Sometimes you sense them before you see them but they've always seen you first...

I clamber up a rock face, wedged between the sandstone and a Eucalypt, not quite like the old days but still enough to raise a smile. About thirty metres above the mangroves now, some flattish ground before a slope to the next escarpment. Swamp wallaby scat, animals live here. Time to bush bash. Not long before a massive brush turkey mound appears. No turkey but I bet a goanna is close by. It's spring, they know eggs are on the way.

There he is! About a metre and half long. Of course he had already seen me. They always do. Deadly still. Him I mean. I try but I'm a clumsy human. We eyeball for a while. He lets me take the image. I respectfully move away, this is his realm, he's got hunting to do.

I look for more scat. I know there's a tiny creek ahead. I've got remote cameras in my pack. Targeting quolls. I wont see them in the daytime but my equipment might spy this powerful nocturnal predator.

I'm having fun. I'm always a few kilos down, a little run down after trekking distances in Nepal. Feeling stronger now, I love pulling myself up the Australian rock, through the bush. No leopards to worry about either. Always wary of snakes though. They have some deadly ones here. Back in New Zealand we don't have to worry about critters. No, it's the rivers that can get you there. They rise so fast...

Every country has its challenges.

Back in the moment. Enjoying this spring sun. I look up. An eagle! Ha! Surveying its domain above the ridge. Wow! A peregrine falcon dives down at the eagle! "Get away from my f...... nest!" ... Another eagle appears, then another again, then another falcon! Five supreme sky hunters putting on an airshow ... how good is this?!

We know these birds. We know where their nests are. We know their hunting grounds. We spend hours monitoring these creatures. We are protective of them, protective of their habitat.

It's my backyard too. We all live here together. These eagles here in Australia, those leopards and those tigers in Nepal, another backyard. Work together, think together.

Protect your habitat. Protect your backyard...

Camera traps, vital tools where technology meets nature...

YOU CAN'T PROPERLY DESCRIBE WHAT'S UNDER A ROCK UNLESS YOU LOOK UNDERNEATH IT - a metaphor of course, put it another way, you can't really describe the odour of rose a unless you've smelt it yourself.
Camera traps. We live in a world of opinions. If they're backed up by facts, research, data, experience. looking under rocks and smelling of roses, well, they're great. But give me data, data, data. Love the stuff.

The camera trap is now a vital tool for those who know how to use them. Often called trail cameras (we call them remote cameras or RCs), they are where technology meets nature. Set them up properly and high quality data can be obtained.

At the moment I'm testing three models which send information straight to my inbox as soon as a still image or video is obtained. I'm trying to adapt them to meet upcoming winter Himalayan conditions. The Australian bush is my testing ground. Teeming with wildlife, wonderful. As a wildlife monitoring tool they are fantastic. It takes a fair bit of work to set them up the right way in the right regions but it's worth the effort.

They are also environmental crime fighting tools. Capture the image of a poacher or other environment destroyer and it can lead to an arrest. A successful identification, often possible in village or local community situations can lead to a lot more data. Put a poacher under surveillance. See who he meets. One image can lead to a network of dealers and buyers.

The successful deployment of a camera trap can lead to a long thread of information in wildlife crime and human/wildlife conflict, relationships. Yes, time, training and money have to be invested but it works.

It's just after 5.30am, the birds are singing, light is replacing dark. I've got a three hour walk in the bush to check an RC. Wonder what I'll find...

Future eater - if only we had a collective memory...

This child was sitting precariously on a stone wall that lined the trail on a walk to Chomrong one day.  We locked eyes for about a minute.  Both inquisitive.  I've seen this look in animals.  "What are you doing?" ... If we as a species were blessed with a DNA that allowed us to remember everything that has happened in human past, a kind of generation to generation memory transfer, I'm sure we wouldn't make the mistakes we are making.  Instead we have to learn everything from scratch.  This child is taught by us.

Buddhism attracts me because of the "living connection to all things" philosophy.  It ties in with modern science.  If we can evolve to develop some sort of collective memory, reduce our learning curve, to be like many other species which have to learn really fast just to survive then maybe we will relate better to that around us.

The irony is this kid is already connected and we're doing our best to "un-nature" our children when they have one hell of a job ahead of them protecting an environment we have plundered...