Game Changer. Glen Martin
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control the disease at any opportunity. On arriving at the ranch, Frank conferred with the owner, who directed him to a brushy river course. It didn’t take long to find the hyena—a relatively young male; we approached it easily as it staggered along the riverbank, shivering and whining, before disappearing into thick brush. Frank loaded his short-barreled 12-gauge pump shotgun with rifled slugs and set off in pursuit; I was timorous at the prospect of encountering a rabid hyena in heavy vegetation, so elected to stay behind. In short order there was a single shot. I investigated, to find Frank standing over the dead hyena, which he had dispatched with a slug placed behind the shoulder. He seemed deeply saddened. “I hate killing these guys,” he said as he prepared to drag the carcass to his Land Rover and ultimately to his lab for the usual battery of samples and tests. “It makes me feel incredibly bad when I have to do it. They are such wonderful animals.” He sighed deeply. “Sometimes there’s simply no alternative.”
On another occasion, Frank was called to a ranch to pick up a leopard. The couple who owned the property—amiable quasi New Agers who combined modest cattle production with some low-key ecotourism—had captured the animal in a box trap after it had eaten their favorite dog. They didn’t want to kill the cat; they simply wanted it gone. Frank and I arrived, and we bent down and looked into the box trap. The leopard, which had been crouched in the gloom at the far end of the trap, made an enormous leap and slammed against the gate, claws extended, teeth bared, spittle flying, eyes lambent with green fire. The entire trap shook with the impact, and a snarl that sounded like an overrevving F-15 split the air. The charge was so abrupt and frightening that I felt any number of internal organs loosening, but Frank merely evinced mild interest. “Aw, poor guy,” he said. “Look—he broke off a canine. They get into these box traps, and they tear themselves up trying to get out. Box traps are really a terrible way of dealing with predators; our snares are much more effective and humane. The animals can’t damage themselves, and you can anesthetize them and release them easily.”
FIGURE 4. Laikipia Predator Project researchers take measurements and tissue samples from an anesthetized leopard that had been killing dogs. It was captured in a box trap by local ranchers. (Glen Martin)
After considerable effort, Frank managed to inject the animal with an anesthetic. Once the leopard conked out, Frank took tissue samples and buckled a telemetry collar around its neck, then loaded the limp, drooling, and utterly unconscious animal into the back of the Land Rover. We drove over rutted tracks through the bush for about an hour, to a site Frank felt was far enough away from human habitation to give the leopard a chance at staying out of trouble.
“Of course, we’re releasing it in another leopard’s territory—every place around here is a leopard’s territory—so he could get killed,” Frank said. “But what are you going to do?” Just as he was unhitching the tailgate to the Land Rover, a truck drove up. It was an acquaintance of Frank’s, a local cattle rancher who loathed predators and disapproved of efforts aimed at their preservation but was nevertheless on good terms with the biologist. They stood and talked for a while—too long, as it turned out.
After an extended palaver, Frank scooped up the leopard in his arms, still chatting with the rancher. A low, deep snarl emanated from the cat. Frank looked down, and the leopard looked up at him peevishly. The anesthetic was wearing off. “Um—I think we have a situation here,” Frank said. The cat abruptly voided its bladder, soaking Frank’s shirt with pungent urine. Its snarl waxed in volume and rose in timbre.
The rancher almost did a back flip as he vaulted behind Frank’s Land Rover. He pulled a compact semiautomatic pistol from a holster at the small of his back and shakily pointed it at Frank and the leopard. Along with their taste for dogs, African leopards are known for unmitigated ferocity if cornered or wounded. It is not uncommon to hear of multiple maulings—leopards chewing and clawing through a group of people, one after another, before escaping, rather than taking the most direct and expeditious route for egress.
The leopard’s flanks had begun twitching now; its lips pulled back from its teeth, and its yowls grew louder. Its eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets. Frank, meanwhile, kept the ninety-pound animal nestled securely in his arms. He walked calmly around the truck and proceeded fifty yards or so into the bush, where he gently placed the leopard on the ground at the edge of a small clearing. The rancher muttered imprecations and holstered his pistol. Frank rejoined us; he stank abominably of cat urine. We watched as the leopard got shakily to its feet, glanced darkly at us, and skulked off into the bush.
FIGURE 5. Laurence Frank prepares to release the aforementioned leopard to the wild. The cat was regaining consciousness when this shot was taken, and worries were growing that it would begin mauling people. (Glen Martin)
“Gee,” said Frank. “That went well, didn’t it?”
By any measure, Frank has accomplished real things on the ground in Kenya. He has built good relations with tribal people, white ranchers, and lodge owners. He has had great success in eliminating the Furadan poisonings that were wiping out predators across the country. As a persistent, though never didactic, advocate for conservation, he is changing human reactions to lions and hyenas one person at a time. Pessimistic by nature, he is quick to characterize his life’s work as bootless and unproductive, but there is no doubt Kenya’s predators would be in even worst straits if he had not been in their corner for the past forty years.
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