MUMBAI: Animals are often housed in cheerless places. But there is another type of animal refuge: a paradise in Namibia, southern Africa, created by the Harnas Wildlife Foundation. Its residents are as varied as the countryside: lions, baboons, wild dogs, cheetahs, mongooses and antelopes.
Two-dozen wardens and rangers feed, protect and provide veterinary care and young people from all over the world offer to work as volunteers for a matter of weeks or months, while paying for their stay. They feed, monitor and study around 400 types of animals. They get in close contact with wild dogs and other predators; they walk with a gang of young baboons and with Goeters, the world’s oldest cheetah. They clean lion enclosures, try to catch a runaway caracal cat and follow scientists who track newly-released cheetahs in the Life Line, a vast fenced wilderness within the Wildlife Rescue Camp. For the volunteers and staff alike the stars are the infant animals. There is always a young cheetah, leopard, porcupine or wild dog to meet.
Animal Planet’s new series Harnas Wildlife Rescue Camp follows the young volunteers’ relationship with wild animals; their stories of love, passion and hate; their adventures with creatures as small as a meerkat and as big as a lion. City slickers from London, New York and Frankfurt suddenly become foster parents to baby leopards. They get bitten by baboons and scared by ferocious wild dogs. But they are safe, protected by characters like Frikkie, the hard-boiled Namibian cowboy who gives the kids a hard time; by Hermann, the gentle giant who has spent most of his life in the bush; and by Schalk van der Merwe, former football pro and manager of Harnas who has an almost eerie ability to talk and walk with lions.
The show will premiere on 9 May 2016 and will air on weekdays at 9 pm.
During the course of the series, viewers will live through an exciting year in Namibia’s Kalahari in front of an incredibly beautiful natural backdrop, leaving powerful scenic impressions. They will watch kittens becoming fully-grown predators. The series is acertain to overwhelm viewers by giant thunderstorms in the rainy season; will showcaseamazing creatures like giant bull frogs swimming in the flood pools; and will ensure bewildering experienceslike drying out of land and turning into a a desert during the southern winter.
Young people from all over the world come and go, many start as pale, sceptical and timid characters, but leave happy, tired and tanned with experiences that will last them a lifetime. There are tears when they get attacked and bitten by nasty monkeys and there are tears also when they have to leave the Wildlife Rescue Camp. There is grief when one of the greatest animal characters, a cheetah, dies and there is joy when a cheetah baby is born on the same day.
The series Harnas Wildlife Rescue Camp tracks the continuous efforts of the Harnas team for better care for our planet.
