For obvious reasons, this posting, which is mainly about anti poaching, will be a bit short on actual detail but I hope it will give an idea of what is happening now at Sinamatella.
Back in September the majority of the remaining Black Rhino were darted and fitted with transmitters (telemetry). This was a big operation involving Parks and a number of NGOs including ourselves. ‘Rhino Ops’ as it is known is exciting but also, in many ways, sad. Sad to see the rhino brought down, their horns partly removed, blood samples taken and so on as well as sad that it is all necessary.
Chap Masterson (Govt vet dept) and Ray Makwehe (Nat Parks, Umtshibi) fitting a transmitter to rhino number 251, a young bull we knew as “Mummy’s Boy” because when we first met him he was only semi-independent and was often seen close to his mother.
However, in spite of the unpleasant aspects of Rhino Ops, I’m delighted that the transmitters were fitted.
Where, in the past, we often took three days to find a rhino, we can now find them within an hour or so. We have recently done some extensive trials, tracking with the telemetry and found that we can reach most of the animals soon after the sun comes up and remain with them throughout the day. When the moon is bright it is possible to be with them by night as well.
This means that all the known females now have rangers guarding them closely throughout the day and we are doing the same for many of the males. One of the animals I have seen a lot lately is exceptionally sleepy and is usually fast asleep in thick bush from early morning, staying that way all day. Not a very exciting rhino to monitor.
This isn’t a bad photo. She really is this hard to see!
Another hardly seems to sleep at all and I have no good recent photos because she always seems to be moving and alert so she’s hard to approach. She’s difficult but interesting to monitor all day.
Strangely, the one who attacked us back in June is like the sleepy female, easy to approach and rather boring
This is a view of him (shown by the yellow arrow) I had for some hours last week. It gave me time to look around and notice things like the funnel web spider below.
The spider is just visible at the centre of the web.
With armed rangers permanently monitoring the remaining Sinamatella rhino we hope to be able to keep the poachers at bay for the foreseeable future. It was worrying to see that the total number of rhino lost to poachers in South Africa Vietnam Zimbabwe
On a personal note, Sue has been visiting Bulawayo but is back at Sinamatella now so the standard of photography should improve.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete