Wire Removal Conservation and Night Drive

 

Collecting the wire.

Wrapping it up.

Loading the truck. 

A small puff adder.

A chameleon.

A bronze wing courser.

A sleeping white backed vulture.

Thursday, May 4^th.

No game drive this morning as we were assigned to conservation. We drove to a location near camp where there is a barbwire fence that has been severely damaged, by either neglect or animals. It is no longer needed as the fences between Kruger Park proper and the surrounding game reserves have been removed or at least no longer electrified. We were divided into two groups: the first was to cut the barbwire strands, measure them and roll them up; and the second was to remove a lot of wire from telephone poles that had been knocked over. It’s a messy job but needs to be done to ensure the safety of the animals who would get wounded or stuck in the fence while crossing it. The lodge that owns the property is trying to reopen an unused road to the river for game drive use. The wires are all over the road and are preventing them from getting graters and other vehicle traffic through. We work on that for the morning. I only had to work half that time as I was assigned to take photos of the others the second half. They want to use the photos for marketing and to show what African Impact is doing to help wildlife in the area. We returned for lunch after which we had to evacuate camp again as the mine was doing another big blast. Loaded up in the game viewers and drove about a kilometer away and waited until we heard the explosion and then returned. Leon from the pub next door called us over to see a highly venomous, deadly puff adder that was on his property. We rushed over to see it and found it was only about six inches long, obviously a young one, but it made you think about what is out here that can kill you – not just lions. The rest of the afternoon was taken up with three work shops. The first was a lecture on the various large carnivores in the area and how they can all survive together. The answer to that is that they don’t all eat the same herbivores or hunt in the same manner or at the same time. We’re talking about lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyaenas and wild dogs. The second workshop was led by Timo and was about techniques for taking astronomy photographs. That basically requires tripods and longer shutter speeds to let in more light. The third workshop was about how to tie creative writing to your photos. Well, I’ve got that covered with my blog. After dinner the astronomy session was cancelled because Paula, our expert, was feeling ill and there was a full moon with some clouds. So, hopefully that will be rescheduled for next week. We went for a night drive instead. We didn’t see a lot, but did see a couple of vultures in a tree and a chameleon. We all went to bed early as we have another early drive tomorrow.