About This Book
Enigmatic, mysterious, seething with coiled tension, Africa’s great cats represent what remains of the world’s remaining wild places. Stealthy, powerful and inherently dangerous, the lion evokes fear and awe in equal measure. The leopard, solitary and reclusive, haunts the human imagination. The cheetah, the world’s fastest land mammal, is capable of blinding speed and yet finds itself in a race for its very survival.
Panthera Africa is a photographic journal, five years in the making, of Africa’s last remaining big cats, from the dusty thorn scrub deserts of central Namibia to the green plains of Kenya and Tanzania during the green season.
It’s a snapshot view, told through more than 100 full colour photographs, of what remains of wild Africa, from the evolutionary heartland of Ngorongoro Crater to the sweeping savannah of Maasailand and the Serengeti Plain. Once the undisputed lord of vast stretches of wilderness virtually unchanged since the Pleistocene epoch, the king of beasts now rules over a sadly diminished realm, persecuted and hunted where it goes. And yet, as this volume demonstrates, the lion has lost none of its power to evoke awe and respect. The leopard still inspires fear; the cheetah still excites through its sheer speed.
Panthera Africa is at once a celebration of the natural world and a call to arms on behalf of what remains of a delicately balanced environment. It’s a book for anyone who cares about reclaiming those tales told around the campfire in the early days of humankind, when Homo sapiens huddled together for protection from the night, in places with names like Olduvai, Laetoli and Turkana, places where small, remnant populations of Africa’s cats survive to this day.
