For generations, conservationists around the world have spent billions of dollars and countless hours trying to restore wildlife and wildlife habitat in areas of sub-Sahara Africa decimated by many factors, including poachers, corrupt governments, hungry local populations, and a lack of education and experience in how to balance current needs and wants with long-term, sustainable goals that benefit both wildlife and local people. And while these efforts often produce short-term results, long-term successes have been few and far between. In Bringing Back the Lions: International Hunters, Local Tribespeople, and the Miraculous Rescue of a Doomed Ecosystem in Mozambique, Mike Arnold, founder of Mike Arnold Outdoors, details how a small group of professional hunters and their partners turn a decimated and near-barren backcountry into one of the world’s premier African wildlands.
By the early 1990s, the once magnificent natural area known as Coutada 11 in Mozambique’s Zambeze Delta is poached-out, a tragic but common situation in today’s wilderness areas. The arrival of hunting safari outfitter Mark Haldane and his many and varied partners began a decades-long, difficult journey to take the defiled and uninhabitable land and make it whole again. The result is both a modern conservation miracle and a blueprint for others to follow across Africa and around the world.
“With the earth’s population approaching 8 billion, working with local people to conserve wildlife is an urgent necessity, not an option, especially in Africa,” said Ludo Wurfbain, Director, Rowland Ward Foundation. “To be successful, conservation projects need to benefit local people, increase wildlife and habitat, and sustain fair-chase hunting opportunities. Bringing Back the Lions tells the story of how the restoration of the ecosystem and the social and economic advances of a local community in the Zambeze Delta have gone hand-in-hand. Arnold brings this fascinating conservation success story to life.”
“Professor Arnold’s work is a wonderful mix of travelogue, adventure yarn, historical novel, and environmental odyssey — an uplifting tale of ecological and social restoration,” said Ian Sherman of Oxford University Press.
Bringing Back the Lions is available at www.mikearnoldoutdoors.com or by CLICKING HERE.
