Life & Death on an African plain

Fülszöveg

'Where life proliferates, so will death. Out on the plains, once the dust has settled and warm blood flows, an urgent, unreasoning hunger will be satisfied. There is an elementary beauty in such pragmatism. It is not ironic, but fundamental and perpetuating, that to successfully balance nature's pyramid of life, the death of a beast is required.'
- From the text
As the world's savannas gradually shrink before man's onslaught and our natural wild life is increasingly threatened, Etosha - the 2,4 million-hectare reserve in north-western Namibia - is still undisturbed in parts, and remains a reminder of the old Africa; an Africa where life and death were governed only by Nature's forces; a world where the seasons' cycles still form a backdrop against which the predators and their prey play out their predestined roles.
It was in this world that Mitch and Margot Reardon spent three years, photographing the animals whose lives and deaths they chronicled, and which are the subjects... Tovább

Fülszöveg

'Where life proliferates, so will death. Out on the plains, once the dust has settled and warm blood flows, an urgent, unreasoning hunger will be satisfied. There is an elementary beauty in such pragmatism. It is not ironic, but fundamental and perpetuating, that to successfully balance nature's pyramid of life, the death of a beast is required.'
- From the text
As the world's savannas gradually shrink before man's onslaught and our natural wild life is increasingly threatened, Etosha - the 2,4 million-hectare reserve in north-western Namibia - is still undisturbed in parts, and remains a reminder of the old Africa; an Africa where life and death were governed only by Nature's forces; a world where the seasons' cycles still form a backdrop against which the predators and their prey play out their predestined roles.
It was in this world that Mitch and Margot Reardon spent three years, photographing the animals whose lives and deaths they chronicled, and which are the subjects of this book. It was here, through personal observation and a sound knowledge of current research, that the couple evolved their emotive yet realistic philosophy about the creatures of Etosha.
And though 'Etosha' mirrors what was once much of Africa's past, it is very much a book of today.
In its pages we meet the animals of the plains as they mate and give birth, hunt and migrate, and - inevitably - die. Superb colour photographs freeze forever the grimace of a feeding lion, the flow of muscles as a cheetah hurtles into action, the ebullience of a spray-splashed elephant calf, or the quiver of a bat-eared fox pup's whiskers as it awaits its feed Remarkable sequences show the birth of a springbok fawn, the mating fury of two zebra stallions, and the death-throes which markthe end of a successful hunt. . . Captured, too, are the arid plains coming miraculously alive with the first of the season's rains, when cohorts of water birds return to the vleis and pans, and a myriad insects fill the air on joyful wings as they emerge from the earth. Vissza