The programs for the weeks of 3/17/19 & 3/24/19 were chosen by Rotary e-Club Member, Berenice Jones Classens.

South Africa’s Kruger National Park – fighting poachers and disease | DW nature Documentary

Published on Sep 8, 2018
“Poachers are destroying our country’s future. Animals are our capital,” says Rendani Nethengwe, a gamekeeper in the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

Nethengwe is one of the most experienced rangers in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, responsible for the protection of animals in every respect: from poachers, from disease. This documentary accompanies him, veterinarian Peter Buss and zoologist Antoine Marchal on their forays in Kruger National Park – stunning an elephant for a tuberculosis check, hunting down poachers and monitoring the wild dog population. Kruger National Park ranger Rendani Nethengwe holds out a bloody cartridge he has just cut out of the carcass of a dead elephant. “It’s sad,” he says. “Poachers are destroying our future. Animals are our capital – they bring tourists and money into the country.” He is currently very worried about the elephants in the game reserve after identifying the human tuberculosis pathogen in a blood sample taken from a dead one. Now he regularly takes blood samples from all the animals in Kruger Park. Wild dogs are among the rarest animals in Kruger but things are looking up. “We now have a really big pack of them here in the park again,” says zoologist Antoine Marchal, who has been bringing the dogs together in a group. That normally ends in bloody carnage – but this time it has created a happy family instead. In any case, wild dogs need to hunt large in large packs to survive. Something that started as an experiment now promises to save the rare canines from extinction.