Okonjima by Brent Hannon

They need too much grass and too much water. They wreck the landscape with their destructive hoofs. Worst of all, like house guests, they’re hard to get rid of.

But, not for Wayne. As soon as bought his present 6,000-hectare tract from his father five years ago, he banished the livestock. “Namibia is just too dry for cattle,” he says. “This land is meant for wild game, and that’s it.”

After Wayne ditched the cows, the farm sprang to life. Today, it’s an oasis in a parched land — a sea of grass and trees alive with birds and animals. The three-hour drive north from Windhoek, by contrast, shows the destruction wrought by cattle: trampled brown earth with a few fences, termite mounds and acacia trees, all baked dry by the hot African sun.

Wayne figured tourism could replace cows as a source of income. He built 10 upscale bungalows and half a dozen luxury tents. Guests poured in to Okonjima, as the farm is called. His work with leopards and cheetahs proved highly popular. It was a perfect fit: the cats love the tall grass, the tourists pay to see the cats, and Wayne and his wife Lise use the income to help Namibia’s remaining predators.

Wayne’s real passion is the leopards and cheetahs that run wild in Namibia. In 1991, worried about the fate of these cats, Wayne and Lise founded the Africat Foundation. The foundation, a charity dedicated to saving Namibia’s predators, has rescued and released 120 cheetahs and about 50 leopards in the last five years.

Africat now dominates the Hanssens’ lives. They lecture farmers. They rescue cats. They build electric fences. They solicit donations. They chop up dead cows and horses for the always-hungry felines. Nothing is too much to ask in the name of Namibia’s threatened leopards and cheetahs. Time, they feel, is not on their side.

With Namibia’s independence in 1990 came a flood of fat foreign beef, against which Namibian cattle can’t compete. The sharp drop in beef prices left the farmers facing poverty, and put them in a chronic bad mood. They can’t raise beef prices, and they can’t make it rain, but they can legally shoot the predators that attack their cattle. They trap the cats in metal boxes, then kill or sell them to zoos.

At that critical point — when terrified cat meets vengeful farmer — Wayne and Lise can step in and save the animal’s life. They will drive or fly hundreds of kilometers to remove the cat from the box trap, bring it to Okonjima, and later release it.

The Hanssens never meant to turn their property into a halfway house for wayward cats. Africat began by accident in 1991, when two tame cheetahs already lived at Okonjima. A soft-hearted local farmer had trapped a cheetah, but didn’t want to kill it. He called the Hanssens: did they want another cat? They did.

They retrieved “Richard” and put him in a fenced field. When the athletic cat broke out and disappeared, Wayne and Lise learned that trapped cheetahs could be returned to the wild, and that farmers might hand them over instead of shooting them.

Next they addressed a farmers’ meeting in Windhoek, asking skeptical ranchers to give the foundation their caged cats. It wasn’t easy. “Some of them laughed out loud,” Lise remembers. “When we told them the cheetah was the fastest animal on earth, one of them said ‘not faster than my 30.06 (a hunting rifle)’. They said their kids could see cheetahs at the zoo.”

At the farmers’ meeting, Wayne preached the four gospels of the Africat Foundation: electric fences can keep calves in and predators out. Predators and cattle can live together with minimal loss of livestock. Removing a good cat (one that doesn’t kill cattle) can make space for a bad one. And finally, if the farmer does trap an animal, please call the Hanssens.

Martin Bause, a sunburned cattle rancher who lives down the road from Okonjima, says he laughed the loudest at that meeting. Yet a couple of years later he asked Wayne and Lise to come to his farm and fetch a cheetah.

Bause looks unlikely to spare the life of any cat. His couches are covered with cheetah and leopard pelts, and his living room sprouts animal heads from every inch of wall space. The whole farm is festooned with the skulls and bones and horns of wild animals. The crusty 49-year-old rancher reckons he has killed 140 cheetahs in the past 15 years, many of them from a microlight aircraft. The tiny plane bears witness to the hunts: spent cartridges have pockmarked the wooden propeller, and there’s a bullet hole where his son missed a cheetah and shot the wheel rim instead. One can imagine the plane careening through the African skies, spitting a hail of bullets and generally terrorizing the countryside.

But as it turns out, Bause is a thoughtful man who has been around a long time: his German-speaking grandfather bought the farm in 1923. He listened carefully to Wayne’s ideas, and slowly became convinced. “You know, Wayne was right,” he says. “His ideas worked. I used to have lots of problems with predators, but now, not so much.”

The shared background helps. “Wayne is a rancher. He knows what it’s all about,” says Bause. Wayne, an engineer by training, helped Bause build a solar-powered electric fence to keep his calves safe. Africat will help any willing farmer put up an electric fence, a process Wayne has down to a science. Does Bause still shoot cheetahs from his airplane? “No, no, we stopped this,” he assures. “Now we trap them and take the time to phone Wayne.”

Wayne Hanssen has always been curious about cats. His father, like many locals, once offered hunting tours on Okonjima. For a price, visitors could shoot wart hogs, leopards, kudu and oryx. Despite the many leopards killed, Wayne noticed that more cats always came. In the early 1980s, he set up bait traps rigged to take photos. The results were shocking. “We had 28 to 32 leopards on the property,” says Wayne. “Way too many for a place this size. Everyone was shooting: my father, all the farmers, the hunters, everyone. And still we had all these leopards.” Despite the shooting, the farm lost 20 calves a year to the stealthy cats.

Wayne persuaded his father to stop hunting, and the leopards began to vanish. In five years just eight remained, and the annual number of dead calves fell to two. Wayne’s hunch was correct: a big male stakes out a territory and drives away smaller leopards. Game hunters, looking for trophies, kill the dominant males, causing dozens of contenders to invade the vacated turf. “They all want to shoot the biggest and the best,” says Wayne.

This counter-intuitive lesson is central to the Africats message: more hunting leads to more leopards. Wayne never cared much for hunting anyway, even as a kid. “Shooting a leopard makes you sick for days, I can tell you,” he says. “They’re magnificent animals.”

Because Wayne and Lise free their leopards at Okonjima, and feed them until they move away, visitors get a rare look at these shy predators. At dusk the leopards materialize like ghosts, alert and silent, to eat their chunks of meat. They have glittery green eyes, great stealth and an intense distrust of humans.

The most remarkable night-time visitor is a handsome, trophy-size leopard named Tyson, who was trapped by a farmer several years ago. A hunter came to shoot the helpless cat in his cage, but luck was on Tyson’s side: He had bloodied his face against the metal trap. The hunter didn’t want a damaged head on his wall, and refused to shoot him.

So Tyson came to Okonjima. Three days later he knocked a baboon off the top of a 3.5-meter fence, ate it, and disappeared. Years later, unaccountably, he returned. Tyson is a handsome animal, a powerful cat with a beautiful square face and the arrogance of a king. He stares straight at the visitors for long minutes, his neutral green eyes aglow with intelligence. “You can’t see leopards like that anywhere else in Africa,” whispers Wayne. Nobody knows how many leopards stalk Namibia, but they have some advantages: they breed fast and mature quickly, they’re smart, suspicious, and nocturnal, and they eat almost anything.

While Wayne spends his time with the leopards, Lise concentrates on the cheetahs. Cheetahs are more vulnerable than leopards and not as intelligent. They’re curious and trusting, almost childlike. They hang about in the daytime, relying on their good eyesight for hunting. Cheetahs can be found on their haunches, or atop small hillocks, scanning the grasslands for game.

Wild adult cheetahs don’t stay long at Okonjima. They are given a blood test, treated for parasites, fitted with a tiny microchip, and released onto game reserves or into the wild. The wild cheetahs don’t have names, and are kept away from tourists. “That’s the problem with cheetahs — they get tame,” says Lise.

Of the 120 cheetahs Africats has released since 1991, just seven have been killed — four by farmers and three by lions. Lise worries about her prodigal cats, but accepts the risk. “It’s worth it,” she says. “It’s a choice between life in a cage or freedom, even for two or three years.”

Hunting comes naturally to leopards, but cheetahs must be taught by their mothers. Orphans never learn. Africats has 16 semi-tame cheetahs that wouldn’t know a gazelle from a fence post. Food, for them, is what Lise brings every afternoon at 4:00 o’clock. Among the non-hunters are Paws, whose two front feet were crushed by the metal door of a box trap as she followed her mother in. Tibia had her leg broken by jackals when she was a cub. The Four Musketeers were all orphaned when a hunter shot their mother. “He had a permit, but not to shoot a mother,” says Lise.

Lise and the cheetahs have great rapport. When she calls, they come tearing across the veld. The half-tame cheetahs are impossibly cute, with their trusting amber eyes and classic teardrop fur pattern. They meow and bark and purr; they dash up, hiss, and scramble back. Yet these gentle creatures double as high-speed hunting machines from which few gazelles ever escape. It can be hard to picture.

The Africat Foundation might represent the cheetah’s last good chance at survival in the wild. Namibia is home to 3,000 cheetahs, more than any other country, but 95% of them live on farmland. If the farmers can learn to tolerate them, the wild cheetahs will survive. If not, they will exist only on game farms and in zoos. “Six thousand farmers own most of Namibia,” explains Lise. “The future of the cheetah is in the hands of those farmers, no doubt.”

Wayne and Lise rescue other animals besides cats. When ranchers shot most of a pack of rare wild dogs in eastern Namibia, Lisa took care of an orphaned puppy named Jack. “They have a strong smell, like garlic and onions” says Lise. Jack now lives on a breeding farm in South Africa, a happier dog.

Wayne once spent six months trying to find a mother for Elvis, the bad-tempered baboon that follows him everywhere. This meant finding a female that would be willing to adopt a new baby. For half a year Wayne hung out with baboons, but adoption proved impossible. “Elvis was ****- scared of other baboons,” says Wayne. Elvis had a good thing going anyway — the obstreperous little ape had already learned to steal and drink Wayne’s beer.

Wayne and Lise are realists. There’s no room on the new frontier for bleeding hearts. They’ll pay farmers for the cats they rescue: US$150 for a cheetah, and up to $800 for a leopard. “If you give them a monetary value, it ensures their future,” says Lise. “That’s how it works.”

Some of Africat’s ideas are radical. Ten years ago, a neighbouring farmer trapped and killed six of Wayne’s prized leopards. Tired of the slaughter, he electrified a box trap and shocked six leopards, causing them to shun the traps. Strong treatment, but it worked. “Half a decade later, they’re all still alive,” says Wayne. He’s now using shocks to keep leopards away from calves.

After two cheetah cubs were born at Okonjima, Lise gave the mothers contraceptive implants. “The mothers can’t hunt, and the cubs can’t either,” says Lise, brushing aside criticism. “We could breed heaps of cheetahs, but so what? It just means more cheetahs in captivity. They have a role to play in the wild.”

Wayne has a knack for the tourism that is the foundation’s life blood. The rooms are comfortable, and the entertainment, thanks to the cats, is outstanding. In just five years, the guest lodges paid Wayne’s debt on Okonjima: half a million Namibian dollars plus 18% interest. But he’s not putting the rest in the bank. Looking to the future as always, Wayne has bigger ideas.

At sunset, guests stroll up a nearby hill for cold drinks and conversation. The view is stunning. Evening sunlight rakes the plains, the horizon stretches westward, and the planet Venus shines through a hole the clouds. It’s a reflective time of day. Guests are moved by what they’ve seen of Africats, and bothered by the plight of the predators.

Wayne chooses this moment to explain his ultimate plan. He wants to buy the farm stretched out below, and one or two others. He’ll set them afire, allowing native grasses to grow, and then build a tented camp and a luxury lodge, so travellers of all budgets can visit.

Finally he’ll fence the entire perimeter, and like a modern-day Noah release half a dozen lions, some hyenas, a dozen leopards, and eight or ten cheetahs. It will be a place of final refuge, a sanctuary of absolute safety. It won’t need the cooperation of farmers or governments. The natural rhythms of Africa will tend his flock. What about the cows, someone asks. Will he stock any cattle? Wayne laughs. “Africa,” he says, “is for animals.”