Sept. 15, 2003
FREE STATE, South Africa — Today is a bit of milestone for Ron and Julie. They were left out overnight in a 150-acre hunting tract, instead of being protectively put to bed in the smaller enclosure that they know so well.

John Varty is up at dawn, eager to see how they made out.

He forgoes a proper breakfast; that can wait until he returns, at midday. Mercifully, the fickle Land Rover starts up without much fuss. Speeding off is out of the question, however.

Varty's commute from his farmhouse to the new hunting area is a scenic if bumpy drive on a network of rutted clay and gravel roads that wind their way through a series of gated electric fences. He encounters not one other vehicle, but that doesn't mean there's not plenty of traffic.

He slows the Land Rover to a stop to wait on a herd of springbuck, living up to its name by springing across the road. It's the third such herd this morning, numbering about 250 animals in all.

"You don't know how much pleasure you get, to know that a formerly overgrazed landscape is now supporting wildlife," he says. "Look how pretty they look in the light! Ah, that's a nice animal!"

In the distance, Varty points out Colesburg Hill, a highpoint on the horizon. According to an old hunting book, this whole valley once was surging with springbuck, he says. There are good accounts of wagons being unable to move for three days, waiting for the striped antelopes to pass.

We wait for less than a minute, but Varty is clearly moved and heartened by the sight of the herd. As much as this project is about rehabilitating captive-born tigers and teaching them to be wild, it is also about rehabbing a downtrodden South African landscape. And it's about boosting the local farmers and shepherds, many of whom could no longer eek out a living here with the way things were going. The tigers, represented by Varty, have been good neighbors to a people who suffer from poverty, alcoholism and AIDS.