Nick Clark

Nick Clark's picture
Nick Clark
Presenter and Correspondent @NickClarkAlJaz | Qatar
Biography

Nick Clark, a presenter and correspondent based out of Doha, has a diverse background in news journalism and is a Royal Television Society award winner.

Latest posts by Nick Clark

By Nick Clark in Africa on October 21st, 2011



Twenty years ago there were 120,000 lions in Africa. Today, it is 25,000 and falling fast, all because of the eternal conflict between man and beast.

But in the Chuylu Hills in southern Kenya, numbers are actually increasing. And it is thanks chiefly to one of the lions’ oldest enemies - the Maasai people. And these are a tribe for whom killing lions has always been a rite of passage.

My cameraman, Ben Mitchell, and I were flying low over iconic Africa in a tinpot but trusty 40-year-old Cessna, its speeding shadow spooking herds of zebra and wildebeest. The great bulk of Mount Kilimanjaro loomed in the cloud.

By Nick Clark in Africa on October 7th, 2011
The mountain gorilla is the only one of the five great apes, whose numbers are actually increasing.

You get so close you can actually smell them - a pungent, sickly-sweet odour of sweaty gorilla. It is of course not far from how we’d smell, if we had been roaming the forest all our lives sans shower gel. We have 98 per cent of the same DNA as the mountain gorilla.

Safari, the big, muscular Alpha Male, stares you down a bit, then purposefully walks by, so close you could reach out and touch him. You don’t of course because you’re rooted to the spot, by the adrenalising combination of fear and wonder.

A couple of infants, no more than two years old, crash about in the trees. Their mother, sitting on her haunches, chews great handfuls of fibrous leaves.

The group has been habituated to human presence of course and you could say therefore they are not truly wild. But this experience brings in millions of tourist dollars every year, benefiting both man and beast.

Near extinction

Tags: Rwanda, Uganda
By Nick Clark in Africa on March 11th, 2011

As we work our way through the chaotic main border crossing between Egypt and Libya, a man with a megaphone is surrounded by an anxious melee of hundreds of Bangladeshis.

They're gripped by his every word. The man is reading out a list of names - the selected few are allowed to board buses for the journey to Alexandria and a flight home.

They shove and barge their way on board their route to freedom, their bagged and boxed belongings of a life lived in Libya shoved down below.
 
The rest remain disappointed. They will be here again tomorrow, and, for most, for days to come. Three thousand five hundred have been processed so far, there are thousands more to come.

"There are three planes from Alexandria to Dakar every day," said Rana Jaber of the International Organisation for Migration.

By Nick Clark in Americas on March 5th, 2011
Phot by EPA

There have been continuing calls from certain quarters for the US administration to forge more steel into their response to the Libyan crisis.

If the US military is hesitant to enact a no-fly zone over Libya, they should perhaps arm the opposition, says Senator Joe Lieberman.

That could yet happen via multi-lateral consensus, should the tide turn in Gaddafi's favour. The alternative is unlikely to be acceptable to the international community. But steady as she goes is the measured call from the White House – let's not act without knowing exactly what we're getting into.

In a chill wind whistling through leafless trees, on a hill overlooking Washington DC, stands one reminder of why the administration thinks the way it does.

Tags:
By Nick Clark in Americas on February 27th, 2011
Photo by EPA

From Oscar fever to Lady Gaga's pyrotechnic two piece (yes, fireworks detonating from her midriff), the Sunday papers make an interesting read in Washington DC, to say the least. So as people walk the empty weekend streets to their traditional brunch spots, there's plenty on the menu to chew on.

Whether or not it matters that top films like The King's Speech do not stick to historical truth, to the transluscent rubber dress Lady Gaga wore. 

Perhaps some will move more seriously, to the ever developing situation in Libya.

And as the rebels look to Tripoli, the Washington Post ponders this question:

"It can't happen in Saudi Arabia. Right?"

(http://wapo.st/fTCGhL)

A Facebook page is calling for a "day of rage" protest in Saudi on March 11.

By Nick Clark in Americas on February 26th, 2011
Photo by AP

Blustery winds buffeted Washington on Friday. Great black clouds sweeping in, dumping rivers of rain, then sweeping out leaving a brilliant blue sky to highlight the perfect white dome of the Capitol building, the seat of US government.

The analogy to revolution is obvious (if predictable).

Tags:
By Nick Clark in Americas on February 26th, 2011
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

A wander amid monumental Washington stirs the imagination. What machinations behind the marbled walls of power?

You can not help but think of imperial Rome, with the granite and the famous on horseback in perpetual statue.

The Heights of Buildings Act of 1899 decreed there could never be any skyscrapers to blight the bold skyline.

And shortly, the capital's 3,700 cherry trees, donated by the mayor of Tokyo in 1912, will explode into bloom and throw a smear of pink blossom across the purple imperium.

As the buds fatten, behind the scenes the Obama administration assesses change in the Middle East. It's been a cautious approach with Libya, throwing the ball to the UN.

Of course not everyone is impressed with this tactic. There are editorials aplenty out here bemoaning Obama's so-called weak stance.

By Nick Clark in Middle East on February 13th, 2011
Photo by AFP

Just occasionally it falls to live news broadcasters to attempt to shape some words that sum up history in the making.

And so it was that I found myself on air not long after Hosni Mubarak had stepped down. You have to subdue the upwelling of momentous, historic and unprecedented superlatives that want to burst forth and in theory come up with something meaningful. It's not straightforward.

The Dictionary of Great Quotations will not be seeking an urgent reprint to accommodate my offering:

It’s one of those moments…".

A little lame, given the import of the occasion. But I was soon to be in good company.

Minutes later President Barack Obama in Washington appeared on Al Jazeera's screens and gave his take on the events.

This is one of those moments…" he said.

By Nick Clark in Americas on April 30th, 2010
Photo by AFP

Last October we were filming in precisely the area now threatened by the advancing oil slick.

I remember sitting in a police launch motoring through a parking lot in the sea for hundreds of boats. Line-upon-line of orange vessels and stubby tugs awaiting duty.

A veritable city of ships in the marshes - the supply headquarters for the Gulf of Mexico’s oil industry.

Many of the boats were on standby, waiting for a disaster such as this. The communities, the oil companies, the coast guard, all knew this could happen sooner or later.

Tags:
By Nick Clark in Middle East on March 19th, 2010
Photo by AFP

So the trade in bluefin tuna lives on, at least until the bluefin dies out.

Unless quotas are adhered to and policed, the future, as seen by the environmentalists, is bleak indeed.

It seems such are the vested interests, a ban will always be hard to implement.

 

And it doesn’t help the very the mechanics of the CITES decision-making process is laboured and open to all manner of tactical maneouvering. 

 

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Biography

Nick Clark's picture
Nick Clark
Presenter and Correspondent @NickClarkAlJaz
Nick Clark is a presenter and correspondent for Al Jazeera based in Doha.

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