Stories from South Africa: Tracking in the Bush

I just returned from the most epic adventure of my life: a month of studying wildlife tracking in South Africa. Kersey Lawrence of Original Wisdom and Lee Gutteridge of Nature Guide Training hosted this phenomenal tracking intensive, featuring the landscape, plants, and animals of the wild bush of greater Kruger area.

Over the span of this program, we roamed this landscape by game drive viewer and by foot, encountering many of the animals who dwell here. We trained in recognition of spoor, to “identify, interpret, follow, and find” these animals — seeking to understand the interconnected whole of this place through the lens of tracking.

For me, these animals, plants, and land now exist in a real, tangible way — filled with color, texture, movement, and smells. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing notes, photographs, and stories from South Africa, to relive those moments and share the inspiration I received from the land, its varied inhabitants, our human mentors and guides, and my tracker colleagues on this journey.

What’s Tracking? 

Tracking is a holistic process of coming to understand the land, its inhabitants, and their interactions and interconnections, through recognizing and identifying spoor (tracks or sign), interpreting behavior, following a particular animal or group of animals, and finding those animals (without disturbing their natural behaviors).

Tracker Certification North America, who administers CyberTracker evaluations on this continent, recently published a StoryMap that speaks to this. TCNA President Casey McFarland speaks beautifully to this question here.

I’ve been practicing and deepening this skill for about ten years, through monthly gatherings of the Minnesota Wildlife Tracking Project and through periodic evaluations by Cybertracker Evaluators. Cybertracker divides the skill of Tracking into two categories: Track & Sign Identification and Interpretation, and Trailing — following a fresh trail to see the animal.

Who Can Learn Tracking?

Tracking skills can be learned by any human with intention, attention, and patience. You can engage in this process anywhere, with any creatures. Kersey Lawrence recommends a daily practice of a “Ten Minute Walk”: walk outside for ten minutes, noticing how the tracks (including yours!) age day to day. This allows you to tune into the landscape, the weather, how the substrate (ground or ground cover) is registering your movements in this moment, who else is moving there, and how those fresh tracks age over time. With consistent practice over time, we become familiar with what tracks look like — learning the vocabulary of a new language.

What’s the Purpose of Tracking?

Tracking can be used in many ways, both professionally and personally. In South Africa, conservation teams track both the protected white and black rhino to gather data on their movements and associations, and anti-poaching units track down the humans who would kill them and take their horns to sell on the black market.

Tracking can also help us understand interrelations between animals or plants in a region. In South Africa, a common sighting was trees stripped of their bark or uprooted entirely with nibbled root systems — a sign of elephant feeding activity. On one occasion, we also noticed a southern yellow-billed hornbill hopping behind a troop of dwarf mongoose, feeding on the insects stirred up by their passage. In North America, Panthera and Department of Natural Resources researchers use tracking to gather data on mountain lion range and movements, interactions with prey species, and the benefit of their actions within the ecosystem.

Tracking also supports basic human health. Through the practice of tracking in community, I experience curiosity, fresh air and sunshine, and the benefit of interacting with fellow trackers with their own deep naturalist knowledge.

Every time I track, I am reminded that I am a small part of a vast interconnected whole, delighted by the stories left by my neighbors on this land, and humbled by the immense intricacies of these interactions. I will never know it all. This will be a lifelong journey, and I’m grateful for each new story along the way.

Stories from South Africa

Posted by kirsten.welge

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