Back home in Hwange!

This is me (in the red shirt) with just 1km to go till the end!

I am home in Hwange now after a wonderful trip and a challenging race. Again I thank you all for your support and now its back to work for those LIONS!

Brent

Finished!

Well, I am  sitting in yet another bath in a london hotel pleading to my legs to speak to me again! I finished yesterday's London marathon in 4:31:01. A bit slower than my target but I am very happy.
I went very well for the first 32km and the my calves cramped up and the wheels fell off!
Dressed in a loincloth, I received amazing support from the public(thanks) but everyone was shouting  things like "come on Tarzan!" Or "oh, caveman! Fancy a jelly baby?"
At the last count I think we had raised about £800 so that is all going to support the "long shields"

Thanks a million folks

Brent

THANKS

Now, with just a dozen hours or so to go, I want to thank you all for your support. I am sure you have  realised by now that I really believe in this project, its people and its principals. Your support, monitary or even just spreading the word about lions, goes a long way to securing a future for Africa's Lion.

I am running in a loin cloth and carrying a small Ndebele shield on my right arm to represent the team! Look out for me and Roar when I come past

Brent

Point of no return!

Well I am sitting in my hotel room resting the legs and have about 24 hours to go until the London marathon! Your generous donations are still coming in so that is inspiring. Keep it up!

All ready 

My mother brought me my customised "loincloth" yesterday and it looks great. My race number is 57978 and I think there is a way of tracking my progress tomorrow online by entering that. Check out "marathon photo" and you will be able to enter my number and get pictures of me on the course and at the finish.

Folks that may be the last post before the run so a huge thanks for all your support and wish me luck!

Brent 

Eye on the prize!

Followers of the London marathon official blog have just recieved a motivational boost....

a sneek preview of the finishers medal!

I did 12.6km this morning but having seen that I might go out again!!

Here is a thought!!

Reading up on last years London marathon it dawned on me that there will be more people finishing the race on the 13th April than there are lions left in the wild!!

Its almost time to go!

Well its almost time to start my journey to London for the big day so this will be one of the last posts until you hopefully see one with my finisher's photo attached. Donations are coming in swiftly now and I wanted to extend my deepest gratitude to those of you that are supporting us. Remember to email me the details of your donations so I can claim them from the Oxford account and so I can thank you personally. If I have not thanked you then I haven't seen your email.

Me running my usual route near Hwange safari lodge

Shupi: The latest news on shupi is that he is about 80km NW of where we were chasing him with vuvuzelas. He is about to re-enter a protected area near Hwange's sinamatella camp so that is a real score if he stays there and out of trouble.

If you are a spectator at the marathon on the 13th April, look out for a man in a leopardskin loincloth, wearing a red shirt with the Long Shield logo on the front. The back of the shirt reads "Roar your support for Africa's lions" so please shout your lungs out as I run past!

Other than that I thank you for your following my training and I wish you a future full of "tawny cats"

Brent  

I have my number!!

I just broke a cold sweat because I have received my official number for the London marathon and followed the link to the final instructions. The scale of the race has just dawned on me and it is very exciting! (more butterflies than that elephant caused this morning!)

You sprint along on your speed work runs, thunder along on your longer ones and welcome your rest days but still it doesn't really hit home until you read those instructions. The massive undertaking it must be to organise 30 000 runners like me as well as the spectators, ambulance services and police.....wow!!

I guess there are people out on the streets of London painting and puting up signs as I write this.

NOTE to family and friends!!
For those of you coming to London to support me please follow this link so you know what, where, who, how and when!!! (Don't ask WHY!)
www.virginmoneylondonmarathon.com

Just 25 days to go!!

Brent

Running through traffic

My last two runs have both been disturbed by traffic. Yesterday's 6km jog was interrupted by a fleet of heavies and I had to take a detour and today I was doing a 9km run and had to pull up and stop while giving way to a large grey bus.


Intersection warning!



As you have learnt to expect from me, here is the punchline:

This bus was about 4m high and weighed 6000kgs and had two large ivory "bull-bars" below the rather small headlights! The wind was in his favour (meaning he was going to catch my scent as I ran past) so I dropped a gear and sped through the intersection without checking my mirrors!!



Hwange bus

Umbrellas, flagships, keystones and cultures!

What do umbrellas, flagships, keystones and cultures have to do with lions...let alone a man running the London marathon?

Lions as Umbrella species.
They are big bodied animals that cover large tracts of land and occupy the pinnacle of the food pyramid and that means that if we manage our land with the conservation of lions in mind then we, by default, conserve their prey and their landscapes!

Lions as Flagship species.
Lions are bold, beautiful animals that ooze sex appeal and confidence. They are photogenic, regal, proud and courageous and all of these manmade labels only add to their allure. That allure brings benefits and focus to the areas where lions are found and the species that they live with that perhaps would otherwise slip away unnoticed in today’s world.

Lions as keystone species.
Lions have been instrumental in the evolution of the animals they prey on, their competitors (including us) and even the savannas they occupy to a degree that we are only really beginning to understand now. By managing the way that herds of livestock (in the place of buffalo and bison) graze and move across a landscape desertification can be reversed and even climate change perhaps! This is done by mimicking as closely as possible the way pack hunting predators (like wolves and LIONS) would have moved large herds of grazing animals around the savanna. It is fact that grasses in Africa have evolved in response to grazing animals and those evolved in response to predation pressures from lions! We are talking globally important here!! (Check out Allan Savory on www.ted.com)

Lions in human culture.
I touched on it in another post but lions, it can be argued, are probably the most culturally important animal in human history. We evolved in the same place, competed for the same resources (including caves in France). As separate species, we have both crossed continents and frozen seas and at one time occupied almost every corner of the earth. We have even both learnt that to cooperate amongst ourselves is to ensure our survival. Take up my challenge and count how many lion images you see in your average day and you will see what I am banging on about.

Lions are in steady decline across Africa with a high percentage of their mortality being assigned to "conflict with man". I think I am correct in saying that there were a half million lions in Africa in 1950 and only about thirty thousand today!

We celebrate our "superior intellect" all the time so why, I ask, can't we outsmart our oldest competitor using brains not bullets and poison?    

Feeling good!

I thought I might share with you the fact that all is going well and I am feeling great.
I did a 14.6km run this morning and maintained a pace of 4min 48 sec per kilometre and that ended with a pair of wildogs in the road ahead of me!!
Donations are coming in via the blog so that is great news.....we are very grateful to you all!
 and
SHUPI has not killed any livestock for over a fortnight due to some remarkable effort from the Long shield closest to him and the man who gave him the name, Emanuel Tembo!!

So you see, with just 39 days to go till I am running down those London streets, I am a very happy man.


Emanuel Tembo - Long Shield for Mabale area

Brent

Living with Carnivores!

Follow this link to hear Professor David MacDonald of WildCRU talk about "Living with Carnivores" and the Long Shields project on a BBC radio pod cast

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036v092

Brent

Is there a more culturally important animal than a lion?

This is a question I like to ask people and one that I ponder all the time.
Is the LION the most culturally important animal on earth?

Think about it for a while or go through your home and count how many lions images you can find.
I did it the other day just fixing myself a sandwich and I found at least 5 in the cupboard alone. They were on sauce bottles, coats of arms, boxes of matches and......my personal favourite.......Lion Lager!

When we came down from the trees we met LION and our relationship has been unbroken ever since.
On cave walls in France we see them, guarding ancient gates at the Imperial palace, football and cricket teams are named after them, the lion of Judah, the sphinx, Peugot vehicles, etc etc etc

Where we live the lion was said to bring rain and if you heard one calling from a particular area that meant a bumper harvest, our local chief told me recently that it was taboo to kill a lion when he was a child.

It is my intention to count as many lion symbols, statues and images as I see during the London marathon and I will publish the results on this blog afterwards. Try it yourself today...you will be amazed!

A much younger me after much "Lion tracking" in London!

I have even heard of a drive to get the lion listed as a World Heritage species because it means so much in our history, our present and our future.

Brent

Useful tips!

Some useful tips if you are training in wildlife areas!

• When running past fresh elephant dung (covered in flies) - breath through your teeth!!
• When prey animals ahead of you on the road are "alarming", don't assume its you they are worried about!
• If you are running in a group, try look healthier than the rest and avoid the back of the pack!
• That banana that you hid behind the tree for your half-way snack may not be there when you come past!
• Zebra striped running shorts are a no no!

Donations welcome!

Ok people here we go!
It's just 51 or so days left until the big day so I have added a link at the top right of the page to make donating as easy as possible. Just follow the link to Oxford's Giving account and follow the directions. Please email me at brent.conflictcats@gmail.com with details of your donation so it can be alocated to the Long Shields and thank you very much in advance. I will run my heart out for both lions and the men and women out there protecting them so give generously!
Yours

Brent Stapelkamp

He just couldn't help himself!!

Indicator indicator, or as we civilians call him....the Greater honey guide, is a bird "we" have known for millenia. That is a royal "we" obviously but our species has come to us him and visa versa. A symbiotic relationship! In Africa this family of birds will lead men to bee-hives literally bush by bush and wait while he raids the hive. Nothing is free of course and so the story goes..you have to leave him his share of the spoils or else next time he will lead you into a lion or cobra!

I had my first encounter like this the other day when I was running. I was doing just a 7 km run the other afternoon when, over a David Grey track playing in my ears, I heard an alarm call from what I took to be a squirrel. I kept running with just a quick glance in that direction and saw nothing.
 I ran to my halfway point, turned around and headed back.

As I reached the same spot where I had heard the call, I heard it again but this time coming from the other side of the road. I couldn't imagine that a squirrel would have crossed the road so I looked up into the tree and saw the Greater honey guide. It dawned on me that he was calling me. With a loud chirping that sounds a little like a box of matches being shaken from side to side he now flew high above me and into a tree ahead. I kept up my pace up and as I passed his tree he flew out again and landed in the next one ahead. This continued for about a kilometre and a half before he thought better than to lead a man dressed only in little black running shorts and clearly not after honey!


On this continent, as the birthplace of mankind, I love to explore the idea of these ancient relationships. Man and Lion have known each other since "day one"and this relationship between man and bird is equally intriguing albeit a little less conflicting.


follow this link to hear a greater honey guide calling: http://www.xeno-canto.org/77495



Brent

 

Shupi - the lion

Cast your eye down the page and you will see a post I did a few weeks ago where I ran into a lion. The photograph I posted is of him sitting in the bushes by the roadside.
That lion is now called "Shupi" which means "trouble". About a week after our adrenaline filled encounter we started getting reports of livestock missing in the forest and cattle coming home with scratches...that sort of thing. We immediately suspected that it was this young male as adult lions rarely injure livestock without killing it. We guessed it was a young inexperienced lion and he was our prime suspect.
In a more recent post about the call of the road I inset a photo of his tracks in the communal lands, so we have been on his trail for some time.

Shupi's tracks in the mud

Well it all came down to one night at the end of January when we spend 9 hours calling him and finally managed to catch him. We put a collar on him and he is now as much a part of the Long Shields project as I am. Welcome Shupi!

We now, using the almost real time gps data that his collar sends, harass and chase him with vuvuzelas and fire-crackers wherever he is in an area he shouldn't be.....it has worked very well and as far as the marathon goes I am calling it "Cross training!"

A local man joins in the chase with a vuvuzela

                                                            Brent

The call of the road!

Yesterday I went for my 6km run and from the satellite collars we have on a few cats (lions) I could see that there were no less than 20 lions in a 70 square kilometer area near our home. Now before you all rush off to say that the Hwange lion density is the highest in the world....this was just because at least three groups of lions were interested in a large herd of buffalo that have moved in recently.

I put on my running shoes and grabbed my ipod shuffle. I put the iphone into the armband so I could take a few pictures if I saw anything and went out. At about my halfway point I took a couple of shots of the road with my long shadow cast by the setting sun. There is something about a road...don't you think?

 

This morning I was with one of my Long Shields tracking a young lion that we intend to catch for our project and I took a photo of his spoor on a path that he had walked in the early hours. It dawned on me that we all have roads on which to travel, some lead us into trouble, some we cannot avoid....but there is an attraction that we cannot deny.

 

 

Look at me getting all poetic!

 

Brent

Dances with wolves? try running with them!

This morning I went out for a 25min jog as the schedule dictated and as I was nearing home and coming through "the dip" as we call it....I caught a whiff of something musky. I looked around but saw nothing so carried on and a few meters further I got the smell again. (I must say here that I have a very bad sense of smell after a wee accident with some hydrochloric acid in Dad's shed...so for me to smell something means it was fresh).
Anyway I run through the dip and as I am coming up the hill a couple of young impala run out of the bush to my right closely followed by two wildogs! The impala raced through the fence around our place and I ran along side the two dogs as they tracked their prey up onto the ridge.
The impala broke back out of the fence and I dropped back a little expecting to see the kill but the impala used a small group of people waiting for a lift at the roadside as cover and left the "hounds" standing there looking bemused.
They turned around and ran past me, back into the dip and were gone!!

Wow!

Brent Stapelkamp

Up to speed!

It has been a while since my last post and a lot has been happening so I thought that I would bring you all back up to speed with the preparations for the marathon in April.

It is a little over 3 months left to go so the training is full time now and I must say that I am enjoying the running. I ran a marathon with a very good friend of mine some 21 years ago now and I don't remember the running being as good. (yup...21 years ago Mark!!! can you believe it?)

My training, as another friend said, would be as interesting as the marathon itself and I think you will agree it has been unusual already. I live and work in a wildlife area and so my training routes are governed by factors such as "where are the lions today", "Bheki saw a buffalo bull near the gate"...you know....that sort of thing!

I have seen three of the big five on my runs already including Lion, Buffalo and Elephant as well as giraffe, kudu, impala, baboons and monkeys!

My latest lion encounter was a couple of weeks ago when I set off down the hill for some speed work. The schedule said 60sec max effort followed by 3 min walk etc etc. I warmed up and started my watch and took off like a man possessed. As I neared the bottom of the hill a herd of impala started snorting an alarm call and ran across my front. I imagined they were alarming at me as i now sounded like a locomotive so I carried on. When I stopped and began my walk I could still hear them snorting. I looked up and there not 80m from me was a lion standing and staring at me.
Now I am not shy, in fact some might say the opposite but I tell you you feel very self conscious standing in the open 80m from a lion and all you have to protect yourself if a skimpy pair of running shorts!!

I looked for signs of agression but found none so I started backing away. He followed!
I stopped and stared at him and he sat down. I slowly inched backwards until there was a little bush between us and he stayed sitting so I took my leave and raced home for the truck. I gathered my family and we came back to photograph him.

 

I have also been kitted out recently with some proper running shorts (I ran the Vic falls half marathon in a pair of khaki safari shorts last year!) and a beautiful pair of running shoes that feel like I am running on Air. Many thanks to my generous donors.......

 

I will be setting up a means by which you can donate to the cause if you chose so watch this space

 

 

Cheers for now

 

Brent