Derek Joubert:
like this, in Botswana really understands.
Anybody who's listened to this call and knows it
will know why we fell in love with Africa.
( leopard growls )
Beverly Joubert:
it won't only be the leopard and the lions
that we will be losing.
It will be pretty much everything, all wildlife
and a huge part of our own souls.
So this is a pivotal moment in time, and sadly,
the battle is against ignorance and greed.
Dereck:
around three major species.
Elephants that we're losing at a rate of five an hour
lions that we're losing at a rate of five every day
and the rhinos, we lose at one every 6.3 hours, every day.
When these animals go extinct people will stop coming
and indeed, communities will suffer.
In fact, whole economies will go down.
( audience applause )
And so, what we like to face on is the beauty.
John Keats wrote that "Beauty is truth and truth is beauty."
And that's what we embody in all our work, in our films.
And the empathy that we have
when something unfolds in front of us.
And this little scene happened a couple of months ago.
Two lionesses wanted to cross the river with their cubs.
But of course, they saw the ripples of a crocodile going by.
And you could feel the tension.
And then of course, a little later, hippos came by.
So this really freaked the little cubs out
and they didn't wanna go.
( audience laughter )
But, the lionesses were determined
they needed to get across.
And so, they managed to get in the water
and they got some of the cubs to follow with them
and straight away, the little cubs dodged
to their side of the bank again.
This took 12 hours, the whole day
and eventually, the lionesses got the cubs to go in.
But, only when they were midway did they realize
that only four cubs were with them.
But, they had to keep going forward.
And so, they went forward
got to the opposite side of the bank, deposited those cubs
only to hear on the other side, the other cubs were calling.
And so, they had to re-confront
that crocodile infested river and go back again.
And of course, the cubs on the other side
were thrilled to see their mothers and wanted to play.
But, the cubs--
their mothers now heard the other cubs on the other side
and so they were in a dilemma
and they had to try and sort this out.
They crossed it seven times that day.
And eventually at dusk, they crossed the one last time.
( audience laughter )
And as they crossed the one last time
the two little cubs refused to go and
they had to leave these two cubs on the other side and they went.
And obviously, the tension in the vehicle
between Dereck and I was extreme.
So, it was now gonna go into a 24 hour journey for these cubs.
And we waited and they waited
and at early dawn, the two lionesses came back.
But this time, they were almost glued together
for their own protection and they were so silent.
And this is what happened.
( instrumental music )
( audience applause )
We were thrilled.
( audience applause )
So, we use beautiful stories like this sometimes
to get our message across.
And in this case, we tweeted this
we used Instagram, we used it on Facebook.
It went out to two million people immediately
because everybody was just engaged with this.
We realized just the other day
that something quite magical has started to happen.
And in fact, people are now taking to the streets.
This is a march for lions.
A global march that takes place
in 32 cities across the globe right now.
Who would ever have thought
that something like this could ever even happen?
So, Beverly was talking about the ignorance and greed.
Something that happened in Kenya recently
is really fighting ignorance.
As we stood at these piles of ivory being burned
we stood in silent memory of the elephants that we've known
and the ones that we will never know.
Beverly:
that inside these piles of ivory, 11 piles of ivory
was a lot of confiscated big cat skins.
Lions, leopards and cheetah.
What's happening to elephants is happening to the cats.
And then who would've thought that
the military would be working with us to protect rhinos
to relocate them to a safe haven in Botswana?
So, the goal is to combat greed
and to secure large protected landscapes.
Derek:
we've had the opportunity to really focus
on what works and what doesn't work.
And we've come down to the notion
that there are four major causes of declines.
Twenty five percent of the declines
on the cats is habitat loss.
So, it's ultimately important to protect wild landscapes.
Poaching is another major pillar of these declines.
And so, we spent four and a half months paddling up the river
from the Okavango to the northern river systems
in the northern part of Botswana, checking on poaching.
The good news is
this is the highest density of elephants in the world
and the poaching is very low.
The bad news is, they weren't always happy to see us.
( audience laughter )
( instrumental music )
( audience laughter )
Beverly:
filming and focusing all our attention on the big cats.
Protecting these magnificent creatures.
How can you not be in awe?
How can anybody not be in awe of this amazing lion?
But, they've led us on a journey.
So, six years ago, we were shocked when we discovered
that we were losing 95 percent of all these cats
in just 50 years. That's alarming.
And so that's where we co-founded
the Big Cat Initiative with National Geographic.
And as you can see, we now have great progress.
We have 91 projects in 27 countries.
Many of them are right through Africa.
We've managed to give out
over three million US dollars in grants.
So, all our goal is to now protect
these last living and thriving big cats.
We need to be successful.
One of the other big pillars of decline is hunting.
So, we still lose 660 largely male lions a year
to the hunting industry, and
a lot of that comes into the USA.
One point two million trophies in the last 10 years
into the United States.
So, we've reached out
and we've tried to do whatever we can in this regard.
And we've spoken to governments around the world.
We're already starting to see
some very, very interesting things at this crossroads.
The US government has announced that they will be restricting
lion trophies coming into the United States.
Similar conversations are happening in Australia
in Netherlands, the European Community.
Everything is now starting to close down.
We've spoken to airlines.
We started this conversation with airlines.
There are 42 airlines today
that refuse to carry hunting trophies.
So, we are having quite an impact
and that's what we're so pleased about.
And then, we need to look at the successes in Africa.
There has been some policy changes in governments.
Botswana stopped all lion hunting
and then in 2011 stopped all leopard hunting.
Twenty-fourteen, they decided no hunting,
completely shut down.
Uganda followed in the footsteps of Botswana
and they stopped big cat hunting.
And now, all hunting.
South Sudan followed and they have now stopped all hunting.
A little different with South Africa.
South Africa has put
a moratorium on leopards, for a year.
But that shows that we can't be complacent
we need to drive forward.
The fourth big pillar, of course, is communities
that live next to these big wildlife populations
and are now in conflict with them.
We have a number of grantees that
are working with communities largely to reduce the conflict
with cattle communities like the Maasai, for instance.
One particular innovative project that we came across
is in redirecting this young warrior instinct
to go out and to kill a lion.
And we're trying to find with them
new ways to direct that energy.
Even though, it's a very, very ancient activity.
( chanting )
( instrumental music )
So this is a race against time.
What we have to do is stop all killings.
We have to stop all conflicts
and we need to mount a major campaign
to stop all the trade in animal parts
for us to be successful.
Who would've thought that
within a year of Cecil, the lion in Zimbabwe being killed
there would be marches in the streets
there would be government policies being changed
there would be airlines stopping trophy hunting?
And so for us, there's never been a time
when the path in this crossroads has been clearer.
-Thank you very much. -Thank you.
( audience applause )