
ignorance and greed something that
happened in Kenya recently is really
fighting ignorant as we stood at these
powers of ivory been burned we stood in
silent memory of the elephants that
we’ve known and the ones that we will
never know and I think it’s important to
know that inside these piles of ivory 11
piles of ivory was a lot of confiscated
big cat skins lions leopards and cheetah
what’s happening to elephants is
happening to the cats and then who would
have thought that the military would be
working with us to protect rhinos to
relocate them to a safe haven in
Botswana so the goal is to combat greed
and to secure large protected landscapes
with a big cat work we’ve had the
opportunity to really focus on what
works and what doesn’t work and we’ve
come down to the notion that there are
four major causes of declines
25% of the declines on the cats is
habitat loss so it’s ultimately
important to protect wild landscapes
poaching is another major pillar of
these declines and so we spent four and
a half months paddling up the river from
the Okavango to the northern river
systems in the northern part of botswana
checking on poaching the good news is
this is the highest density of elephants
in the world and the perch is very low
the bad news is they weren’t always
happy to see us
so we’ve spent the last 35 years forming
and focusing all our attention on the
Bearcats protecting these magnificent
creatures how can you not be in all how
can anybody not be in awe of this
amazing line but they’ve led us on a
journey so six years ago we were shocked
when we discovered that we were losing
95% of all these cats in just 50 years
that’s alarming and so that’s where we
co-founded the big cat initiative was
National Geographic and as you can see
we now have great progress we have 91
projects in 27 countries many of them
are right through Africa we’ve managed
to give out over 3 million u.s. dollars
in grants so all our goal is to now
protect these lost living and thriving
bear cats we need to be successful one
of the other big pillars of decline is
hunting so we stole these 660 largely
male lions a year to the hunting
industry and a lot of that comes into
the USA 1.2 million trophies in the last
10 years in to the United States so
we’ve reached out and we’ve tried to do
whatever we can in this regard and we’ve
spoken to governments around the world
we’re already starting to see some very
very interesting things at this
crossroads the US government has has
announced that they will be restricting
lion trophies coming into the United
States similar conversations are
happening in Australia in Netherlands
the European community everything is now
starting to close down we spoken to
Airlines we started this conversation
with Airlines there are 42 Airlines
today that refuse to carry hunting
trophies so that we are having quite an
impact and that’s what we so pleased
about and then we need to look at the
successes in Africa
there has been some policy changes in
governments but Swan has stopped all
lion hunting
and then in 2011 stopped all leopard
hunting 2014 they decided no hunting
completely shut down
Uganda followed in the footsteps of
Botswana and this topic had hunting and
now all hunting South Sudan followed and
they have now stopped all hunting a
little different with South Africa South
Africa’s put a moratorium on leopards
for a year but that shows that we can’t
be complacent
we need to drive forward the fourth big
pillar of course is communities that I
love next to these big wildlife
populations and are in conflict with
them we have a number of grantees that
are working with communities largely to
reduce the conflict with cattle
communities like the Messiah for
instance one particular innovative
project that we came across is in the
redirecting the this young warrior
instinct to go out and to kill a lion
and we’re trying to find with them new
ways to direct that energy even though
it’s a very very ancient activity
so this is a race against time what we
have to do is stop all killings we have
to stop all conflicts and we need to
mount a major campaign to stop all the
trade in animal parts for us to be
successful who would have thought that
within a year of Cecil the lion in
Zimbabwe been killed there would be
marches in the streets there would be
governed policy’s being changed
there would be airlines stopping trophy
hunting and so for us there’s never been
a time when the pass in those crossroads
was been clearer
you
Please follow and like us: