Mauled producer kept cool

By MATHEW DEARNALEY and NZPA

Award-winning New Zealand wildlife film producer Judith Curran, mauled by a leopard on location in southern Africa, kept her director's hat on after the attack.

Natural History New Zealand head Michael Stedman said Ms Curran knew what to do after being attacked by the hand-reared animal at a Namibian game park, instructing her crew on first-aid until she could be airlifted to hospital.

"She is determined and strong, and maintained control over what happened," he told the Herald. That included ensuring her badly bitten leg was raised to reduce blood-loss.

Mr Stedman said Dunedin-based Ms Curran, 46, was in a serious but not life-threatening condition after an operation at Johannesburg's Milpark Hospital to clean the wound on her inner thigh. It was hoped she would be moved to a general ward this week.

An injury to her hand, where at least one of the leopard's teeth had pierced from one side to the other, had become infected.


Ms Curran was flown to the South African city from a hospital in the Namibian capital of Windhoek, about 280km south of where the attack happened on Thursday, at the privately owned Harnas Guest Farm, an orphanage for wild animals.

Her sister Clare Curran said the leopard took a "fist-sized chunk" out of her inner right thigh as well as inflicting cuts to her legs and a hand before her crew and bystanders could drag it off her.

Ms Curran's family had spoken to her by phone and were satisfied doctors were doing all they could.

She was "lucid but on a lot of pain killers", Clare Curran said.

Mr Stedman said Ms Curran and her crew, who included another New Zealander, a South African and an Australian zoologist, were packing up towards the end of a six-week assignment making a film called Scavenger Hunt.

The documentary was being made for the international television channel Animal Planet and was aimed at setting the record straight on the bad reputation of scavengers. The supposedly tame leopard, a hunting animal, was not part of the cast.

The leopard attacked for no apparent reason in a carpark. Mr Stedman doubted whether the cameraman was filming at the time.

Ms Curran had been preparing to return home today or tomorrow, but will probably now have to stay in South Africa for two or three weeks.

Her husband, Chris Prendergast, has flown to Johannesburg.

Mr Stedman said Natural History New Zealand, the second largest film production company of its type in the world, sent crews to some of the planet's most remote and dangerous places and had medical evacuation plans worked out well in advance.

"The crews are extremely well prepared and have the best first-aid training you can buy," he said.

They were always just a phone-call away from evacuation by international medical provider SOS, although there had been just three or four such emergencies in the past 10 to 15 years.

He said hand-raised big cats could be unpredictable, but the attack was "absolutely inexplicable".

Ms Curran, originally from Dunedin, worked for many years in Australia before joining Natural History New Zealand in 2001.

She won an award for an Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary on Christmas Island's endangered red crabs, which are being slaughtered by super-colonies of yellow crazy ants from Africa.

But Ms Curran has also made films about Australian fashion designer Collette Dinnegan and about women in high-security prisons.

An intensive-care nurse at the Johannesburg hospital, Bongi Maduna, told the New Zealand Press Association her unit often treated people injured by wild animals.

"But a leopard is unusual - usually we treat people for snake bites."

Namibia's Ministry for Environment is investigating the incident, but the fate of the leopard is understood not yet to have been decided.