"Out of nowhere, there was this huge commotion and I began snapping as many pictures as possible without even realising what was happening," Larkan explains. "A massive crocodile had latched onto one of the elephant’s trunks and the elephant attempted to drag the beast out of the water."

Obviously realising this was a meal too much, the croc released its grip on the elephant's trunk and was sent back into the water by another angry member of the herd.

"Before we knew it, this remarkable experience was over. My hands were trembling and I could not quite believe what I had just witnessed. This is why we love the bush and I will cherish these images for the rest of my life."

Images and story: Gareth Larkan

In Canadian national parks, monitoring strategies come in all shapes and sizes, and involve a variety of different tools, from 'mist nets' that capture wild birds for study, to net guns and helicopters used in the capture of wolves and caribou to better understand the predator-prey systems that have evolved over millennia. And with rapidly changing technology, the approaches to conducting all of this research and monitoring have also been shifting.

In the span of a few decades, radio collar and GPS technology in particular has advanced to the point that animals can be tagged or collared and monitored remotely, reducing disturbance and allowing them to continue with their normal activities while providing reams of data that give rangers insights into their movements, use of habitat and much more.

Very High Frequency (VHF) radio collars had been used in Canadian parks to track wildlife for decades, helping rangers to locate animals (on the ground or from the air) on a regular basis and collect basic information about their home range size, seasonal movement patterns and habitat use. GPS technology has made this work much easier by increasing the amount of information gathered while reducing the need for costly monitoring flights and allowing for data collection on a 24-hour basis.

The critical first step to using any collar technology is actually getting the unit on. This involves the careful capture of an animal, and its handling and release after the collar is fitted. Monitoring the animal after it’s freed is the next step – rangers need to ensure the collars are functioning properly and the animal is not suffering any negative effects. The impact of capture strategies on animals can be a controversial issue, so it’s crucial that this work is carried out humanely and with the least possible impact on wildlife. Today, wildlife capture has to follow strict rules that are backed by animal-care committees responsible for overseeing the welfare of any animals used in studies in the national parks.

When the capture of a target species isn’t necessary, less intrusive strategies come into play, including surveys – conducted on the ground or from the air – to track population numbers and trends. Remote cameras and specialized microphones are also part of the 'unobtrusive' monitoring arsenal, and provide data like acoustic files and digital imagery, which can be archived for future reference and used to identify a broad range of species.

These less intrusive approaches to monitoring eliminate the need to physically capture wildlife, lowering the risk of injury. They’re also better at helping rangers to understand the relationships between humans and wildlife, including how animals respond when human activities infringe on their habitat. 

Differences aside, there's one thing all of these strategies have in common: their main aim is to protect and maintain animal populations and their habitats, a primary role of parks and protected areas around the world.

And if you like your infographics better with a bit of motion, watch the animated version!

Image © RichardAtUCT

Africa's unique wildlife is particularly at risk. Here in South Africa we've lost 594 rhinos to poachers this year (Rhino poaching tracker) and many other species are being targeted (across the continent, an elephant is killed for its tusks every 15 minutes). One organisation that's working to highlight the growing threat posed rampant wildlife crime is the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). Operating on the frontlines of environmental crime (sometimes undercover and often face to face with illegal traders), the London-based NGO works to gather evidence about criminal activities that range from illegal whaling to ivory smuggling. Eager to do our bit to raise awareness, we teamed up with the EIA to create this animated infographic to help publicise some pretty shocking statistics and the organisation's efforts to protect the natural world. Watch (and share!)...

Image © ENOUGH Project

Lions gatecrashing your picnic, cobras under the bed and elephants at the washing line ... we've been telling you for a while that camping out in the African bush has its close calls and suitably wild encounters. And that's something photographer Alison Buttigieg discovered for herself on a recent trip to the Mabuasehube Game Reserve in Botswana when a procession of nocturnal 'visitors' turned up at the (leaking) camp shower.

The trickle of water (a rarity in the region's dry Kalahari climate), first enticed an elusive brown hyena ... followed by a group of thirsty lions. According to Buttigieg, the cats (six of them!) spent the entire night at the campsite, making the most of the amenities, wrestling with each other and 'inspecting' the camp tablecloth! After you've checked out her amazing snaps (there's a video too), you'll want to add 'always check the bathroom for lions' to your safari checklist!  

You can check out more of Alison Buttigieg's wildlife snaps here.

It’s a conservation debate that’s as fiery and emotive as they get: how does South Africa, which is home to 90% of Africa's rhinos, go about protecting them from a poaching pandemic that’s likely to claim over a thousand victims before the year is done (and could eventually devastate rhino populations)? That debate really intensified this week when the South African government gave its strongest indication yet of the route it plans to take: the country’s environment minister announced that South Africa would back "the establishment of a well-regulated international trade" in rhino horn and seek permission for a one-off sale of stockpiles worth around $1-billion.

With the news setting off heated discussion online, we spoke to one expert who believes well-regulated trade is the right answer. Conservation economist Michael 't Sas-Rolfes, who has written extensively about the market factors driving the poaching crisis and the ‘economics’ of rhino conservation, answers a few of our questions on this controversial topic (and if you’d like to add your voice to the legalisation debate, have your say on our Facebook page).

With a background in business and economics, you haven’t really followed the ‘conventional’ path into the area of wildlife conservation. How do you think those skills help you to see the poaching crisis from a different angle?

I think they are not only helpful, but essential. The poaching crisis – and indeed many other conservation problems – is driven by human behaviour. To solve such problems we need to come to grips with the incentives driving that behaviour and the systems that create those incentives. So we need to have an understanding of social sciences more than biological sciences: that includes economics, psychology, sociology and politics! Most importantly, we need to understand how markets work.

For those of us who don’t speak ‘economese’, it can be tricky to understand the poaching problem and the rhino-horn market in rigorous economic terms. Is there a simple way to break things down?

Simply put, the way things are set up right now, poachers and illegal traders have much stronger incentives – and more money at their disposal – to kill rhinos than individual rhino owners and custodians have to protect them.  This is because Asian demand for rhino horn is real and not expected to decline in the near future, and – most importantly – Asian suppliers are expecting rhino horn to become commercially extinct and therefore increasingly valuable over time.  We are facing some very powerful market forces here.

Do you think more people would see legalization of the rhino horn trade as a viable option if they were able to understand the economic forces that drive the horn market?

Most definitely!

The widely accepted timeline seems to be that the poaching crisis was sparked around 2007 thanks to rising demand in Vietnam and the emergence of the infamous cancer-curing myth. But you believe the timeline is actually quite different…

Yes, I think that is a somewhat misguided interpretation of what actually happened (as seen through a Western lens of understanding). Rhino horn has been a valued commodity in Asia for thousands of years, for both ornamental and medicinal purposes, mostly in elite circles.  An essential part of the horn’s current value is its scarcity. As a medicine, it is – and has always been – used to treat a wide range of conditions related to inflammation and toxicity in the body. In some circles it is considered the ultimate medicine to treat serious (and not so serious) cases – i.e. it is the Rolls Royce of traditional Chinese medicine. Evidence suggests that demand is rising in both Vietnam and parts of China along with increased affluence (not just for cancer treatment, but for all sorts of medicinal and ornamental uses, but with the underlying prestige factor). The poaching crisis was sparked when we responded to that increasing demand in exactly the wrong way: by restricting the supply. Basic economics tells us that if you reduce the supply in the face of increasing demand, market prices will rise. If prices rise, so do the potential rewards for poachers and illegal traders.

Many anti-poaching campaigns are aiming to ‘reduce’ Asian demand for rhino horn through awareness and education. Can ‘reeducation’ work?

I am skeptical that this approach can deliver results fast enough to bring poaching down to sustainable levels in the short and even medium term. We are dealing with a product market based on very deeply held cultural values and beliefs. Those advocating demand reduction are unable to tell us how quickly this can work and – most importantly – how much it will cost to be effective and who is going to pay for it.

Aside from awareness campaigns, you argue that enhanced security (and what you call after-the-fact enforcement) will not be enough to halt rampant poaching. Why?

Poachers and other criminals have very short time horizons. If you offer them a huge reward now with a fairly low probability of being caught and punished at some time in the vague future, they will typically ignore that potential cost. And what is the point of prosecuting them a year or two later anyway? By then a whole bunch of new poachers and criminals are already in the game. To stop poaching you need to convince poachers that they are very unlikely to succeed in their initial poaching attempt – that it simply won’t be worth it in the first place. The only way you can do that is by lowering the value of their potential initial take (dehorning rhinos and/or reducing the price of horn) and – most critically – having such effective security on the ground that the rhinos are almost impossible to get to.  

What would you say to those who feel that farming rhinos for their horns would effectively reduce one of Africa’s most iconic wild animals to the status of livestock?

I fear we are faced with a stark choice: a lower risk option of white rhino ‘farming’ as a buffer to wild populations of all species – or the continued severe threat to all species and likely reduction (and even extinction) of almost all wild rhino populations.

Even if trade is legalised and farming rhinos becomes a reality, is it possible that some consumers may still seek out horns sourced from “wild” (poached) rhinos rather than their “farmed” counterparts (the same way wild-caught salmon is preferred over the farmed variety)?

I consider this less likely with rhinos as we are not talking about artificial and intensive feed-lot farming, but rather ranching – periodically removing the horn from free-ranging rhinos (that is by far the most cost-effective way to produce horn). Conscious meat consumers avoid grain-fed feed-lot beef but are happy to eat grass-fed free range beef, even if the cattle in question are not truly ‘wild’. I would not expect rhinos to be much different. If you offer consumers the choice between genuine certified legal free-range rhino horn and illegal horn of unknown origin that may be a fake, I suspect few consumers would pay a premium for the latter. If anything, most would probably be willing to pay far less.

What about those who argue that South Africa’s government agencies are too corrupt and ineffective to properly monitor and manage legal trade in rhino horn?

You could argue the same for controlling the illegal trade. The argument doesn’t make any sense.  With legal trade, the owners and custodians would be getting the money – lots of it – that is now all being taken by criminals. With legal trade the owners and custodians would be able to afford better security and have a much stronger incentive to protect and breed up their rhinos.

Even if South Africa decides to move forward on the road to legalisation, legal trade hinges on approval from CITES – which can only be granted at the next CITES conference in 2016. What are the logistics of that approval process and who would be involved?

The logistics are intimidating. South Africa will have to secure the buy-in of key consumer countries, which will need to amend their laws to allow for this. The mechanism is also critical – there are many wrong ways to set up legal trade and only one right one. There is still a lot of work to be done on this and everyone needs to be involved, from government agencies to private agents and NGOs.

Can trade be legalised in time to save Africa’s rhinos? 

I regret that we are likely to lose a lot more rhinos in the next few years, whatever happens. With a properly established legal trade we have a better chance of navigating our way out of this mess and securing the future of most rhinos into the longer term. Without legal trade I fear rhino numbers will be severely reduced. I think extinction is unlikely, but the longer-term prognosis for rhinos will not be as good.

It’s not necessarily what you’d imagine a drone to be like ... especially if you've seen images of military-grade drones. It may even elicit a smile of disbelief. But its tiny size is an advantage. It can be launched from anywhere – a road, a field, a clearing in a woodland – and then landed again in the same place, making it immediately deployable and highly flexible. 

The drones are useful in the daytime, but it's at night that they come into their own. They film and broadcast live imaging directly to those on the ground and can detect a lit cigarette even from a couple of kilometres away. The thermal imaging takes a little while to adjust your eye to, but almost immediately patterns become distinct ... a range of white dots shows the presence of an antelope herd, a single large block becomes a rhino and the long neck of a giraffe is instantly recognizable against the backdrop of trees. 

Conservation organisation SPOTS (Strategic Protection of Threatened Species) has been working on preventative measures to tackle the rhino-poaching problem in South Africa. Peter Milton, one of the founders, explains: “We saw so much money and time wasted in conservation programmes simply through inefficiency. We were convinced that we could come up with new, effective measures that would make a real difference.” These UAVs are the result.

You can’t hear them until they’re right above you – and even then, you can't see them at night unless they want to be seen. As a result, suspected poachers have no idea they've been spotted and their exact location exposed ... until it's too late. It’s not possible to hide after that. 

People often ask how far the UAVs can fly and the answer is not that far: they rely on signals that need a clear line of sight with the instruments on the ground. But that doesn’t matter – as long as they can stay in the air for a little while. The idea is for the drones to be deployed in areas where poaching is suspected (following tip-offs or the discovery of tracks, for example). Like an anti-poaching team on the ground, it's unlikely that a drone would ever be sent out without some prior knowledge. But unlike a team of people on foot, the UAV has one huge speed advantage – with a 5km radius, it can quickly cover a vast amount of ground, and cut down on the human risk that anti-poaching units routinely face. If poachers are spotted, the drone can make itself highly visible, switching on a range of lights as it flies. Would-be poachers are likely to abandon their plans upon seeing an aerial vehicle skimming the treetops. It is technology that cannot be beaten by hiding. 

Does it actually work though? Lucian, the pilot, says, “I’ve been using it on farms in the Free State where stock theft is an issue. As it’s full moon I’ve just phoned to find out how many animals have gone missing and when I’m needed back to fly again. For the first time in many months not a single animal disappeared from any of those farms.”

So are drones the solution for saving rhinos? With conservation resources stretched thin, the South African courts swamped with cases and poachers often out on bail for many months, they may very well be. In the war against poachers, the best measures are preventative ones. After all, bringing a poacher to justice after the fact will not bring a poached rhino back to life. But with conservation drones acting like our eyes in the sky, the rhino may simply not be pursued in the first place.  

I came across this grizzly bear track while working in the Rocky Mountains and made an imprint alongside it with my hiking boot – I needed an image that would convey the message that people and wildlife often share the same trails.  You could just as easily substitute my boot imprint with the tread of a running shoe or a mountain bike tyre – both trail running and riding are becoming increasingly popular in this part of the world. 

While there are many 'official' trails formally developed for our activities, many have had no formal planning or design. In some cases, these are what I like to call 'wild trails' – trails that form an important part of a wildlife habitat and are used by various animals to get around, forage and hunt. So what happens when these 'wild trails' are appropriated by humans? The effects on local wildlife are difficult to assess, but not impossible to predict. 

Wariness and vigilance are two traits that help animals survive by allowing them to recognize and respond to potential threats before they're in imminent danger. When the perceived threat is of the human kind, there's a good chance the animal will retreat before the human is even aware of its presence. A single close encounter probably won't have a lasting effect ... but once humans begin to move through an area frequently, many animals may simply choose to avoid it. Of course, some animals could react in the opposite way, and in extreme cases, could become conditioned or habituated to human presence – with potentially serious consequences.

How an animal reacts depends on a number of factors, including the species involved, the individual animal itself and its previous experiences, as well the specific circumstances at the time of the encounter. A hungry female grizzly that's just emerged from a winter spent underground with her cubs (that now depend on her for food and security) may respond quite differently than a lone bear fattened up by feasting on berries in late summer. Similarly, a wary wolf that's not used to seeing humans will probably not react the same way as a wolf that frequently encounters people.

So does this mean we should all stay out of the wilderness? No. It simply means we could all do with a little more awareness and knowledge about the trails we use and the potential for a path-crossing encounter. 'Wild trails' in particular should be avoided – in most cases, using them reduces the already limited habitat species have available for doing the things they need to do to survive. In contrast, official trails are designed with wildlife in mind, they're clearly signposted and their layout has been carefully planned to reduce the potential for conflict and ensure humans and wildlife can happily coexist.

So, the next time you're venturing out into the wilderness, take the path most travelled ... and leave the wilder paths to the wildlife.