The image is a cake I bought an anti poaching team. They were feeling really bad about a tiger which had died in a snare. I told them it was not their fault, it’s just that the system is broken. What I mean by the system is the big picture, our overall societal attitude to wildlife. Big cat conservation symbolizes that, there’s too many ironies, too many inconsistencies. This particular tigress died a horrible, long painful death. Once the picture was pieced together it was gut wrenching. On the protection side no one was to blame and yet the blame game commenced, that is the nature of things. The anti poaching team I bought the cake for patrols long distances in all conditions, with limited resources. They help protect a national park that people with over sized cameras can enjoy. There’s an incongruence in the whole line of how people are connected to protected areas, there’s borderline poverty to well heeled tourists, somehow those involved in wildlife protection are stuck in the middle of that. It’s hard because sometimes you have to trust the system even though you know it’s not working and when a beautiful prime of life tigress is killed by poachers questions need to be asked. It wasn’t just the life of that big cat snuffed out brutally, it was future generations lost. This particular death made me dig deep which tested me because every day in some way I confront deaths of big cats. It tested my own trust, even in myself, I asked myself how I could do better, I found that in a way I grieved more than usual in searching for those answers. I looked at how different people reacted, perhaps who trust could be placed in, examined just who cared and who didn’t. It’s at that point I realized once again that it can become confusing and frustrating, that’s it’s best to just get on with the many tasks at hand.

And just stick to the trust that we can do better to protect big cats…

It’s a busy time, a comprehensive update as soon as possible.