Manuel Sacaia has faced armed soldiers, poachers, steel-jawed traps and even a hungry lion in a life spent protecting Angola’s iconic Giant Sable. Born in the Luando reserve that is the antelope’s last wilderness home, Manuel was working as a teen-age ranger when Angola’s civil war broke out in 1979. Rebel fighters detained him after invading the area, but he managed a daring nighttime escape through the bush. He later returned to the abandoned reserve and his family and monitored the last antelope herds in his spare time. In 2009, he led conservationists to the spot where they caught their first bull for a last-ditch breeding program. Two years later he was guarding three captured Giant Sables when a lion crept up to their makeshift pen. Manuel climbed up a tree but fell down, bumping his head so hard that he still suffers headaches. In 2005, Manuel stepped on a powerful leg trap laid by poachers. The trap closed on his boot – not his bare leg - sparing him from a life-threatening injury.