50|50 Episode 35 Season 8: 3 December 2017

Wildebure: vultures

Able to fly at such immense heights, with home-ranges bigger than an entire country, these very misunderstood birds constantly get a bad rap due to their choice of food. They are in fact survival gurus with many adaptations and play a crucial role in the ecosystem. In many places, they also live nearer to us than we might expect, and get on quietly with the job of being very good wild neighbours.

Greener food production: cheese of the future

Everyone loves a good cheese and we humans have loved this creamy substance since we discovered that curdled milk was both delicious to eat and could last. For one cheese farm, cheese isn’t the only passion, they are driven by a vision to leave the world a cleaner, greener place and they farm with a sustainability mind set.  It’s not just farming efficiencies that are the objective here, the stores that sell the cheese and other produce are also going green.

The dilemma of captive elephants: Camp Jabulani makes a change

What do you do with an unruly bunch of orphaned elephants, individual survivors of historical culling operations? One answer might be to create a new herd and let them live together in as natural a way as possible. But where? Another option might be to make them earn their upkeep by interacting with tourists. But that is frowned upon by animal welfare groups. The argument for and against elephant-back safaris raises its head after some time out of the media. Hermien tries to understand both sides of the story from people who have walked a mile on both sides of the problem.

VeldFokus:

Things get a little gross in this week’s VeldFokus, with some strange animal eating habits on display. A hornbill bites off more rodent than he can chew, a giraffe appears to show off her sword swallowing abilities, while a many legged parasite is the stuff of nightmares for unsuspecting fish victims!