John Frederick Walker

Before I started writing about the fate of Africa’s elephants, I had been covering the tenuous future of another of Africa’s most endangered species: the giant sable antelope of Angola, long feared to have been wiped out in that country’s 27-year-long civil war (1975-2002).

I was on the first post-war expedition into Cangandala National Park, which uncovered evidence of the antelope’s survival. Last year I returned to the park to join a capture operation aiming to put the first radio collars on these spectacular creatures. My article on this attempt (”Icon on the Brink: Angola’s Giant Sable Antelope”) appears in the May/June 2009 Wildlife Conservation (sadly, the last issue of this 112-year old magazine). Please visit my nature page for a link to a PDF of the story.