How to Train a Margay: Samantha Zwicker - Hoja Nueva

08/06/21 • 21 min

Recently a friend sent me a photo on the Nat Geo Instagram account and said, “Hey, this could be a great story for your podcast”. It was a photo taken by Trevor Frost of Samantha Zwicker, a PhD student from the University of Washington with an ocelot deep in the Peruvian Amazon. I don't know if this was intended, but this photo really reminded me of that famous photo of Jane Goodall, touching the hands of an infant chimpanzee in Gombe, Tanzania.

But just like that photo, there's a fascinating story behind this photo too. In August, 2018, Sam received an emergency message from the local community, that there was a small wild cat wandering the floor of a community store. It was that ocelot in the photo - Keanu. His mother had been killed due to logging and as a small kitten he was destined for the illegal wildlife trade.

Sam, however, had a bright future planned for Keanu. One without cruelty, one without fences - a future at home, free and wild in the Amazon. This is the story of Sam and her not-for-profit Hoja Nueva - a beacon of hope deep in the jungle of the Peruvian Amazon, where every day they rehabilitate and rewild threatened wildlife, just like Keanu, the ocelot.

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Previous Episode

The Orphaned Cubs of Welgevonden: Carmen Warmenhove, Welgevonden Game Reserve

Around 12,000 years there was a mass extinction event that eliminated around 75% of the world's large mammals. It's still unclear exactly what caused this but it marked the end for legendary megafauna such as the woolly mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger. Remarkably, a handful of cheetahs survived this event, but it created a population bottleneck, resulting in an extreme reduction of their genetic diversity. Today, the average level of genetic variation in cheetahs is less than 4%, lower than the gorillas of Virunga National Park, the Amur tigers and Australia's Tassie devil.

What all of this means is that cheetah conservation is really important and needs to be carefully managed. So in 2018 when a private game reserve in South Africa found three orphaned cheetah cubs calling incessantly for their mother, they made a decision to intervene - a decision to fight for their survival. Typically, orphaned cheetah cubs are removed from the wild and placed in facilities - but Welgevonden wanted to try a new approach - could they keep the cubs in the wild and just help them to bolster their odds of survival?

This episode features Carmen Warmenhove from Welgevonden Game Reserve.

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Next Episode

Wild Cat Photography: Sebastian Kennerknecht

There's not too many people in the world with the job title of wild cat photographer. But in this episode, we're going to meet one of the world's best - Sebastian Kennerknecht. He’s photographed over twenty species of wild cat in their natural habitat and has teamed up with biologists all over the world to share their research and stories.

Like a field biologist though, it's not a job for the faint-hearted - he's had hook worms burrow in his feet in the jungles of Borneo, almost rolled his car off a bridge in Gabon and had a terrifying near-death experience in Uganda. And don't worry - I've blown my entire sound effects budget for the year to tell that story.

So what does it take to be a wild cat photographer? What role does photography have in conservation? And what should you be doing today if you want to follow in his footsteps?

This episode features Sebastian Kennerknecht. Follow him @pumapix on Instagram or visit his tour company at www.catexpeditions.com

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