‘Six Njala females, one juvenile and two Njala males,’ Kevin called out to me, and I quickly ran my fingers along the lines of the printed table in front of me and diligently made three new marks. A week and a half after my first encounter with Kevin from the Wild Tomorrow Fund, I was sitting in his white pickup truck again, but this time we weren’t transporting small trees to the 1,200-hectare reserve, just the two of us.
‘Game Counts,’ i.e. animal counting, was on the agenda, and so we had been ‘bumping’ along the uneven, rough roads at walking pace since 7:30 a.m., counting and counting and counting.
Game counts are an important part of monitoring and indispensable in the management of an animal reserve. By determining the number of animals along a fixed route, it is possible to determine the actual population size in a reserve. Since the animals naturally wander around and do not all line up along the paths at the same time, only a rough estimate can be made. However, in order to determine the number as accurately as possible, the principle of averaging is used: the more counts are made, the more accurate the average becomes.
‘You need at least eight counts to get a useful average. Phinda even needs three months for its count,’ Kevin explained to me as he steered the car through a deep puddle, his eyes darting attentively from left to right.
‘One impala… no, wait. It’s just a termite mound…’
It should have been easy. We were sitting in the car, the air conditioning was set to a comfortable temperature and the radio was playing soft, rhythmic pop music. There was no other traffic and only a few bumps in the road. So it could have been quite relaxing. In fact, however, it was very exhausting. Kevin took the count very seriously and was determined to count every single animal and record it, which can be easy and relaxing in an open grassy area. But in the thickening undergrowth, it’s a completely different story.
The thin legs of the slender antelopes disappeared into the bush, the grey of the nyala bulls was the same colour as the trunks of the shrubs and trees, and the rich brown-orange of the impala and nyala females was easily confused with the termite mounds of the same colour. Njala females and impalas are also herd animals and therefore tend to stand in large groups in the thicket and move wildly around as soon as something unexpected is spotted. Such as a white pickup truck.
The count therefore required constant and intense concentration – and was tiring. ‘Why exactly is the inventory so important?’ I asked Kevin after I had filled another row of Njala females.
“Well, this isn’t the real wilderness. It’s a fenced-in area that can only support a certain number of animal species before the ecosystem starts to collapse. Too many impalas eat too much grass and bushes. These can’t grow back and, in extreme cases, disappear. On the one hand, this decimates the diversity here in the reserve; on the other hand, there is nothing left for the animals to eat and, ultimately, they all start to suffer. So if we find that we have too many animals of a certain species, we have to start removing some of them.”
Removing. Removal is a professional term for taking animals out of an area. For certain species that are rare elsewhere, this can be done by relocating them. However, for species that are widespread, this usually means culling, i.e. hunting.
‘But it can also go the other way,’ Kevin interrupted my thoughts. ‘If we have too few herbivorous species of a certain type, then the natural “decimator” is missing and certain types of grasses, bushes or trees start to proliferate.’
I looked out of the window, felt the warm air, listened to the birds chirping and slowly began to drift off into my thoughts again. We had been on the road for a good three hours now, the list was already well filled and I noticed how my eyes were slowly becoming heavy. ‘At the end of the day, an animal count is nothing more than a systematic, private safari with a mission.’ I thought to myself as we drove through a yellow fever tree forest on the banks of a reed-covered wetland and I suddenly spotted countless round, finely woven weaver nests in the reeds, as well as a crocodile and a group of hippos in the water. ‘Just normal reality here in Africa,’ I thought with a smile.
pruned wilderness
The reserve was wonderfully diverse, and Kevin drove the car across open grasslands, dense forests, muddy swamplands, and thick, green bushland. I enjoyed the ‘exclusive’ ride, but Kevin wasn’t too keen on the dense bushland.
‘You can’t see anything here, I need to rush my troops through and clear everything up,’ he grumbled repeatedly, making it clear to me once again that although this was ‘the bush,’ it was not wilderness, but ultimately a wildlife park – without guests. A wildlife park that had to be managed and looked after by humans, because otherwise, again due to humans, it would fall out of balance. Somewhat perverse, I thought, as Kevin whipped the pickup truck over the uneven paths and pushed the shock absorbers to their limits – while countless antelopes looked at us with wide eyes. But they didn’t count anymore, because Kevin had just declared the morning count over.
It was now almost 12:00 noon and we had covered ‘only’ 36 kilometres in four and a half hours, while counting and recording nearly 750 animals. Now we had an hour’s lunch break before the whole game started all over again.
‘Coffee, Delisch?’ I asked, slowly really needing a good coffee.
‘Yes, please! Good idea,’ replied Kevin, steering the car off the dirt road onto the roughly paved road.
‘Are you free tomorrow?’
‘I don’t know yet. Game counts again?’
‘Yes, I have to get it done. We’re behind schedule this year and soon everything will be so overgrown that you won’t be able to see any animals.’
der zaungast (the “fence guest”) | patrol with field rangers
When a white pickup truck from the Wild Tomorrow Fund picked me up for the third time two days later, it wasn’t Kevin who was waiting for me, but his two field rangers, Seni and Bheki.
‘We’ll start with a patrol drive and then go on foot to look for traps,’ Seni, the head ranger, gave me a brief overview of the day’s activities as I squeezed myself into the truck.
Seni was slim, a good head shorter than me and looked to be in his late twenties. He was wearing olive-coloured camouflage trousers and an orange-brown long-sleeved plastic shirt, also in camouflage. Once again, I was surprised by how sensitive the locals were to the temperature, as I was only wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, even though it was already 26 degrees at 7 a.m.
Seni had been working as a ranger for five years and had previously completed a year-long training course at a special school, which qualified him directly for the position of head ranger at the Wild Tomorrow Fund. However, this was by no means the case for all field rangers.
‘Many rangers are simply hired by the reserves and then trained “in-house”,’ Seni gave me a little insight into the world of field rangers. His training had been a good mix of conservation and anti-poaching topics. He had therefore gained knowledge of flora and fauna and conservation and protection measures and methods, as well as skills in tracking, shooting and some tactics. However, according to his description, this was nowhere near as extreme as it is supposed to be during the six weeks at Protrack, he assured me.
Protrack is a special school for future anti-poachers in South Africa that is renowned for its tough training. It is particularly hard, but also particularly good. You can find out more in a separate report on an anti-poaching unit.
Seni’s colleague Bheki appeared to be in his mid-thirties, also wore long, uniform-like clothing, albeit in different colours, and was more of a quiet type. He was very friendly and reserved, spoke hardly any English, but listened attentively and with alert eyes to the conversations between Seni and me.
The three of us squeezed onto the pickup’s only bench seat, and I had just settled into my cramped position when Seni used a transponder to open a large barred gate to the reserve and parked the car behind the gate, which he then closed again.
‘Fence check,’ Seni replied to my questioning look and opened the door.
‘See that arrow? That means there’s a break in the fence somewhere in that direction. It’s not too bad, though, because there’s still enough voltage. But we’ll take a look at it,’ Seni explained as he checked the voltage of the electric fence with a yellow ‘fault finder.’
Seni and Bhek’s main task was to check the condition of the fences. This involved checking the structural condition of the posts and wire on the one hand and the quality of the electrification on the other.
‘The fence is the first barrier. If it’s intact, it makes life harder for poachers. It’s also a good indicator. To get onto the property, you have to get past the fence – that leaves traces,’ Seni explained, and Bekis nodded in agreement while Seni checked another wire on the fence.
‘Do you have a lot of problems with poachers here?’
‘It’s okay at the moment. But there have been worse times. In July, for example, we found 66 traps that had been set the day before. That was a wild time, a real game of cat and mouse. The poachers had placed scouts at a nearby river by the fence, who were fishing but also scouting our patrols.’
‘Did you catch any of them?’
‘No. Only just. But we showed them that we’re watching out here and we removed all the wire traps.’
After checking that all the important parts of the fence were working properly in the already hot morning sun, the three of us squeezed back into the car just as the pleasant cool air from the fan reached my slightly damp forehead. I was just about to adjust the fan so that I could feel the full airflow when Seni turned off the air conditioning, ventilation and radio, opened the windows and let another wave of warm air flood into the vehicle.
‘We patrol with all our senses, especially hearing and smell,’ Seni explained, starting the car and turning onto a road that ran directly along the fence.
In addition to the technical inspection of the fences and electrical systems, the structural quality now also had to be checked by means of a patrol.
‘Most of the problems with the fences here aren’t caused by poachers, but by the giraffes,’ Seni whispered to me as we drove past a female giraffe and a baby giraffe.
‘Not these ones, of course. But the male giraffes often fight so fiercely that they hit the electric fences and damage them.’
Unlike in other large reserves, where tasks were more strictly divided, the tasks for the rangers from the Wild Tomorrow Fund were more varied. In addition to checking the fences, they also repaired the fences and paths and carried out motorised patrols and checks. They also conducted further open patrols on foot or covert, so-called ‘listening’ positions. I already knew that much. What was new to me was that they even carried out simple investigative work.
‘When an antelope is poached, I sometimes send my guys into the communities to see who is selling it. We even have some informants in the villages who tell us if wild game is being sold on the streets. Sometimes we even pretend to be “civilians” outside the fence to see who is hanging around there,’ Seni explained to me, already a little proud.
After a few kilometres along the fence, passing several electrocuted dung beetles, Seni stopped the car in the shade of a tree on the bank of a large river, took a big gulp from his water bottle and then locked the car. The next task was ‘snare patrol’, i.e. searching the area for wire snares. I had already done this on a large scale in Bonamanzi, but had only been semi-successful there.
‘We probably won’t find much here either, we come here too regularly for that. But we always check for traps that have been set up around the wildlife trails,’ Seni discouraged me as the three of us trudged along the small paths, looking for signs of wire traps.
It was once again a completely different kind of hike through the wilderness. Instead of sweeping through the bush like the APU-K9 units, we were even slower than the nature guides Dylan and Nunu, and it was more like a stroll than a walk.
‘Slow patrol. It’s not about speed, it’s about seeing,’ Seni explained to me. “The traps are easy to overlook. We take our time, but we’re more thorough.”
That made sense to me. Seni stopped again and again to tell me about wild adventures at this or that spot, and the piles of bones told their own vivid story of the suffering of strangled njalas, impalas and even zebras.
‘To set a trap, you need certain conditions. Low trees or branches and dense undergrowth to lure the animals into the trap. That’s why we took lots of photos of this area after setting the 66 traps,’ Suni explained, pointing to the open spaces around us, and Bheki nodded in agreement.
Unlike the guys from an exclusive anti-poaching unit, the two field rangers were unarmed and, due to their different uniforms, almost looked a bit like poachers themselves. But they were highly motivated and knew their stuff. After two hours and almost 4.44 kilometres along wildlife trails and past countless splattered hippo dung middens, we actually found an old wire trap and the housing of a missing camera trap.
“Once, the poachers came into the area with their dogs. We spotted them and drove them out of the reserve, while they left their dogs behind. We then let the dogs out of the reserve and followed them until they found their owners,” Suni tells me with a grin, recounting another adventure story as the three of us squeeze back into the heated car and set off on another patrol, now on the opposite side of the reserve, where the temperature has risen to 34 degrees.
More info can be found at:
www.wildtomorrow.org
