My first job in conservation - shortly after University - was with Blythe Loutit, a very special friend and founder of Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia.  I was based with her in Khorixas in the hinterland of the Skeleton Coast running a crafts for conservation project with local communities. It was a crash course in desert living and in the biology of desert adapted black rhino, but also one of the most formative periods of my life.  Blythe’s enthusiasm was infectious and she knew the desert inside out.  One day she let me in to an extraordinary secret about rhino - something that only she knew.  I had little idea then that trying to record what she had witnessed would turn into a four year obsession.  When Blythe died in 2005 I decided to try and track down this special secret about her beloved desert rhino and make a film in her memory.  She was the finest eco-warrior I’ve met, and I hope that I had her blessing.

Black rhino are solitary animals with an aggressive reputation.  But what Blythe had witnessed challenged all of my preconceived notions.  To observe them at night as she had we had to find a way of unlocking the darkness, so we used a special starlight camera (which amplifies moonlight), bringing a beautiful silken quality to the images as well allowing us to be flies on the wall. Buoyed up by the talents of my wonderful crew we set off to find a secret location Blythe had talked about where she’d found black rhino gathering in great numbers at night to socialise.  Our hope was to film this hidden rhino world for the first time.

There’s something incongruous about a beast as big as a rhino surviving in one of the most inhospitable places on earth, but due to the unique geology of Namibia and the low rainfall, desert plants are super-charged with minerals, and desert-adapted black rhino tend to be some of the fattest rhino in the world.  These iconic rhino pictures were taken by my friend and colleague Mike Hearn, who was Blythe’s deputy until his accidental death six months before hers in 2005.  They’re some of the best pictures of desert rhino ever taken, and the film is dedicated in love and memory to both Mike and Blythe.

I often wished for Blythe’s guidance during my quest, and missed her wisdom sorely, but when I finally found her secret spring and filmed rhino interacting at night it felt like I’d discovered a completely different world.  For under the cover of darkness black rhino shed their solitary skins to become the social butterflies of the desert.  Completely in their element with senses on full alert they come alive in the darkness.  I must admit to there being a few hairy moments when I was approached by exceedingly curious rhino, and again when a pride of lions arrived and took over the water hole.  Later I heard them hunting zebra just beyond our periphery.  It was one of the most extraordinary full moon nights of my life, and as dawn broke I realised that I’d learnt one more lesson from Blythe - to peer into this, learn from it, but then leave it alone so it has a chance to survive. Under the cover of darkness I’ve seen rhino in a completely different light.

 

I hope you enjoy it!

 

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, 6th Season

March 2nd, 2008, 7 pm, Animal Planet