Safari Journal - August 2022
Our Great National Parks
A five-part documentary series about the world's most breathtaking national parks and the wildlife that live there, produced and narrated by president Barack Obama - who protected more public lands and waters than any other U.S. President in history.
Documentary can viewed only on NETFLIX and features footage of wildlife never before seen. From the executive producer of Blue Planet II - a Wild Space production in association with Higher Ground Productions and Freeborne Media
Part 1 — “A World of Wonder” - features
Loango National Park, Gabon
Where the Congo Rainforest meets the Atlantic Ocean, Hippos leave their fresh water lagoons and carry their 3 ton frames to the beach in order to surf the ocean swells. “ The natural world can continue to surprise us as long as we give it space to thrive” - Barack Obama
An outtake from the documentary shows 30 minutes of what hippos usually do under water in a fresh water lagoon.
Loango National Park is located on the Atlantic coast of south-west Gabon, approximately 300 km from the Gabonese capital of Libreville. The park was established in 2002 and covers an area of 1,550 km².
Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park, Madagascar
This remote National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has species found nowhere else on earth. Native only to the Tingsy, the Dekens Shivaka lemur will leap up to 30 feet, from jagged peak to peak, in the dry season, to find new sources of food over these gaping chasms.
The word tsingy is indigenous to the Malagasy language as a description of the karst badlands of Madagascar. The word can be translated into English as “where one cannot walk barefoot”.
By Heinonlein - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44577688
See the site location for this reserve and read more about other wildlife in this area.
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
“In 1872, two million acres in Wyoming became the first national park in the world. Yellowstone National Park was one of America’s greatest ideas - wild space for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. It caught on - now 15% of the land in the world and 8% of the oceans have been protected.” - Barack Obama
Manuel Antonio Park, Costa Rica
The Three Fingered Sloth has the slowest metabolism of any mammal. It could take up to a month to digest a single leaf. After a rain the sloth changes color, to a vivid green caused by an algae found only on sloths - an entire micro-kingdom living in his fur - consisting of over 80 species. This sloth acts as a tiny pharmaceutical factory to a fungus that is proving to be effective fighting cancer, malaria, and antibiotic super-bugs.
Rainforests are home to 1/2 of all life on land and to 1/4 of all our medicines originate in rainforests.
Photo Credit: Sean Crane / Minden Pictures
Kakadu National Park
When Mullets begin to move to their spanning grounds, it causes the greatest gathering of saltwater crocodiles on earth - along with a quarter million Magpie geese.
Kakadu’s 8,000 square miles (20,000 km2), one-third owned and leased back by Aboriginal peoples and covering virtually the whole South Alligator River system, was designated a U.N. World Heritage Site for both its wildlife and cultural history. The oldest known human artworks are here, along with wallabies and kangaroos, ferocious and occasionally man-eating saltwater crocodiles up to 33 feet (10 m) long (Crocodile Dundee was filmed here).
Raine Island - Great Barrier Reef, Australia
One and a half thousand miles of reefs, atolls, and islands - the largest coral reef system in the world. One half mile long Raine Island is a lifeline for 90% of the endangered green sea turtles in the region. Thousands travel huge distances across the pacific to lay over one million eggs each season, as they have for over 1,000 years.
If you found these articles interesting, check back for another edition in this series. Please "like" our social media pages to be notified.
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Botswana Predator Conservation Trust
For over two decades, the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust has been working to study and preserve wildlife in Africa.
Tusk's approach to conservation recognizes that the long term future for wildlife and Africa's other natural resources is dependent on sustainable rural development. more... Tusk believes that if conservation is to succeed and environmental degradation to be reversed then education needs to be promoted at an early age.
Cheetah Conservation Botswana (CCB) aims to preserve the nation’s cheetah population through scientific research, community outreach and conservation education, working with rural communities to promote coexistence with Botswana’s rich diversity of carnivore species.