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Headline: Photographer Captures This Year's Wildebeest Migratory River Crossing

Caption: *VIDEO AVAIL: info@covermg.com* These stunning images, taken Thursday (22 Oct), show wildebeest and zebra disregarding social distancing to make their migratory river crossing in Kenya. British wildlife photographer Paul Goldstein captured the scene in the Masai Mara, which he says is ready for business, but lacking foreign tourists vital for local economies. The Exodus Travels guide explains: “The sight of over 20,000 wildebeest or gnus thundering over the Mara river would normally attract hundreds of tourists, their hard-earned currency vital for both wildlife and the thousands of people depending on it. This magnificent spectacle was witnessed by only five Landcruisers. 'Wildlife needs the policing eyes of tourists and their hard currency. I am so pleased for those who believed and came having the fabled plains almost to themselves, but we need more of them. It will be a battle, but that morning it was good gnus for once. “The crossings of the Mara river are only a small part of the annual migration but certainly the most dramatic. I have only seen them returning back into the Masai Mara this late once before. It was almost as if they were missing their usual audience, an audience denied them by dubious quarantine and mystifying FCDO advice. “This was a spectacular show to witness, one of the best I have seen, as it went on for over an hour. The snorting was deafening, their cadence reaching a feverish pitch as they accelerated across the murky waters. They faced no quarantine when they arrived from Tanzania a few months ago and have no regard whatsoever for social distancing or indeed isolation. This is a parlous journey where they run the gauntlet of feline predators, hyenas, crocs and in this case a territorial hippo, their journey almost as hard as it is currently for tourists arriving here from the UK. "Right now, the British government has all but stopped travellers to the whole African continent, the one continent that has very low levels of Covid. You are 60 times more likely to catch it in the UK yet still they persecute these countries making thousands destitute. Wildlife tourism is critical to so many.”

Keywords: natural world,quirky,weird,amazing,interesting,cool,animal,animals,news,and finally,viral,cute,wild,wildlife,nature,photography,picture,photo

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