WILD CONNECTION - Award Winning Short Documentary

When it comes to conservation, there is no one right way. Some people think that we must be completely separated, but I think people have, over generations, forgotten how connected we actually are to this world. We are from this earth. We've separated ourselves. We've built walls around our cities. We've closed ourselves into houses. We've started farming, chopped down forests so we can plant one plant and eat that. We've created a billion sheep, a billion cows, 20 billion chickens and things like this and disregarded the rest of the natural world to the point that people have forgotten that we are connected. Hey, I'm Nick Clear. I'm from South Africa. I'm 35 years old and I'm a wildlife guide and photographer. I've been photographing and going on safari since I was a little child, since before I can remember, to be honest. My name is Kristina Polerius and I'm 32 years old and I'm from Stockholm, Sweden. It's always been my dream to give back and to help natural places in any way possible. Twelve years ago I took the leap and I went here on my own and I never went back home. I studied finance and marketing. I started working in a bank. I was miserable. I truly was miserable. I hated living in the city, I hated the traffic, the noise, the everything. So I actually resigned and moved to the bush. Just at that stage what I thought was going to be a few weeks and almost instantly, I think it took me a week, I just was like, you know, this is the be all and end all of life. It's so nice to live out here. The people are better, the atmosphere is better, the stress levels are much lower. The more and more that I do this, the more that I just want to give back to the wild because it's given me so much. It's just good for your soul. Nick and I, we are partners. We've been a couple for about a year and we've been friends for many years and we are fortunate enough to work together and to share this life in the bush together. I'm very fortunate that I've managed to find a partner that shares my passion. The first time I came to Tiger Canyon ten years ago, John Viety, the man that started up Tiger Canyon, was here and he had invited me up. I arrived with a friend of mine late afternoon and was told that there was two cheetahs that lived on the property in a separate area to the tigers and that we were able to walk there, that the cheetahs were no problem. So I went out for a walk to try and see if by some chance I could get lucky and find the cheetahs. I had a strange feeling and I turned and looked behind me and there was the two cheetahs. They were two brothers. They were the ones that were hand raised and what started the Cheetah Project here at Tiger Canyon. They were raised in a captive situation. They were not fed the right things from a young age, which is the case in a lot of places around the world. And so these two young males initially developed something called bowleg, which meant that their bones were not growing at the right pace. One bone grew the right pace and the one was shorter, which meant that they were not good at hunting. This required them to be operated on and hold it in a zoo for a little bit of time. And then we were released here at Tiger Canyon and the hope was that they would then adapt into a wild situation. So I wanted to see personally how close I could get to them. I didn't have any intention of going and touching them or anything, but I wanted to see if I could go and sit up close and have an encounter with them basically. And as I started walking up, they started purring. And I couldn't believe my ears. I thought that I was going a little bit crazy, to be honest, but they started purring. And as I approached, they both stood up and approached me and just straight into me, head-bumped me, started purring, I sat down. But that feeling, nobody had told me that, so that feeling was just profound. It was out of this world, the time that I had with them there. My friend's face was quite something. He was in shock, but it was incredible. And that feeling for me was hugely powerful. And from that moment, I looked at cheetahs very differently to what I had before. And I hadn't managed to spend much time with them because their numbers were so low. I hadn't spent much time with cheetahs in a wild situation. And it's evolved, yeah, it's evolved from there, but that was a hugely powerful moment for me. The area that we currently live in, well, the Tagi Canyons is in South Africa. The Free State, right in the center, down to the south of South Africa, used to be a stronghold for cheetah. And there used to be loads of cheetahs all the way through Africa, but this particular spot, there used to be many, many, and there are none left. Unfortunately, humans are taking over. We're building houses, we're farming, so basically the natural areas are getting smaller and smaller everywhere in Africa, and even other places. So here we sit with Mara. She's basically one of the ambassador cheetahs for her species. She's one of two girls here at Tagi Canyon. She lives inside of a 1,000 hectare fenced-off area, which is about 2,400 acres. It's her sister and one male, and then at the moment her four cubs. Mara initially, we thought, had some problems. We didn't think that she could breed. She had mated and things and wasn't producing cubs until the little Zambezi came along. She gave birth to just the one. And I think something in her psychology, until she had that cub, was a little bit off. She was never hugely social with us. She would allow you to come and sit relatively close by, 20, 30 feet or something like that, but if you wanted to go any closer than that, she would sort of get up, move off, and sit down again. Once she had Zambezi, she became a wonderful cat to be around. I can't explain what it was, but she just seemed to be a lot calmer. She's a very gentle soul. She's very accepting of us. She truly enjoys our company when we spend time with her. You can see that she's very inviting. She even calls her cubs out so we can spend time with the cubs and get to know them as well. You can see in her demeanor when we're sitting close to her, she's just got not a bad bone in her body. She's a wonderful, wonderful cat to be around. Nothing really ruffles her feathers or anything like that. All of these four cats have picked up this incredible calmness that she has. What's changed for me with cheetahs and why I'm so strongly attached and associated with them is because of this relationship built up on being able to walk up and sit with them in a wild situation, go hunting with them, sit in amongst their cubs and be close to them. I've built a really, really personal relationship with some of these cats, and they've become my friends. Of all the big cats that are out there, they are the weaker of them, of the lions and leopards and tigers and whatever else. And I like to fight for the underdog or vote for the underdog. I think a lot of people do, the David and Goliath sort of story. Cheetahs being the weaker cats or whatever, you just want them to do well. The fact that we can make a connection with them is something really beautiful. So because of that reason, they've become a huge passion for me, something that I really, really strongly believe in and that I'll fight for. I want to keep them going. I love the creatures. They've created something really special for me. I think I've spent more time amongst cheetahs than I have with many of my own friends and family even. They're extremely incredible creatures to be around. Conservation in general is a lot more than what people think. It's not putting an animal in an area and then just leaving it alone. You can't just fence off a piece of land and put a bunch of animals and think that it's going to be okay. Conservation is very hands-on. It takes time to build a relationship with these cats. It takes time to know how to behave, how to move, what signs to look for if they are getting agitated or if they're getting scared or any of these type of things. It takes time. It takes experience. There's nothing that can replace it. So in no way would I encourage anybody out there watching this to just go walk up to a cheetah in the wild or anything like that. These animals live their life and we are privileged to be a part of it. We're privileged to witness what they do on a daily basis. Places where the animals are not harassed and they can live their life and you can just be a little part of their day. That's fantastic. You can just witness what their life is. I've spent enough time with them to know each individual's personality extremely well. Much as you would come home and know that your dog's done something wrong or is in a good mood or a bad mood or whatever, I have that same feeling with these cheetahs. I know them when I arrive home. I'd consider the cheetahs here at Tiger Canyon like my family, for sure. This cheetah over here is a young male. He's about two and a half years old now. His name is Mashai. He's the father of the cubs that we've been spending a bit of time with. He's come from a holding facility, a breeding centre, where him and his brother, his brother's unfortunately passed away, but him and his brother were raised in a very small area. They were fed chopped up bits of meat and things for their whole life, which is not ideal. So when he first arrived, we actually had to teach him what he's supposed to eat because he was used to eating chopped up perfect bits of steak and things. He didn't know how to get through the skin of warthogs and things like that and it actually made him ill in the beginning when he first started eating warthog skin. So it's a great result for everybody involved that he's here now and doing his thing. He'll remain at this place here at Tiger Canyon for the rest of his life and he'll just produce cubs and those cubs will then go into the wild. He's got really good genes in him, so it's a very good success story for the model that we're trying to take forward, basically. Proof that you can rewild these cats, even if they have been hand-raised or anything like that, or raised in a facility. So a project like this where we work very closely with them and we're reproducing with cheetahs and spreading their genes back into Africa is crucial and it's crucial now because the gene line has become so narrow. If those numbers decline more and the blood lines drop further down, the gene pool becomes super narrow and then the cheetahs will get weaker and weaker over time and eventually they're just going to disappear in wild areas and we're only going to have captive cheetahs and all of them are going to be inbred. We need to put big populations of cheetah back into the wild and the knock-on effect from there is not just cheetahs that are going to be saved, it's going to be big natural areas that would be saved as well. All the antelope and all the trees and the grasses and the birds that go along with that will come back because of one species that you're looking after. I think that something like this and the feelings that I have and the feelings that I'm trying to spread out to the world is that we are connected. So I just think it's a wonderful way forward and then we can create reserves where people are able to reconnect with nature where you can go and walk and there's cheetahs doing their thing and they're hunting and they're mating and they're producing cubs but you are able to go and witness that and be part of it. That's like what really captures you and I think when you have that experience you basically become an ambassador for the animals. Then you go back home and you feel like you want to help in any way possible. What more would you want out of life than being connected to such a beautiful creature or to nature in general? Together I don't think we're going to make as much difference as we can in the conservation world and try and fight for cheetahs until our dying day. We can leave something behind for our future kids to look forward to and to carry on.