Rhinos Without Borders: Chasing the Blood Moon

Every 28 days, all across the rhino range of Africa, conservationists shiver when they see a red moon rising—it is a unique, red-tinted full moon, a poachers’ moon, a blood moon. As the moon rises, fighting through the dust layer that turns it red, those conservationists know that at that very moment poachers are emerging from huts, vehicles, buses, helicopters, holes in the grass, or caves dug into river- banks. They are attaching silencers to hunting rifles, hugging their mothers good-bye, and setting out in the moonlit night to steal horns from innocent creatures.

Blood Moon tells the story of an extraordinary effort to rescue rhinos from these high-poaching zones in Africa and move them to safer locations. Following a lifetime of animal rescue, unprecedented African wildlife conservation efforts, and careers as National Geographic Explorers at Large, film- makers, authors, and photographers Beverly and Dereck Joubert gather a team of the most unusual collaborators to find solutions for rhinos. This oversize volume is both a celebration of these magnificent animals and a call to action to save them from vanishing forever.

In this riveting and action-packed tale, the Jouberts enlist the help of fellow tourism operators AndBeyond to join Great Plains Conservation in an unprecedented collaboration. They work with government officials, military personnel, fellow conservationists, wildlife veterinarians and capture experts, cargo plane and helicopter pilots, and truck drivers to accomplish a seemingly impossible task: transporting 100 rhinos, one at a time, to safety in Botswana. It certainly isn’t easy. From overheated rhinos, complicated logistics, and a mother separated from her baby to successful releases and the celebration of new life, the behind-the-scenes stories that fill this book are both informative and inspiring.

In these pages, striking black-and-white photographs are paired with the use of red, which has always been symbolic of wealth in the East, the largest market for rhino horns, and also evokes the color of the blood moon. These breathtaking images not only document this incredible rhino-relocation project, but also transcend wildlife publishing to celebrate these elusive animals and the vanishing habitats of Africa. Blood Moon is an uplifting demonstration of what humanity can do to turn back extinction if we try.

THE EYE OF THE LEOPARD

This is an astonishing book about the extraordinary life of Lagadema, a leopard at Momba. For two years, Beverly and Dereck Joubert have followed this leopard who has crept into their lives since the first day they found her at 8 days old. The Joubert's are National Geographic's top rated wildlife filmmakers. Over the past twenty five years they have created and crafted some of Africa's finest wildlife documentaries. Their story of Lagadema is enthralling.

“We found her when she was 8 days old, and she seduced us with her blue eyes and determined character. She was the first surviving cub of a female who had lost five cubs in a row. Somehow this leopard was different, and that first day I think we recognised that.” - Beverly Joubert.

“If the eye expresses life and soul and what lives inside. Leopards are the eye of Africa, linked through a connective nerve directly to what this continent means and symbolises.” - Dereck Joubert

THE LAST LIONS
- Official companion to the motion picture

A symbol of mythic potency, the African lion has ruled the human imagination for millennia. But in Botswana's Okavango Delta, the world's most awe-inspiring hunters are challenged not only by their waterlogged territory, but also by their formidable prey—the buffalo—who wield their massive horns with deadly accuracy. Pulsing with ancient rhythms of wild Africa, this harsh and eternal struggle is compelling, powerful, and poignant. Award-winning filmmakers and National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Beverly and Dereck Joubert, give us an unforgettable glimpse of this iconic drama in the official companion book to their feature film, The Last Lions, and warn that due to declining numbers of lions in the wild, it may soon end forever. In fascinating text and breathtaking images, the Jouberts reveal both the beauty and danger of the Okavango Delta and its inhabitants. We follow a lone lioness, Ma di Tau—Mother of Lions—and three newborns as they flee a ferocious rival pride. Braving the Delta, despite their instinctive hatred of water, the lioness and her cubs head for an island lost in a labyrinth of streams. She and two cubs escape successfully; a lurking crocodile snatches the third.

Soon, their refuge is invaded by a vast buffalo herd—aggressive, unafraid, a constant threat, yet the lions' only prey. But even as Ma di Tau hones her tactics and stalking skills, she is trapped between throngs of buffalo and a rival lion pride. So she does what all of her kind must—adapt or die. The Last Lions is a story of family and hope in a world of wild beauty and relentless predation that is a superbly photographed, sharply detailed intimate portrait of one dauntless mother struggling to protect her young and preserve her bloodline. It is a vivid, universal vision of the fate of lions everywhere, isolated on tiny islands amid a sea of humanity. Can we rescue them, or have we already, heedlessly, met the last lions? For decades the Jouberts have lived among great cats in the wild, observing, documenting, and often discovering unsuspected facets of lion behavior. A key message is that the inexorably rising tide of human population will soon drown what remains of that world unless we act now. The book draws attention to the numbers (500,000 in the 1950s to only 25,000 lions today) and highlights projects that have been enacted to help preserve wilderness for lion habitat.

RELENTLESS ENEMIES: LIONS AND BUFFALO

An extraordinary visual and written coverage of one of Africa’s most extreme hunting episodes, where on Duba Island in the Okavango Delta, Enormous lions have adapted to hunting buffalo as a single food source, and they do it daily!

Over 130 images spread across 175 pages takes you through this journey, led by Beverly Joubert’s National Geographic quality work, and Dereck’s written explanations of what it is like to live with lions daily and to witness some of the most bizarre events known to animal behavioural science. It is deeply thoughtful both in its photography and writing.

“Only the Joubert’s with an unwavering commitment to telling the story of Relentless Enemies: Lions and Buffalo, could bring us a tale like this.” - Chris Johns Editor in Chief, National Geographic Magazine.

“Relentless Enemies is a vivid depiction in a superb narrative of photographs of nature’s elemental struggle for survival. To get such pictures you would need to become a something of a predator yourself-but kindly ones, as the Jouberts are. Their book is a reminder to the urbanized and dreary world that somewhere on this planet epic battles are still being fought-battles not based on pride or pettiness, but ones that are matters of life and death, in a cycle that began with the dawn of Earth.” - Paul Theroux

ELEPHANT IN THE KITCHEN - Recipes from the wilderness

Printed mid to late 2005. Price US$ 70 per copy.

It's a wild adventure. It's a cookbook with recipes from the Wilderness.

Craig Higgins. Chef extraordinaire, Crazy Scott, bush lover, creator of many a wonderful meal at Wilderness Safari's Mombo Camp is completing his long awaited book. The book is a joint venture with Beverly and Dereck Joubert, two of National Geographic's finest wildlife photographers and filmmakers. So this is more than just a cookbook with scrumptious recipes.

It is a journey through what it takes to produce meals in this truly remote location at a worldclass level. It is a journey into the heart of the lightness that is Craig's life of beating off elephants that invade the kitchen, fighting to defend his kitchen from the local hyenas and enjoying the passing graces of the camp leopard, all while trying to produce five star food.

Written with humour and enjoyment the book is also a guide to producing some of those great meals, so that you can take a sprig of African recipes, a breath of her aroma and the salivating tastes of her food. Learn how to prepare a Babotie spring roll and a Wild mushroom Risotta, or an Amarula caramel chocolate sauce for your pancake… or what to do when a monkey swoops down and steals a cigar out of your salmon cigars, what to do when your local hyenas eat the Easter eggs, and why you shouldn't cry when the milk is spilled.

It's a wild adventure ... It's a cookbook.

And most of all it's a celebration of living in Africa and being part of her ethos, not apart from it, something we can all take back with us wherever we go.

THE AFRICA DIARIES

The Africa Diaries is a powerful first -person account of the Jouberts extraordinary work as wildlife researchers and conservationists. They document their odyssey through passages culled from the pages of their field journals and over 130 stunning full- colour photographs, giving readers a rare insight into their unusual lives in the African bush.

An illustrated memoir of life in the bush

HUNTING WITH THE MOON

An astonishing and spectacular chronicle of lions in the wild, this unique volume is the fruit of those long years of intimate contact with the majestic cats who have held an irresistible appeal for the human imagination since time immemorial. Meticulously observed and captured in a wealth of breathtaking full-colour photographs.

A National Geographic Society Book about the lions of Savuti with text by Dereck Joubert and photographs by Beverly Joubert