Gareth with Rafiki
“In that period when I was living with the lions, I learned fellowship. I was totally immersed into their world and though I had studied them before that experience it really allowed me to enter the world of lions. I was seeing the world through their eyes. I was spending far more time in the world of lions than I was in the world of human beings. It was a very privileged time.”
GARETH PATTERSON
Knysna, Africa
I had the fantastic privilege to interview independent wildlife researcher and author Gareth Patterson who grew up in Africa and dedicated his life to the study and care of lions and now, of elephants too. He is currently writing his autobiography – living in a place very close to the elusive Knysna elephants – What the African authorities has once considered already an extinct species and was beginning to lose interest for he proved otherwise after long and rigorous investigations – yes they are indeed alive and thriving and they’re OK. Recently Gareth was part of a 4 month campaign to stop the authorities in Johannesburg from putting down a white lioness, Nyanga for an accident that caused a life of a zookeeper. Though it was rare to pull something like this off – a decision came yesterday that was in favor of Nyanga . It was a great victory (more for the lioness and all other animals bred in captivity and in the wild) and Nyanga is now safe in her lion sanctuary.
All these and more on this warrior for the wild, “Lion Man” Gareth Patterson, today on Soulspeak.
WHO IS GARETH & WHERE ARE YOU NOW AT IN YOUR JOURNEY?
I tend to describe myself as belonging to the tiny little tribe here in Africa which doesn’t really have a name. And what I mean by that is that I was born in Britain but taken over to Africa with my parents when I was just a small baby. The reason I say I belong to a tiny little tribe is that there were many of us scattered around Africa, born to expatriate parents and grew up here. Most of the parents would return to their motherland. But there were those who stayed behind because Africa was the only home they knew. So the parents might have gone back to Britain or wherever but there were these people like me who stayed behind and here I am fourty something years later and I’m still in Africa.
Interestingly, among my friends who were in the same situation as me (also expatriates) they also have a very strong love for Africa – its wildlife, its environment, and its people. And we weren’t the offspring of colonial people. We arrived in Africa when Africa was changing. We’re not the offspring of white capitalists or whatever you’d like to call it. It’s quite a unique situation. Africa has always been my first love and what I’m doing today is basically what I’m doing all my life which is just a total fascination with wildlife. You said that you initially planned to contact an elephant biologist – and people say to me sometimes that I ‘switched species’ – but people are missing the point here and it’s that I have always been involved with elephant issues despite long long years working with the African lion. I never stopped working for the African lion and elephants have always been there. They’ve always been looming in the background. Wherever I’ve worked with lions obviously there’s always been elephants.
LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR WORK ON THE KNYSNA ELEPHANTS.
The recent years down here at the Southern tip of Africa, something very much motivated me to look at the story of the Knysna elephant, which are the most Southerly elephants in the world. The authorities have basically written them off and said that they were a functionally extinct population. And I thought I’ve got to look into this. It’s a vast area of forests and mountains and plantations, and elephants are like ghosts . I decide that we can’t write off this population. That’s when I decided to investigate.
To see what was really going on and it took years and thousands of kilometers on foot. I stopped counting. Thank goodness, I discovered that the elephants were actually doing fine. There were many more than what people thought. There were at least 12 and there have been births, and basically these are such inspirational elephants because they have brought themselves back from the brink of extinction without any help from humankind. It was a complete revelation and they’re out there – and as I’m speaking to you now I live in a little cabin on the edge of the forest and the closest that actually I’ve had to one of these elusive elephants is about 2 to 3 kilometers from where I am speaking to you now. It’s an incredible story. It’s a huge victory for the elephants, for myself and also for the minds and the perceptions of the people. It was always very negative. People thought that there was only one elephant left here and nervous that she was gonna die and now its completely turned around. People really love these elephants. They’re very well known to people of South Africa. They were enormously happy, and the reception to the book “
The Secret Elephants” and the film that we did that was called “S
earch for the Knysna Elephants” which was screened worldwide – There’s been such positive energy with the news that ‘No, in fact the elephants are okay’. They’re doing fine.
WHO WERE YOUR INFLUENCES AS A CHILD?
George Adamson of ‘Born Free’ had a big influence on me. As a child I never knew and could never imagine what could happen in the years ahead. but it was an interesting thing. I think on my ninth birthday my mother gave me two things for Christmas. The one was a game reserve which she had made out of paper-maché on a board. It had mountains and water holes and plastic animals and a little zebra striped land rover. The second thing she gave me was George Adamson’s first autobiography called “Bwana Game”. Obviously as a child I never imagined that one day I would work for George, and then after he was murdered by Ivory poachers I would never imagined as a child that I would rescue his last lion orphans and eventually rehabilitate them back into the wild. But yes – it was like something was destined there. Other influences were the world famous biologist George Schaller – his work in the early 70s, “Serengeti“, which I read about. He pioneered the study of lion behavior. On another front there’s people like Credo Mutwa, who is a seer and a prophet, and very much like me believes in the importance of African Environmentalism. He has always been an influence on me.
WHAT IS ‘AFRICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM’?
What I mean by African Environmentalism is that before the white people came here Africa had its own creed and beliefs in terms of environmentalism. And part of that whole system was the belief in ‘Totem Animals’ and say if your totem is a lion you must never do anything to harm lions and you must never do anything with that impact on anything close to lions.
So everyone had their own totem. Every clan, every pride had their own totem animal. And there was very much a reverence for everything and a belief that God is in everything – even in the stone, in a rock in a tree, in a stream. African environmentalism encompasses all of that. One thing that I am strong about is trying to create a Renaissance of African Environmentalism, and then here in Africa we can sort out our own problems because otherwise things are very much monopolized by a Western outlook towards wildlife, and that Western outlook often includes invasive use of animals and is pro the use of ivory trade, hunting, etc — all these consumptive utilization forms, which is not part of African Environmentalism in any way shape or form.
African Environmentalism still exists but it very much needs a Renaissance. It needs to be rejuvenated. And then we can take care of wildlife and the environment the African Way and not as outsiders dictate to us.
I FEEL THAT IT’S HAPPENING EVERYWHERE. IN MANY WAYS. PEOPLE ARE BECOMING MORE AWARE OF THE POWER & SANCTITY OF NATURE.
I agree with you, there is a resurgence of this kind of reverence happening worldwide. I was dong some research awhile ago and I read that Pantheism (the belief that everything contains God) is like the 2nd or 3rd fastest belief system in West now. That people are turning their backs on traditional religion and embracing Pantheism. And Pantheism is just African Environmentalism by another name or belief system anywhere in the world. We’re going back to the old thinking, and that’s great. We can take the best from the old and inject it also with new.
BEING WITH LIONS ALMOST YOUR ENTIRE LIFE CAN YOU TELL ME A FEW EXTRAORDINARY THINGS THAT PERHAPS NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THEM?
Back in 2001 as my contribution to trying to change people’s thinking I wrote a book ”
To Walk With Lions“. It was a breakaway book because normally I write about my life, recounting what’s happened in my life with lions but I decided to do this book because it dealt with what I recognized as the 7 spiritual principles of the lion. Basically it’s about these 7 precepts of the lion that I was drawing from examples seen in my life with lions.
The first one is SELF RELIANCE,
second is FELLOWSHIP,
third is THE WILLINGNESS TO CARE,
fourth is AFFECTION,
fifth is DETERMINATION,
Sixth is COURAGE,
and the seventh is LOYALTY.
And each one of those principles I have seen very very clearly in the lion. Basically with these 7 precepts I wrote an inspiring story illustrating those precepts. I’ll give you one – Let me take DETERMINATION as an example.. We talked about Rafiki earlier. At that time she had been returned to the wild, but one day she came to me at my camp and I noticed that she was in the late stage of gestation and in fact you can see part of the fetal membrane hanging from here. She kept on calling me and eventually she went off and then the next day she came back again. I saw the fetal membrane had disappeared. It wasn’t there anymore. She was so determined that I should follow her, but it was very very late in the day. It was almost night time. I couldn’t follow her. I don’t have the eyesight of a lion. I can’t walk out there at night, in the pitch black. But she stayed at the camp the whole nigh. – very very determined. She really wanted me to follow her. So early the next morning as the sun was coming up I went outside and I went to her and her brother Batian, the male lion. He was there too. And she kept on urging me to follow her – and I followed her for quite a distance. Batian came with me as well. But we had no idea what she was wanting us to do and every time Batian and I stopped, she would come back and urge us to follow and eventually she led us into some hill and disappeared into the thick vegetation. She was calling us continually. Batian came in the way she went, and when he came out I went in as well, and then I saw that she was laying there, and she had a still-born cub across her paws and she was just licking and licking it as if she was trying to ignite it with her life. That’s what she had wanted to do. To show her still-born cub. After that happened, she ate the cub which in lion behavior was like a form of burial. She was replenishing herself of what was used to produce the cub in the first place.
Very quickly after that she came into evestress again . She mated with a wild lion. Their gestation period is 110 days. When I knew that her pregnancy was nearly due then suddenly she disappeared and did the same thing to urge me to follow her. There’s actually a YouTube footage of this where Rafiki was leading me to her new born cubs, and I followed her and there they were. She presented them to me. On a lighter side she was so determined that I come visit her and her cubs. Obviously under any other circumstances that was one of the most dangerous situations that someone could find themselves in -To be close to a lioness with new born cubs. But she would take the opportunity of when I would actually visit her – actually using me as a babysitter. That I would go to the nursery site. That she would come out and greet me and leave the cubs and then she’d go off to hunt. Drink water or whatever. And the first time it happened I thought to myself – how far do I take my responsibilities here?… I mean the lioness might leave her cubs for almost three days! – but she would only go for a few hours each time and she would come back and then take care of the cubs. Then I’d go back to my camp. It was a fantastic experience. Ferrara, another lion did the same thing. She also led me to her cubs.
And people don’t recognize that like elephants, lions also grieve. Talking about Rafiki – her brother Batian was killed by trophy hunters so I buried his remains and built a grave of stones. It was so spiritually uplifting for me to see the following evening after I’ve done that and went down to his grave – to find the footprints of Rafiki and her cubs. She took her cubs to Batian’s grave.
A year later I came down to Batian’s grave – when I buried him he had an identification collar – I took the collar and I put it into a hole in a tree. Subsequently I went back there and it disappeared. I thought I’d never see that collar again. But a year after I buried him I went back to the grave and I was visualizing what a big lion he would have been a year later, although he was already a big lion before he was killed. I left the grave and I started walking back the way I had come. Suddenly there was the collar. On the ground where I walked on! The ground is my newspaper it tells me everything – what is going on – and there was no way I could have missed that collar when I just previously went to the grave. The interesting thing about it was that it was still bucked up but it had been cut and the collar was laying out straight in front of me. That meant a lot for me because I was grieving for a year. Seeing that collar lying out in front of me – it meant, to me at least, that I needed to let go. That was quite an extraordinary things that happened. So it’s things like that that I write about in this book “To Walk With Lions” putting across the message that they are animals of such inspiration. They are incredibly intelligent animals and like I said they have a range of emotions akin to our own.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOURSELF FROM THIS EXPERIENCE?
It’s one of the precepts I mentioned. In that period when I was living with the lions, I learned fellowship. I was totally immersed into their world and though I had studied them before that experience it really allowed me to enter the world of lions. I was seeing the world through their eyes. I was spending far more time in the world of lions than I was in the world of human beings. It was a very privileged time.
But with that privilege comes a lot of pain. There were a lot of deaths, like I said, I lost Batian, and then his sister was shot and two of the cubs were shot, but Rafiki lived on. I left the area partly to in a sense protect her because my presence wasn’t welcomed in that area. I was highlighting the bad things that were going on and illegal hunting. I feared that there was gonna be retribution against the remaining lioness, Rafiki, so I left her. I was the only one who could recognize her as an individual. To other people she was just another lion. She carried on. She had another litter of cubs and then she subsequently had several other litters. Though the losses were very painful – with Batian and Ferrara, more lion lie were created through Rafiki and her descendants are still out there to this day, and that’s wonderful. It’s just like George Adamson with his lions. There are lions out there in Kora which are second, third fourth, fifth generation wild born lions which exists because of the ones that he actually adopted and rehabilitated back into the wild. That’s a nice and holistic way of looking into the whole experience.
WHAT HAVE YOU UNLEARNED LATELY?
I think one of the biggest things is that I’ve also got to be kind to myself. In a sense that I mustn’t try and take on the burden of all the things that affect lions. For a while I was working myself to the bone and just feeling so responsible for every single situation when it came to lions. That would have killed me if I had carried on like that. I realized I just had to be gentler on myself. Though I had to keep on nudging myself often because I still do tend to take on too much. I just got to realize that I’m not God, and God is God. Sometimes you rest things with God and the bigger picture and just do as much as one can without damaging oneself.
WHAT PIECE OF ADVISE WOULD YOU GIVE TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE A GROWING FEAR OF LIONS OR ELEPHANTS?
The possibility of being attacked by lions is very very small compared to that of lions being attacked by humans. Every year hundreds and hundreds of lions are being killed legally by trophy hunters. People going out of their way to kill them. Basically if you’re on foot and you come across a lion in the wild the lion is the very first to move and run away. That’s normally the first reaction and for good reason – because they have a fear of man. they have every reason to be fearful of man.
I had an interview for a radio station in Belgium the other week and they were saying “You lived with elephants how many times did you actually witness a full killing charge?” and like I said I lived amongst these very very aggressive elephants. They’ve been poached, they’ve been shot at and some of them still have bullets in them – on a daily basis I would encounter very aggressive behavior. But that is what we call ‘mock charging’ …It’s not a real killer charge . I witnessed hundreds of these and everyday, I would be charged by the elephants because they were so traumatized. So when I was asked this question – how many times I witnessed a real charge- then I had to think. After all those years and after hundreds of mock charges I witnessed a killer charge by an injured elephant probably only 4 or 5 times. So despite the fact that they were so traumatized they weren’t seeing it through. When they are doing a mock charge they are just telling you to move away and a real charge is quite different. It’s quiet, very fast, they don’t announce their presence – but I witnessed it just a handful of times in all those years.
Because of what poachers were doing to them, we lost so many elephants. It was in those years called the ‘ivory wars’ throughout Africa at that time the elephant population went from 1.3 million down to about 650 thousand in about a decade. Elephants throughout Africa were extremely traumatized, and where the most aggressive elephants only did a killer charge for a handful of times – I think it speaks volumes. Our impact on the animals are obviously far far greater than their impact on us.
TALK ABOUT THE DIET OF ELEPHANTS AND LIONS. I ALWAYS WONDERED IF THERE ARE VEGETARIAN LIONS…
On the lighter side I am basically a vegetarian and part of the way that I’ve learned about these elephants for example is that I use samples of the droppings to discover what different leaves, plants and trees they have been eating. The diet side has really been a big part of my study. I have taken samples from hundreds of droppings here and I can just say it is actually a nice relief for me to be working with the largest living vegetarian on earth.
Lions are real carnivores. Unlike us they have very short intestines. In a sense that they have a valve to process meat. Unlike ours , it’s a very quick process. For humans the meat stays within us and ferments within us because we are not truly carnivores. That’s how they are and they have a wide range of diets. But I’ll tell you what lions don’t eat. They do not want primates and they generally won’t eat other predators . Once again this speaks volumes because it illustrates that we’re not the normal prey of lions, which I find interesting indeed.
WHAT IS LOVE?
To me love equals God. — I’m going back to what I said about Pantheism or African Environmentalism. Seeing that essence just within absolutely everything around us and seeing life through those eyes. When one does that the world becomes a better place and it becomes a kinder place. Love is compassion. It’s God.
YOUR NEXT STEPS. WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE?
You know it’s very interesting, just to digress I have never really made a decision about what I have to do. It just presents itself to me. Be it when I first starting studying lions, to taking on George Adamson’s lions, to exploring canned lion hunting in South Africa – doing all the things that I have done. Even with the elephants out here , it was just something that presented itself to me and I just had to do it. I’m not part of the decision making – the decision has already been made for me. Sometimes it can be a bit hard for me because no sooner does one door close and I finish something and another door opens very very quickly. I’ve got to rush on and do the next thing.
But to answer your question at the moment what I’m working on is my tenth book, which is my autobiography. Obviously it’s because of the timeline of 48 years it’s going to be quite a big book. It’s going to be at least two and a half times the size of any other book that I’ve ever written. I’ve just finished half of it now. On the normal circumstances I could be saying I just finished a new book but actually I’m only halfway at the moment. This is gonna take me at least another 5 or 6 months to do. i’m just trying to be very disciplined by outing aside this time, trying not to get drawn into too many issues. I try to write at least a thousand words , at least 8 hours a day, just knuckling down and doing it because if I don’t, the book wouldn’t be written. It’s very important to me. It’s not self indulgence, it’s not self serving. I’m writing this book because I’m hoping that it could be inspiration to other people encouraging them to do what they can for the wildlife and for the environment. I like the way it’s going at the moment. It’s been a lot of re-learning for me. t’s not just re-living…it’s re-learning. It’s also joining the dots in one’s life. It’s teaching me a lot, taking me in directions which I have never imagined it would so it’s fantastic.
By the way, you will not know this, but one of the first lions I studied, way back in the 1980s, I named Juno. Her story, and that of her pride, was told in my first book, Cry for the Lions. This all comes to mind as I am writing this autobiography .
THAT IS WONDERFUL! THANK YOU FOR SHARING THAT.
It struck a chord with me. I very much liked the look of what you’re doing. Your website and all the rest of it. If we were to talk about Juno we’re going back now to 1983 – I was about 23 then and she was a very beautiful lioness. I don’t know why I called her Juno. The name just came. She was a very special lioness. A very gentle one. That was when I first started studying lions in Botswana. That was for I think about a 4 year period and I was very very close to Juno’s family. She belonged to a tribe I called the “Lower Majale” pride. They were really like my family, and I documented their life and also their death because poaching and illegal hunting was taking place. I actually made a decision to leave the area to write my first book which was called Cry for the Lions, and that really tells the story of Juno and the rest of her family and all the lion prides in her area.
YOUR ONE MESSAGE TO THE WORLD.
Never give up, in what you believe in and what you believe in the world around you or whatever and your aspirations… One must never give up.
FOR MORE ON GARETH VISIT HIS WEBSITE
FEATURE VIDEOS
“The Search for the Knysna Elephants (Promo)”
“Lion Man Gareth Patterson led to new-born cubs by Adamson lioness, Rafiki”
(This interview was conducted via Skype on April 25, 2012)
READ MORE STORIES
Who’s On and Who’s Next?
Soulspeak Gallery
All articles written within the period of Oct 2011 through present. © Juno Cristi 2011-2012, All Rights Reserved
THANK YOU FOR STOPPING BY!
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A DONATION TO THIS SITE , CLICK HERE
Source:
