A Day at Work

22 Jun 11

Went for a ride into Tzaneen this morning to drop off one of the Savannah Camp volunteers who was leaving and one of the Rangers who had a couple of days off.  Over here they are still allowed to ride in the back of the ute, but it was cold!  We called into a shopping centre (just the same as Casuarina) to grab a few items and it felt strange walking around dressed cams, but nobody looked twice.  They must be used to it.

In the afternoon we did a driving patrol during which we came across one of the elephants, Umfumu who was rescued after having his trunk caught in a poacher’s snare (if you look closely in one of the photos you can see the end of his trunk is missing).  He had a bit of a charge at us at one stage which got the heart rate up.

Umfumu the elephant (the last unblurred shot as the rest in the sequence were taken while driving away very fast).



We also went to the elephant boma which is currently being used to house a pack of African Wild Dogs (in the photo).  Apparently there are less than 3000 of them left and SanWild has 18.  Unfortunately because of their numbers they are unable to be left to free roam, but the elephant boma is a pretty big enclosure.





African Wild Dogs.  They are so cute, just like normal dogs!



We did a walking patrol around the area of the hippo waterhole before last light and I found my first poacher’s snare.  It was fairly old but it still felt good to find it when it had been missed in the past.  I originally thought it had been set up as a test of observation skills but I was informed by the team members that they didn’t know about it. 

I saw the funniest sight in the late afternoon!  We were over near our western boundary fence when a couple of people on horseback were riding past outside the fence.  I noticed that something had spooked the wildebeest and the next thing I saw was a big male hippo charging about 700 m across the plains like a missile to get to the horses.  It then proceeded to chase the horse riders down the fence for about a km.  It was so funny seeing the hippo sprint, almost like a cartoon with the short legs going so fast they were in a blur.

I then spent 12 hours overnight guarding a rhino, finishing up at 0600 in the morning.  I had lions roaring about 150 m away at times during the night.  It was absolutely amazing, much deeper than I expected, and the ground and air seem to reverberate!