Purple starlings flit overhead. Verdant tumbles of vegetation whisper in the mid-afternoon breeze. As our rifle-toting convoy snakes along a game trail through Yankari National Park in North-eastern Nigeria, it’s a picture of tranquillity. Until we’re flanked by a stampeding herd of cattle…
Three hop-like steps and a leap, and suddenly Jacob Osang, an eco-guard with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), appears to be levitating above the rainforest floor. With nimble-footed ease, he darts across a moss-covered trunk that bridges a rock-strewn gorge like a fractured bone.
t wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and become fodder for army ants beneath torrential skies — all to no avail.