South Africa: Okapi – New Book Celebrates a Once Famous Animal and Recovers Indigenous Experts’ Place in Its History

As a child growing up in the Ndumo Game Reserve on the South Africa-Mozambique border, Simon Pooley read an animal encyclopaedia given to his family by a visiting scientist. He became fascinated by the okapi, a striking animal from the Congo Basin rainforest. Decades later as a conservation scientist and environmental historian recovering from dengue fever contracted during research, he returned to that early interest. Visiting London Zoo, he began investigating the okapi’s history, discovering in…