Zebra and Conservation Activity

The beautiful plains zebra.

Elephants checking us out.

The invasive queen of the night cactus.

Cutting it up and carrying it away.

Pulling down larger sections.

Piling it up to be burned later.

Glorious sunset.

A tiny pearl spotted owlet on the night drive.

Thursday, April 27^th.

We were up at 5 again for a new adventure. It was the photography groups time to join the conservation group in removing some of the invasive species of cactus with the unusual name of The Queen of the Night. It is native to South America and is thrives here, growing to huge sizes and heights. It interferes with the native plants’ ability to grow in the area as it hogs the water. There are no native animals that eat it and it has needle like thorns that irritate animals. So, we drove 90 minutes to the location only to find a herd of about ten elephants happily browsing on the other plants in the area. So, we had to sit and wait patiently until they moved on, as it would be too dangerous to get out and get to work. When they moved off, we began. We were to cut the cactus to pieces with machetes, saws and ropes. Then we carried the pieces by pitchfork to a pile which would be picked up by a truck to be hauled away and burned. We worked for a couple of hours. We were also asked to take photos of the process to use to show what the company African Impact is doing. On the way back to camp we saw quite a few zebra, and a large herd of Cape Buffalo. After lunch we had two good lectures. One was on Taxonomy led by Kes and the other by Timo on ethical photography. We learned about the taxonomic structure of the classifications of all life from the largest grouping of domain and becoming more and more specific through the other classifications as they cascade from general down to more specific: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family genus and finally individual species. Got that? Timo went on at length about real wildlife photography and faked shots and how to tell. He also gave us food for thought whether it was ethical to plant food in order to entice a bird to come to it in order to get a better shot, or go to places where the animals are used for entertainment for tourists. I know I’ve done things like that in the past, but always rationalized it as ‘when am I ever going to get the chance to do that again’ or ‘if I don’t do it someone else will’. For example: riding elephants, walking with lions, posing with tigers, diving with white sharks… Anyway, it makes you think. After dinner we had a night drive. We saw dozens of groups of impala, a couple of elephants, and a tiny pearl spotted owl. It’s a very different experience driving around in the dark, flashing a spotlight in the forest and up trees looking for reflective eyes and then coming across an enormous elephant. When we got back it was time to get to bed as we have another drive in the morning.