Meet the man who took on poachers, guerillas and mantraps to save a species

The Duke of Cambridge honoured Sir David Attenborough for his services to wildlife this evening, but perhaps the real star of the annual Tusk conservation awards ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum was a diminutive Angolan of indeterminate age who cannot read, has lived most of his life in the bush, and had never left his country before this week.

Manuel Sacaia, winner of the Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award, has spent nearly half a century protecting the giant sable, a critically endangered antelope with magnificent five-foot horns, despite being captured by guerillas during Angola’s long civil war, attacked by armed poachers and caught in a mantrap. 

The giant sable is a critically endangered antelope with magnificent five-foot horns
The giant sable is a critically endangered antelope with magnificent five-foot horns Credit: ALAMY

For most of that time Sacaia received no pay. “I did it because the sable is a wonderful animal that exists only in Angola so I’m very proud of it,” he told Telegraph Travel through an interpreter. “I am a poor man but my country is wealthy because it has the sable, and my children will tell future generations that their father worked to protect it.”

The Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa, through which the UK-based charity recognises an emerging leader, went to Cathy Dreyer, 39, a South African so determined to protect the critically endangered black rhinos in her reserve from poachers that she refused to let Prince Harry visit lest he draw attention to them. She is the first woman to win a prestigious Tusk award. The Prince William Award for Conservation in Africa, give for lifetime achievement, went to John Kahekwa, 53, who has spent his career protecting the Grauer’s gorilla, another endangered species, in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kahuzi-Biega national park. Like Sacaia, he remained in his post through many years of war.

Sacaia was born on the edge of Angola’s vast Luando reserve sometime in the early 1950s. Orphaned in childhood, the reserve employed him as a kitchen assistant at 14 and a ranger at 18. At that time there were more than 2,000 giant sables - Angola’s national symbol - in Luando, and around 200 in the Cangandala national park, the only other place where they are found. Civil war erupted in 1975. Four years later Sacaia was caught by Unita guerillas who had moved into the 830,000-hectare reserve. They tied him up, intending to kill him, but after two days he escaped, swam across the crocodile-infested Luando river, and walked 40 miles through the bush to safety.

Sacaia monitored Luando’s sables through more than two decades of warfare
Sacaia monitored Luando’s sables through more than two decades of warfare Credit: KOSTADIN LUCHANSKY | ANGOLA IMAGE BANK

Sacaia continued to monitor Luando’s sables through more than two decades of warfare, hiking deep into the reserve, barefoot and for days at a time, though the reserve’s authorities had long since fled. He did his best to protect the animals from guerillas and poachers who killed them for their meat. “I worked for nothing – no money, no food, no boots, no uniform, no tents, only the rain,” he said.

By the time the war ended in 2002 there were just nine sables left in Cangandala, all females. The Kissama Foundation, a wildlife NGO, spent two fruitless months searching for sables in Luando. Finally they turned to Sacaia, who knew of an area where they had survived that was so remote no white person or vehicle had visited it for 30 years. The foundation hired a helicopter and found the reserve’s last sables exactly where Sacaia had said. It subsequently moved two bulls to Cangandala and launched a successful breeding programme. Luando now has about 140 sables, and Cangandala 50.

Sacaia now heads a team of 22 “sable shepherds”
Sacaia now heads a team of 22 “sable shepherds” Credit: KOSTADIN LUCHANSKY | ANGOLA IMAGE BANK

Sacaia now heads a team of 22 “sable shepherds” in Luando to whom the foundation pays small stipends. He is training a new generation, including two of his sons, to guard the sables, and still leads patrols deep into the bush for two or three weeks at a time. The dangers have not gone away. Three times he has been fired at by poachers, so he now carries an AK-47. Last year he was caught in a mantrap. His leg survived only because he was wearing tough new boots, but two fellow shepherds had to carry him 12 miles to the nearest village.

“We’re amazed by Sacaia’s experience and wisdom,” Vladimir Russo, the foundation’s executive director, said. “Even during times of war, poverty and hunger he was telling his colleagues the animal is a national symbol and they should be proud of saving it. He has had a huge impact in the protection of the sable.”

This year's other winners

The Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa: Cathy Dreyer

Cathy Dreyer, winner of the Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa, was a carpenter’s daughter born in Cape Town. She did not see a rhino until she was a 19-year-old student working with the renowned veterinarian Peter Morkel. He was so impressed that he employed her in the SANParks game capture team.

For the next 13 years she specialised in the capture and relocation of rhinos to establish new populations elsewhere. She helped reintroduce endangered black rhinos to reserves in Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Botswana and South Africa’s northern provinces where they had previously been poached or hunted to extinction. Her particular skill is taming rhinos in bomas over several days so they can be crated for their journeys. She soothes, feeds, strokes and talks to them like a horse whisperer. “It’s just patience,” she says. “After a while they get used to you and accept their fate.”

In 2012 Dreyer became conservation manager of a reserve in the Eastern Cape that she does not want named to protect its black rhinos from poachers. Of more than a hundred she has lost seven this year, but has notched, named and taken the DNA of almost every survivor so they can be monitored by 26 full time rangers and two tracker dogs. She flies over the reserve at dawn most days, searching for poachers. Last year she briefed Prince Harry, but is so determined to protect her rhinos that she refused to let him visit the reserve for fear of the publicity. The prince took it well. “She’s very impressive, hugely passionate, and just a damn nice woman,” he wrote afterwards.

The Prince William Award for Conservation in Africa: John Kahekwa

John Kahekwa, winner of the Prince William Award for Conservation in Africa, grew up beside the Kahuzi-Biega national park in the eastern Congo which his uncle helped establish. He became a ranger charged with habituating the park’s rare Grauer’s gorillas as it pioneered gorilla tourism in the late 1970s. But for most of his 23 years as a ranger he found himself fighting the militias, poachers, refugees and illegal loggers and miners who invaded the park as war engulfed the region after 1990.

Kahekwa went on joint patrols with the Congolese army to deter the incursions. He was shot at several times, and lost many colleagues. By the time the conflict ended in the early 2000s, the gorilla population had halved to about 130. Maheshe, a silverback who appeared on Congolese bank notes, was dead. So was Mushamuka, who featured in the film 'Gorillas in the Mist’.

Wildlife in the Kahuzi-Biega national park
Wildlife in the Kahuzi-Biega national park Credit: ALAMY

But Kahekwa also realised that impoverished local communities needed alternative livelihoods so they did not plunder the park. “Empty stomachs have no ears,” the poachers told him. In 1985 he used a tourist’s $10 tip to buy ten t-shirts on which he printed “I tracked gorillas in Zaire”. He sold them for $10 each and bought more. By 1992 he had amassed $6,000 with which he founded an NGO, Pole Pole ('Slowly slowly’). It has since opened schools, planted four million trees outside the park to stop deforestation, trained former poachers to make clothes and woodcarvings, and built ponds to provide fish as alternative to bush meat and the algae spirulina for nutrition. After decades of precipitous decline, the park’s gorilla population is growing again and four of Kahekwa’s nine children are training, he says, “to be the next generation to take care of the gorillas”.

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