IT’S THE DAY OF THE PREMIERE! This is the last time we are sharing a blog post from Daniel Byers, who was assistant camera and a shooter on Snow Leopard of Afghanistan. 

Check out this behind the scenes perspective and  be sure to tune into Snow Leopard of Afghanistan at 8pm and 10pm Eastern Time, and 7pm Pacific Time TODAY, Sunday, December 9 on Nat Geo Wild.

Tony Gerber will be live-tweeting during the 8pm ET premiere @marketroadfilms. Place #BigCatWeek in your tweet and join the conversation.

Paliwan

May 29 2012

Originally posted on Daniel Byers’ Skyship Films Blog

With the collaring finished and the animal released, we gave Hussain Ali, whose incredible expertise of the area and snow leopards made the capture possible, the honor of naming our cat. He thought about it for a long time, then returned with the name “Paliwan”, which in Wakhi means “the fighter” or “the competitor”. It was clear the leopard had been in some recent scrapes, and had the shreds of one ear to prove it, so the name seemed right. Now, with our field work barely begun and a capture already completed, what’s next?

The first order of business is to get our camp into the mountains – no mean feat, as we’re moving a staff of nearly 20 people into the field. We’re leaving the traps alone for tonight – there’s some concern that the tranquilizer drugs used on Paliwan will make him forget his experience (like a bender) and he might stumble into the same trap twice, which would be very bad for him as well as for us. I set out to film the donkey caravan bringing our tents and gear up the valley from a wide angle, while Tony stayed in for the closeups. Boone and Goodrich are in high spirits and getting a little cocky – “at this rate, we’ll catch one a day,” says Goodrich. Considering that two days ago these guys were grinning sadly and saying it was a shame that we’d come all this way and just didn’t have time to catch a leopard, expectations have done a 180.

Now, if our GPS tracking software works, we’ll be able to see Paliwan’s movements transposed onto a google map of the valley every day!

In anticipation of the premiere, every day this week we are sharing posts from Daniel Byers, who was assistant camera and a shooter on Snow Leopard of Afghanistan. 

Check out this behind the scenes perspective and be sure to tune into Snow Leopard of Afghanistan at 8pm and 10pm Eastern Time, and 7pm Pacific Time on Sunday, December 9 on Nat Geo Wild Channel.

Capture!

May 27 – 28, 2012

Originally posted on Daniel Byers Skyship Films Blog

The site of the first trap set (Photo Courtesy of Daniel Byers)

This is an amazing day – and the more for starting as a pretty unremarkable, even frustrating one. It turns out that our polite declination of the local Shah’s offer to stay in his guest house (we needed to be at WCS’s house to cover our subjects) was actually taken as a major slight and threatened to undermine popular local support of our project in the area. To top this, the events of the previous night made it clear that we needed to set things straight with the border police to avoid any other gunpoint incidents. In the interest of damage control we headed over to the Shah’s for lunch – lamb kabob skewers, which I must say, is the most edible form of the meat I’ve encountered yet – followed by a series of long speeches in translation. The Shah recited a poem to us at one point, the general gist of which was “It is an evil thing to allow a leopard to live.” He did concede afterwards, however, that attitudes were changing due to WCS’s awareness-raising work.

We did an interview of the Shah, then trekked over to the border police station for Lunch #2. The police commander, a powerful and grizzled man who had the look of having been involved in more than one Afghani war, treated us to tea on a mat outside. He gave his blessing, not neglecting to inform us that he too was a great trapper, and if we failed perhaps he would come show us how it was done. But the best moment was when Boone encountered the two border police who’d walked him around at gunpoint the day before, and reconciled with laughter and high-fives all around. I think we all feel a little safer, having cleared up that frightening misunderstanding.

By this point it was late in the day, and our initial plan to set three to six snares was not to be. We trekked into the mountains and began to set our very first snare in a steep overhang we’d identified as a leopard scratching ground previously. By the time it was laid and camouflaged with dirt and rocks, the sun was setting, and it was clear there’d be no more trap setting that day. “Well, at least we’ve got one in,” said Goodrich, acknowledging that it was at best a symbolic victory – the chances of catching a cat were “a million to one.” Goodrich and Boone elected to stay in the valley overnight in tents just in case, but the rest of us returned to the WCS office as we hadn’t had time that day to move our full camp into the field – and anyway, we weren’t going to catch anything, right?

Wrong. Because six hours after the setting of our one and only trap, we captured the first live snow leopard in the history of Afghanistan.

In anticipation of the premiere, every day this week we are sharing posts from Daniel Byers, who was assistant camera and a shooter on Snow Leopard of Afghanistan. Enjoy this behind the scenes perspective and be sure to tune into Snow Leopard of Afghanistan at 8pm and 10pm Eastern Time, and 7pm Pacific Time on Sunday, December 9 on Nat Geo Wild Channel.

Tony Gerber will be live-tweeting during the 8pm (Eastern Time) premiere on Sunday @marketroadfilms. Put #BigCatWeek into your tweet and join the conversation.

Good Snares and Bad News

May 26, 2012 by danielbyers

Originally posted on Daniel Byers’ Skyship Films Blog

It was supposed to be a field day. We visited a nearby construction project and the head builder agreed to let us bend some rebar to use as ground anchors for the traps – one of our major missing pieces. Later that day the rest of our gear would arrive, as well as some bits and pieces from a mission to Tajikistan – so the trap kits are ready.

Boone and Goodrich spent the rest of the morning packing, and we were just about to head out to set our first snares when Hussain came back. “Bad day to go to mountain,” he reported. Apparently the border guards have their heckles up – there were some illegal border crossings recently, and they said no travel today. At lunch, we got the rest of the story: the Taliban are getting uncomfortably close. Marcus looked at a map and did the math: only 6.5 hours by car.

Then – just twenty minutes ago – I walked into the WCS Office to download our media for today, and found Boone hunched over his computer, shaking his head. “I was walking over here and I just heard this gun cock in the darkness,” he said, “and two guys with machine guns came out and pointed them at me, told me to walk.” It was the border guards again, and they harassed him for twenty minutes or so before leaving. Sitting alone in the office, typing, as I am now, I keep stealing glances at the windows, wondering if they’ll be back. It’s pretty clear these guys are just yahoos, and wanted to mess with him, but that’s exactly the worst kind of situation to get yourself into. “I really want to catch a leopard, but honestly, I’d like to get out of dodge,” says Boone.

Despite the nervousness this is causing, the day went incredibly well. The gear we weren’t sure would make it through the combat zones arrived. The traps are ready to deploy. Boone and Goodrich trained the Afghanis in snare building, and Stephane trained them to shoot the dart rifle and pistol. Tomorrow we head to high camp and start snaring. I’ll be staying over the first night with the trappers in a makeshift camp before the full camp arrives the day after.

Camera Trap (Photo Courtesy of Daniel Byers)

In case you missed it, this ABC Nightline video gives a fantastic lowdown of the Snow Leopard expedition. 

Enjoy, and don’t miss director Tony Gerber live-tweeting during the premiere on Nat Geo Wild, this Sunday night at 8pm ET. Bring your questions and tweet #BigCatWeek.

Be sure to tune into Snow Leopard of Afghanistan at 8pm and 10pm on Sunday, December 9 on Nat Geo Wild Channel.

In anticipation of the premiere, every day this week we are sharing posts from Daniel Byers, who was assistant camera and a shooter for the documentary. Enjoy this behind the scenes perspective!

Tracking the Leopard

May 25, 2012

Originally posted on Daniel Byers’  Skyship Films Blog

Man, am I dirty.

Today we trekked for 7 hours up a glacier valley, searching out trap sites. Hussain Ali led the way, followed by Boone, Goodrich, Dave and Anthony. Tony and I were on camera, and working hard. Sprinting at 10,000 feet is tough enough – doing it over scree fields and boulders is something else entirely.

But the search bore fruit. Our best chance for cat sign were the small caves – some little more than overhangs – that lie amidst the rocks and boulders. First we just found scratches – then, in a dry riverbed, an amazing find. A set of perfect snow leopard tracks, preserved during a muddy rain about a week ago. In a nearby cave, Boone and Goodrich leaned in close to the rock to smell for cat piss. “Huh, kind of a sagey smell,” says Goodrich. “Almost minty. Nothing like any cat piss I’ve encountered before.” Spirits are high, and the excitement is tangible.

Higher up: fresh scat, two days old at the most. But this might be a bad sign. The cats range over a wide territory, and if one was here two days ago, it might not be back for three weeks. By the time our full snare kit arrives, we’ll have just one. Thinking on this and other challenges, we eat lunch and head back.

That’s when we first spot it: a massive brown cloud heading up the glacier channel from the valley below. It looks almost like low lying fog, but the texture is wrong, the color, the way it moves. “Dust is coming,” says Hussain, and start hurriedly tying his scarf around his face.

It’s an onslaught. We huddle behind a rock in screaming winds, shielding our faces. Then the rain hits. By the time the droplets strike they’re mudballs, blinding and stinging. The temperature plummets to nearly zero. We put our heads down and move as fast as we can, taking shelter behind rocks along the way. We’re not even close to the valley floor.

In all my travels, I’ve never seen weather turn around that fast. Tony told me on the walk home he was glad he’d skyped his daughters that morning, because he thought that was it. Apparently, though, it’s fairly common – and it can last for a month. I think it’s the Wahkan’s way of saying hello.

Despite the weather, I have to say – this place is amazing. I’m working harder than I ever have before, I’m here with a great project, and I’m running up glacier valleys in the mountains of Afghanistan looking for leopards. Life is good.

Afghan Ranger (Photo Courtesy of Daniel Byers)

Thanks for reading!

Daniel

Be sure to tune into Snow Leopard of Afghanistan at 8pm and 10pm on Sunday, December 9 on Nat Geo Wild Channel.

In anticipation of the premiere, every day this week we are sharing posts from Daniel Byers, who was assistant camera and a shooter. Enjoy this behind the scenes perspective!

Into the Wahkan

May 24, 2012

Originally posted on Daniel Byers’  Skyship Films Blog

Time to breathe a sigh of relief. The Wahkan corridor is vast, dusty, beautiful, the Hindu Kush mountains rising up to 25,000 feet around us. It’s peaceful, it’s quiet, it’s safe. And that’s a welcome change from Faizabad.

4AM and I was startled out of bad, twisted dreams by what I thought was an earthquake. The windows were shaking violently and there was a bright blue light flooding the room. I thought maybe I was still dreaming – but no – and then I thought we were under attack by insurgents. Luckily, it wasn’t us, and it wasn’t insurgents: it was a special forces raid on the house directly across from the hotel. The helicopter dived low and a floodlight hit the building – black silhouettes plummeted down ropes. Then it was dark again. The support helicopter circled for a few more minutes, then departed. Confused, shaken, I fell back into an equally disturbed dreamworld.

(Marcus, Tony and Daniel-Photo Courtesy of Daniel Byers)

In the morning Stephane informed me that we might not be able to fly due to weather conditions (as the pilot, Daniel, later said: “Clouds, mountains, airplanes. Pick two.”) This was not what I wanted to hear – Faizabad and me were done. We waited on the phone call telling us the plane was coming. Nothing.

We headed off to the airstrip anyway, communications being what they are here, and were met with a welcome sight. The Kodiak was on the strip, fueling. Daniel greeted us and we loaded up.

I’d been on plenty of twin otter flights in Nepal, but nothing like this. You practically felt like there wasn’t a plane around you – like you were levitating at 21,000 feet over the massive snowcapped Hindu Kush. We didn’t end up needing oxygen, and Daniel dipped in low, flying just meters from the rocks and ice. The wind caught us and tossed us like a toy, giving me a whole new concept of “turbulence”. It was beautiful.

We hit the strip and immediately I was working. I miked up Stephane and we shot – all the way along the bumpy 2 hour ride to Qal-e-panja, then for several hours more with the now complete cast of characters. As Tony put it, we’re hosing this one down – shooting everything until we track down our story.

Qal-e-panja is wonderful, and there’s even internet and power at a cute little office built by a foreign aid grant. I’m feeling safer and happier than I have all trip. In fact, it reminds me a little of the yurts on Spruce Knob, West Virginia, that I visited as a kid. Tomorrow we hit the mountain trails to scout trap sites, and I couldn’t be more excited. I met Ali Hussain, the Afghani student of Rodney Jackson (seems like there’s only a few people working with these leopards, and they all know each other.) We met John Goodrich, the other trapper, and people started trading trapping stories.

Stephane: “Once we had a Persian leopard break through his chain, so he was held only by the spring [the spring is a narrow coil of metal used to reduce shock to the animal's leg when it jerks against the trap.] He was charging at us, and we expected him to stop after 2 meters, but he kept coming. The vet with the tranquilizer gun froze and stared and the leopard leapt at him – but the spring caught him just meters away.” John nods at this and shows us the mauling scar on his hand when one of his traps failed.

It brings up a difficult and complex question. What do we do if we catch, for example, a cub, whose mother is free and mad? What if we catch one of a mated pair and the other hangs around? What if it’s at night, when the cat could kill all of us without a problem? And – what if the animal is injured and needs to be euthanized? Stephane said it best in Faizabad: there’s no real plan. You adapt and hope for the best.

But first, we need to catch a leopard.

Thanks for reading, missing home.

Daniel

Be sure to tune into Snow Leopard of Afghanistan at 8pm and 10pm on Sunday, December 9 on Nat Geo Wild Channel.

In anticipation of the premiere, every day this week we are sharing posts from Daniel Byers, who was assistant camera and a shooter. Enjoy this behind the scenes perspective!

What it means to be a “Target”

May 23 , 2012 

Originally posted on Daniel Byers’ Skyship Films Blog

“Do you think we as a National Geographic film crew could be targets?” I ask Stephane on the rooftop of our hotel. Stephane snorts with laughter. “Are you kidding? A high profile organization like National Geographic? They would love to kidnap you.”

This unwelcome fact comes packaged with troubling news: the Taliban are attacking in the next province over, directly in the path of our ground route to the Wahkan. This is more a problem for our equipment than for ourselves, as we’ll be taking a 5-seater Kodiak – but the heavy gear needs to travel by ground. After hearing the reports our driver shakes his head. He won’t go tomorrow, he says. Maybe later, if the reports improve. This could be a serious problem: if our gear doesn’t make it – or doesn’t make it in time – we won’t be able to trap or film the leopards.

During my time in Faizabad with Stephane, the word “target” keeps coming up – and not in an abstract way, unfortunately. First, it turned out our 2-day stay coincided directly with a 2-day police training workshop in the same building. Which makes the building a clear target for insurgents and anyone with a bone to pick with the police – which, it turns out, is a lot of anyones. This morning, we drove to the Provincial Governors compound, our car squeezing past concrete blockades and razor wire along with donkeys and motor carts. “This place has been attacked many times. The central authority always has many enemies,” Stephane told me. It’s a tribal area, and any central governing agency inevitably has bad favor with many of the tribes. AK47s bristle everywhere – I try not to visibly shirk away when their barrels swing past me. Despite the heavy security I feel more vulnerable than ever – as Stephane keeps emphasizing, heavily fortified or armed areas are the least safe places to be. I think about what it must be like to be a NATO soldier in this country, with a red X painted on you all the time. Being here, seeing for myself the atmosphere of violence, I can imagine it in a way I never could from the media reports back home.

The Provincial Governor was good to us, and Stephane even gave him a tranquilizer dart, which he loved. I was able to film a little, but not until after thorough inspection of the camera. The famous Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud was killed by a suicide bomb hidden in a camera by two Tunisian extremists posing as Belgian reporters – since then, cameras are an unwelcome prop around officials.

Back in the hotel we lay low, as filming wasn’t an option with the police around. Picking up some interview on the roof, Stephane insisted we never film too long in one place or in view of the street. It’s not good letting people know there’s a film crew around, and in this case, the more influential name brand of National Geographic actually works against us. I’ve been getting a lot of good survival advice from Stephane on the side. If the Taliban attack the Wahkan, he told me, don’t think twice: swim the river to Tajikistan and let them arrest you for entering without a passport. At least there you’ll have a way out.

I’m looking forward to flying out tomorrow, to someplace where even a worst case scenario can be solved with a 300 meter swim.

Love to all at home,

Daniel

Hey there, Market Road blog readers!

Market Road Film’s Snow Leopard of Afghanistan will premiere on December 9 at 8pm and 10pm on Nat Geo Wild as part of their Big Cat Week.

The process of going for the impossible, capturing, collaring, and releasing the “ghost cat,” happened in a dangerous yet beautiful landscape. Our crew was in Afghanistan for over three weeks, and during that time had some near scrapes with death, but also experienced some of the rich cultural heritage the Wakhan Corridor has to offer.

In anticipation of the premiere, we’ll be sharing posts from Daniel Byers, who was assistant camera and a shooter on Snow Leopard of Afghanistan. Daniel kept a fantastic blog during the shoot back in May and in July, and we’ll upload some of the highlights every day leading up to the premiere.

Enjoy this behind-the-scenes perspective, and be sure to tune in to Nat Geo Wild on Sunday night.

 (Photo Courtesy of Daniel Byers)

Kabul – A History of Violence                                                                                                                                                                              Originally posted on Daniel Byers’s Skyship Films Blog

May 21, 2012

Three days of travel and we finally arrived in the Kabul airport. Marcus, Tony and I met up first with our trapper and star Boone Smith, then our WCS team: Dave Lawson and Peter Bowles.

Despite similarities to other airports I’ve visited in developing nations – Kathmandu, for example – something is very different. It’s quiet. The people waiting outside aren’t thronging, they’re waiting silently, and no one is trying to get you into their taxi. This was my first indication of a much larger, even ubiquitous aspect of Kabul that sets it apart from any other place I’ve been: the overwhelming presence of security.

After a much needed ten-hour sleep, we headed back into town to meet the Ministry of Agriculture and the Director of Protected Areas, where we were very kindly received. We then headed out to get our travel documents, which is where things got interesting. Through Dave’s stories and the view out the window, a picture of the deep-seeded violence in the area began to emerge. Grain factories marked with holes from Mujahideen rockets – whole blocks still being rebuilt from conflict with the Russians – bullet holes marking the mud walls. You can see the history of Kabul physically burned, blown, and punched into its landscape.

As usual, the topic was cats. Boone told a story about wrestling a female Jaguar, hallucinating from a dart and mad as hell, as it wrapped itself around a tree and chewed through the safety rope he was harnessed to. “We had donors out that day, I think they liked the show,” he said. Climbing up a tree to hand-rope a hallucinating animal seemed to me like a great way to get mauled, but Boone’s done it almost 200 times without a serious injury. Dave Lawson told us about darting Lions in Africa, then told us about the Lion in the Afghan zoo, Marjin, who’d recently died. “Someone got in his cage and got eaten, so the next day his brother came back and threw a hand grenade in with him.” Miraculously, Marjin survived the grenade (though he was blinded in one eye) and lived a long life. Still, it was one more example of just how deeply present violence is here.

And today was no exception. While securing our travel documents, we got word that there’d been an assassination attempt on the vice president just outside the compound, literally blocks from us. Small arms fire. A vehicle cutting off the VIP procession to make the attack. The sort of thing that would have shut down a city block or even a city back home. Here, the Afghans just carried on – and so did we. We got in our cars, drove to the WCS office, and kept on shooting.

Tomorrow I fly out with the vet (Stephane) and the gear, and start the journey north. As fascinating as Kabul is, I won’t be sad to start towards the more remote – and safer – parts of the country.

We are pleased to announce that FIRST TO FALL has been chosen as one of the 8 recipients of the 2012 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund out of a record breaking application pool of 697. This grant will allow director Rachel Beth Anderson to complete production in Libya and Canada this summer. See the First to Fall page for more information.

Tony Gerber and a team of scientist and filmmakers are heading to Afghanistan to film the elusive snow leopard. They will be in the Wakhan Corridor, specifically. Over the last month, we’ve learned interesting things about the Wakhan Corridor. For instance:

Pari are female supernatural denizens of the high mountains. People in Pakistan, Afghanistan, north India and throughout Central Asia are familiar with pari. The Wakhi ethnic population in northern Pakistan, China, Tajikistan and Afghanistan have their own word for pari: mergichan. The mergichan inhabit the mergich realm, which is the realm of the mountains and high pastures. It is a pure, even sacred realm, where the supernatural mountain spirits tend their wild flocks of blue sheep and ibex. Humans only enter the mergich realm during summer, and only after ceremonially announcing to the mergichan that the people will displace them for the summer and asking them for a favorable influence on the livestock and dairy production.

By Dr. John Mock, 2004

Continue reading here.