#big game

"In one of Africa’s last great wildernesses, a remarkable thing has happened—the scimitar-horned oryx, once declared extinct in the wild, is now classified only as endangered.

It’s the first time the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest conservation organization, has ever moved a species on its Red List from ‘Extinct in the Wild’ to ‘Endangered.’

The recovery was down to the conservation work of zoos around the world, but also from game breeders in the Texas hill country, who kept the oryx alive while the governments of Abu Dhabi and Chad worked together on a reintroduction program.

Chad... ranks second-lowest on the UN Development Index. Nevertheless, it is within this North African country that can be found the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve, a piece of protected desert and savannah the size of Scotland—around 30,000 square miles, or 10 times the size of Yellowstone.

At a workshop in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena, in 2012, Environment Abu Dhabi, the government of Chad, the Sahara Conservation Fund, and the Zoological Society of London, all secured the support of local landowners and nomadic herders for the reintroduction of the scimitar-horned oryx to the reserve.

Environment Abu Dhabi started the project, assembling captive animals from zoos and private collections the world over to ensure genetic diversity. In March 2016, the first 21 animals from this “world herd” were released over time into a fenced-off part of the reserve where they could acclimatize. Ranging over 30 miles, one female gave birth—the first oryx born into its once-native habitat in over three decades.

In late January 2017, 14 more animals were flown to the reserve in Chad from Abu Dhabi.

In 2022, the rewilded species was officially assessed by the IUCN’s Red List, and determined them to be just ‘Endangered,’ and not ‘Critically Endangered,’ with a population of between 140 and 160 individuals that was increasing, not decreasing.

It’s a tremendous achievement of international scientific and governmental collaboration and a sign that zoological efforts to breed endangered and even extinct animals in captivity can truly work if suitable habitat remains for them to return to."

Cari Bershell

“Once Engulfed.”

A curious whitetail buck with golden fall colors as a background, that just minutes before he was engulfed in, comes in closer to Lance's photo blind as he shoots this sequence of photos. In the days before mirrorless cameras and silent electronic shutters, he knows you heard him complaining about how wary bucks would spook at the sound of his Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera firing off like a machine gun, but sometimes he's able to trick a buck into thinking it’s part of another sound that’s unthreatening to him. In this photo, he pressed the shutter button on his camera very slowly, and would synchronize blowing a short grunt from his grunt call in his mouth, each time he fired off his camera to help camouflage the sound of the camera’s mirror flipping up and down and shutter opening and closing. Most bucks will still spook from it, but sometimes others, like this 8-point beauty with extras, will find the grunt/click combo confusing enough that they’ll stand for a few seconds longer than normal, before blasting away. He has used sound camouflaging in many ways over the years, with some more effective than others. So remember, there’s other ways to camouflage yourself other than camouflage clothing and masking scents. You can often times camouflage your sounds in the woods, as well.