Film-maker Andrew Barratt achieved an International Tourism Film Festival Africa (ITFFA) award for his documentary on Africa’s largest vulture relocation. While he’s grateful for the accolade, he says it’s a win for creating awareness of our need to conserve our natural heritage
Words by Lisa Abdellah
Photography by Andrew Barratt
I took a gap year after school to live in the Eastern Cape with my mom, who works at Shamwari Private Game Reserve. I interned with Lyndal Davies, an Australian wildlife presenter for Animal Planet who was making Shamwari: A Wild Life, documenting what it was like to live and work on the reserve. I was hooked. I worked with Lyndal during every varsity break and spent four years working full-time for her in Qatar, where she started a film company, Ayn Al Shaheen Films.
When I returned to South Africa in 2016, my now-wife Quinby and I started Hungry Bison Films. I am one of the producers of Netflix’s Shamwari Untamed, a documentary highlighting the essential work of the conservationists managing the 250 km² reserve, told mainly from the perspective of wildlife vet Dr Johan Joubert and ecologist Dr John O’Brien.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, Lyndon Brandt and I co-created Shamwari TV with the reserve’s head ranger, Andrew Kearney, to showcase its wildlife. We’ve filmed nearly 300 episodes, and the channel has a following of almost 120 000 people worldwide.
The award-winning documentary forms part of a broader narrative in Shamwari Untamed’s second series and tells the story of the first phase of one of VulPro’s projects to address the severe decline of African vulture species. In January, the organisation relocated 160 Cape and African white-backed vultures 1 042 km from Hartbeespoort to bespoke enclosures at Shamwari.
The move involved 50 people and took 18 hours, with all the birds loaded in three hours. Logistics company DHL provided transport and security, and WeWild Africa, an NGO specialising in animal rewilding and translocation, loaded the birds and funded their transport crates. Challenges included hot weather and translocating the birds before their mating season started. Professor Katja Koeppel from the University of Pretoria Faculty of Veterinary Sciences and Dr Joubert managed the birds’ welfare.
I used a combination of reality-style shots to capture the story as it unfolded and time-lapse footage of packing the trucks to show the magnitude of translocating that many vultures. Arriving at Shamwari the following day, the rest of the Shamwari Untamed crew joined me to film the team offloading the vultures at three enclosures. We ensured we knew the translocation team’s schedule and planned our coverage accordingly.
An upside to my job is that I learn a lot from the experts. African vulture populations have declined by 80%–97% over the past 50 or so years, so preventing further losses in the Eastern Cape is crucial. It’s significantly more challenging to re-introduce a species than to translocate individuals to supplement a dwindling population.
These birds are the super-cleaners of our ecosystem, disposing of carcasses and other organic waste that could contaminate water sources and livestock. According to a recent study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, South Africa’s nine vulture species’ biggest threats include shooting, trapping, intentional and unintentional poisoning, killing for food and belief-based purposes and flying into wind turbines or powerlines.
Why three enclosures? These include a sanctuary close to the veterinary hospital for birds whose injuries are so severe that they require constant attention and can never be released. A second, adjacent to the existing Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, includes an artificial cliff to provide optimal conditions for Cape vultures to breed, the idea being that although 40% of the birds may not survive in the wild, their offspring can, meaning they can supplement dwindling populations and re-populate areas where they’ve become extinct.
Shamwari Untamed will follow a second phase to relocate breeding pairs of non-releasable lappet-faced, white-headed and hooded vultures and some additional white-backed vultures. VulPro will transport other species to its Hartbeespoort facility and send the birds to release sites that the National Vulture Breeding Steering Committee has identified as areas where these species need bolstering and support. The organisation will fit Cape vulture offspring with GPS trackers to monitor where they go and how long they stay in a specific area, which will inform long-term research to help us better understand vultures.
My editing process involved condensing over 10 hours of footage filmed over 48 hours and contextual interviews with key role players into a 10-minute documentary that, I hope, viewers enjoy and understand the importance of vultures and why we need to protect them.
hungrybisonfilms.com
vulpro.com
shamwari.com
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