Wildlife Related Books - Non-fiction

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Don't run whatever you do

- Peter Allison
- ISBN 9781857885019



A charming, off-the-wall and thoroughly entertaining travel book recounting the true-life adventures of a young safari guide living in the Botswana bush, confronting the world's fiercest terrain and wildest animals and, most challenging of all, herd of gaping tourists.
Despite the fact that "I had none of the qualities you would expect of a rugged bush man.... I'm markedly uncoordinated can't repair vehicles or understand how they work, I don't like guns and sweat profusely when nervous or excited... which is exactly how watching animals makes me feel", Peter Allison works as a top safari guide in the Okavango Delta, on oasis of wetland and wildlife in the middle of the Kalahari desert.
Full of outrageous-but-true tales of the people and animals he has encountered - the half-naked missing member of the British royal family; the mouse that overdosed on malaria pills; the monkeys with an underwear fetish; and last, but by no means least, "Spielberg" the video-obsessed Japanese tourist - Allison's stories are often self-deprecating and always hilarious.
Full of essential wisdom like "never stand behind a frightened zebra" (they are prone to explosive flatulence when scared!), this is a wonderful and vivid portrait of what the life of a safari guide is really like.
Peter's humour is exceeded only by his love and respect for the animals. The next best thing to sitting around a campfire late at night and listening to him talking, "Don't run whatever you do" is warm, funny and utterly engaging.

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Don't look behind you

- Peter Allison
- ISBN 0781599214696



Romantic notions aside, being a safari guide isn't always particularly glamorous. Quite often it is beset with challenges, like having to spend a night in a thorn tree with marauding hyenas below. But safari guide Peter Allison lives for such moments. Here, the author of the widely praised "Whatever you do, don't run" details his time spent in safari camps not only in Botswana but also in South Africa, Mozambique, and Namibia - places he loves, despite how much it feels like they just might be trying to kill him.
In "Don't look behind you", Allison recounts adventures few would live to tell. Like the time he and a group of bored guides launched a makeshift raft into a foaming river teeming with hippos and crocodiles. Or the afternoon he heard monkeys telling him that a leopard was walking around the camp. and then realized the leopard was in his tent, with him in it.

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The Man-Eaters of Eden

- Robert R Frump
- ISBN 9781592288922



The hand that tour guide Neville Edwards noticed waving to him, beckoning him, from the thick of South Africa's Kruger National Park was startling and puzzling at the same time: No sane person would be in the wild on foot and alone. It was only when the scavening black-backed jackal come into view- the waving arm lodged between its teeth - that Edwards knew another refugee had fallen victim to ... the lions.
Today, Mozambican refugees are being eaten alive en masse as they attempt to find freedom by walking across Kruger National Park - an area often referred to by travel guides as "Africa's Eden" - yet no one seems to know about these massacres, and nothing is being done to stop them.
So begins the ivestigative journey of award-winning journalist Robert R. Frump. In july of 2002, his plane touched dwon on the airfields west of Kruger, and what he discovered was beyond belief.
The questions he intended to ask were simple, but the issues surrounding them complex. Was a human life always more valuable than a lion's? If so, why was that not apparent in Kruger? Frump broaches these subjects and many others as he attempts to literally walk the Kruger himself. He presents his findings with a sense of urgency for the truth that unwaveringly portrays the facts as they were revealed to him. The Man-Eaters of Eden is a deftly written study of the park's two thousands lions, of the helpless refugees, and of the crossed paths the two species travel.

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Hokoyo
Silent Spoors & Parting Blades

- Julie Anne M Edwards
- ISBN 9780620397414



An incredible true story of an amazingly brave woman whose passion and love for the wild fights for the survival of the rhino, an endangered animal of Africa, with nothing but a bicycle and a menacing horse who became her best friend. Julie Anne Edwards takes us on a fearless journey of passion, madness and love. Covering Europe and down into the continent of Africa meeting extraordinary people who admired her strength and purpose. This book is not just about animals or a biography, this is a cry from the animals, Julie Anne is their voice.

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Elephantoms
Tracking the Elephant

- Lyall Watson
- ISBN 9780143024538



As a child in South Africa, spending summers exploring the wild with his boyhood friends, Lyall Watson came face to face with his first elephant. From that moment on, Watson's fascination grew into a lifelong obsession with understanding the nature and behaviour of this impressive creature. Around the world, the elephant - at once a symbol of spiritual power and physical endurance - has been worshipped as a god and hunted for sport. In this captivating portrait of the elephant, Watson draws from scientific research, anthropological studies, and personal experience to document the animal's wide-ranging capabilities to remember and to mourn; and he reminds us of its rich mythic origins, its evolution, and its devastation in recent history. Part meditation on an elusive animal, part evocation of the power of place, Elephantoms presents an alluring mix of the mysteries of nature and the wonders of childhood.

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Insider's Guide
Top Wildlife Photography Spots in South Africa

- Shem Compion
- 9781770098350



Shem Compion, professional wildlife photographer, naturalist and photographic tour leader, shares his secret spots and top tips in this comprehensive guide to photographing wildlife in South Africa. Filled with detailed and up-to-date information, this book tells you where to go, how to get there, what you'll find in the parks and wildlife areas of South Africa and how to make your pictures truly professional. Compion's photos will inspire you, as well as providing guidelines of how to get the same stunning results.

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Part of the Pride
My Life among the big cats of Africa

- Kevin Richardson
- ISBN 9780312556747



About a year ago, a video started to circulate on YouTube of a remarkable man named Kevin Richardson, an animal custodian in a South African animal park. The video showed Richardson in his day-to-day work with some of the world's most dangerous animals, looking them directly in the eye, crouching down at their level, playing with them, and sometimes even kissing them on the nose. The video's popularity skyrocketed, and Richardson became an international sensation. In Part of the Pride, Kevin Richardson tells the story of his life and work, how he grew from a young boy who cared for so many animals that he was called "The Bird Man of Orange Grove" to an adolescent who ran wild and, finally, to a man who is able to cross the divide between humans and predators.
As a self-taught animal behaviorist, Richardson has broken every safety rule known to humans when working with these wild animals. Flouting common misconceptions that breaking animals' spirits with sticks and chains is the best way to subdue them, he uses love, understanding, and trust to develop personal bonds with the animals. His unique method of getting to know their individual personalities, what makes each of them angry, happy, upset, or irritated - just like a mother understands a child - has caused them to accept him into their fold as one of their own.

Like anyone else who truly loves animals, Richardson allows their own stories to share center stage as he tells readers about Napoleon and Tau, the two male lions he calls his "brothers"; the amazing Meg, a lioness Richardson taught to swim; the fierce Tsavo, who savagely attacked him; and the heartbreaking little hyena called Homer who didn't live to see his first birthday. Richardson also chronicles his work on the forthcoming feature film White Lion and has a lot to say about the state of lion farming and hunting in South Africa today. In Part of the Pride, Richardson, with novelist Tony Park, delves into the mind of the big cats and their world to show readers a different way of understanding the dangerous big cats of Africa

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Man-eaters, Mambas and Marula Madness
A Game Ranger's Life in the Lowveld

- Mario Cesare
- ISBN 9781868424610



What started as a vision for the Olifants River Game Reserve has become the story of a game ranger's life. With a naturalist's eye for detail as well as the bigger picture of managing a fragile ecosystem through years of drought and plenty, Mario Cesare brings a storyteller's delight - and a dash of Italian passion - to sharing his world.
Life-and-death encounters with lion, elephant and buffalo are balanced by rescues and interventions as these giants of the lowveld suffer the effects of human interference in their ecosystem. There are problems with poachers and with rapacious neighbours; then the delights of success - and in the case of the elephant population, the conundrums of too much success.

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The Game Rangers
A Bundle of authentic stories from the African Bush
Revised Edition

- Jan Roderigues
- ISBN 9780620167123



Short stories of Game Rangers such as Kobus Kruger, Louis Olivier, Dirk Ackerman, Salomon Joubert and so on.

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Africa: The Legends Live On

- Jan Roderigues
- ISBN 9780620411820

Short stories of Game Rangers such as Elias le Riche, Pieter Retief, Johan Fourie and so on.