Tracking Animals A Guide to Trailing Wildlife

About this book

Tracking Animals: A Guide to Trailing Wildlife, co-authored by Lee Gutteridge and Dr Kersey Lawrence, provides a fresh look at the processes and skills required to become competent in the art and science of tracking wild animals. When done correctly, tracking allows for viewing a wild animal without alerting it to your presence, which is key to interpreting and understanding their natural behaviours.

But an animal's trail doesn't stop when we find it. An animal's trail goes on until the day it dies and its bones decompose back into the earth, or it becomes the living flesh of another animal. Tracking gives us glimpses into an animal's life. Tracks tell stories, and trackers read those stories. Like the tracks themselves, this book is animated with teaching stories and photographs from the field by Lee, Kersey and other expert trackers. The stories span continents, species and habitats, and the concepts are applicable everywhere there are animals to find, and tracks, signs and trails to identify, interpret and follow. This means that the book can be used anywhere in the world, although its heart is in the southern African bush.

This book starts with basic "how to" information and grows in complexity, moving into a series of more technical skills and information, including detailed descriptions of methods used to handle different circumstances a wildlife tracker will encounter. It also includes a few simple exercises that you can do to become a better tracker, whether you are only interested in identifying the tracks and signs in your backyard or in developing the full suite of skills that trackers use.

With its engaging and informative content, Tracking Animals is valuable for both beginners and experienced trackers, and to naturalists, hikers, guides, hunters, scientists and educators.

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Biography

Lee Gutteridge is a well-known nature guide and is a Master Tracker on the international CyberTracker system of evaluation. He has over 30 years of 'dirt-time' and a passion for sharing information. He runs courses on various aspects of the natural world with his partner, Dr Kersey Lawrence, in the Lowveld of South Africa. He particularly focuses on teaching F.G.A.S.A. Nature Guides, trackers on the international CyberTracker system and university study-abroad programmes from around the world, and leading tracking programmes in remote parts of the globe.

Kersey Lawrence (PhD UCONN, Natural Resources; Land, Water & Air) teaches ecological literacy globally through the art and science of wildlife tracking, for which she is certified at the highest levels through CyberTracker Conservation. Her research focuses on the social and ecological connections that the tracking process organically and holistically promotes, which she describes as "the ecology of tracking and the culture of trackers." Her research and instruction blend scientific methods with local wisdom to enhance our understanding of nature. Kersey's goal is to make people more observant and passionate about our environment, nurturing skills that make them responsible custodians of the Earth.