John Varty

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John Varty is a South African zoologist and wildlife documentary film maker. Among his films are Silent Hunter, Swift and Silent, and Living with Tigers. All document the lives of large predatory cat species in Africa.

John Varty and his brother Dave inherited a stake in a game farm near the Kruger National Park called Londolozi. He halted the hunting activities and focused on game viewing instead. Nelson Mandela is documented to have visited Londolozi, and said "Londolozi represents a model of the dream I cherish for the future of nature preservation in our country." Varty and his wife Gillian van Houten have made documentaries about the predators on the reserve. In one documentary, he rescued an orphaned lion cub and unsuccessfully tried to reintroduce her into the wild when she reached adulthood.

Varty has been involved with a project to introduce captive-bred tigers to South Africa. The idea is to eventually have a population which could produce tigers for reintroduction into Asia. There is great controversy regarding this project, with leading conservationists saying that introducing a non-native species is harmful to an ecosystem. They say that money would be better spent trying to conserve the habitat of the tiger. Gus Mills, director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust's Carnivore Conservation Group, is a leading critic of the project.

There has also been a dispute between two tiger introduction organizations. An organization called Save China's Tigers, founded by Beijing-born Li Quan, also has a project to introduce Chinese Tigers into South Africa. Li Quan and her husband Stuart Bray funded Varty's film work, and have claimed that the money was misused to introduce a non-endangered subspecies of tiger. There have been disputes over land ownership and charges of fraud regarding the Living With Tigers film.

Dave Salmoni was Varty's tiger trainer, and appears in the film Living With Tigers.