I love being in the jungle, really love it. Mountain or lowland, it doesn't matter, as long as it is big cat habitat it feels right. My head clears very quickly and the job at hand takes focus.
Today was a little different. I did not mind the heat or biting insects and I had my usual observation of surroundings based on monitoring and safety. I just found it longer than usual to clear my head. A family member who knows my stuff, knows the pressure of what I'm doing as well as the sacrifices I've made, reminded me by email to keep my values, qualifying that by saying he knows I will. I miss my family a lot, sometimes that compounds the difficulties but they understand and support my motivation.
In an interview yesterday I told of my total respect for the leopard, an animal I have come to admire more and more. The pressure this species is under, the lack of support, is perhaps the burden I took into the jungle today, perhaps the burden of a misunderstood animal weighed me down more than usual, took me a while to shake off. A post made earlier today on Facebook perhaps made me ask more deeply than usual the question of human values. Tiger farming and other issues regarding the trade in big cat body parts in general, give every day reminders for those of us involved in big cat protection, there is no escape and a lot of hard work goes on behind the scenes to combat these scourges. It's just that today, I guess combined with the serious infrastructure challenges we've had here (see Facebook post two back), I questioned values again when it comes to marginalization of species, marginalization of people.
Everyone screams "save the tiger! save wildlife!" but is it just noise? Normally in the jungle I just get on with the work and despite everything there is a sense of peace. Today the noise went with me, it made me wonder who is the genuine article...
Tomorrow there will be two more jungles, the tiredness that brings and now we have some electricity a ceiling fan that works, will hopefully mean sleep... but not tonight, a lot to do, a lot to catch up on... and some gnawing questions...
