The large black-maned male was lying on the floor up against the front of the enclosure, one of his enormous paws sticking out through the bars. With his eyes closed lying there asleep, he looked like a huge house cat in the morning sun. Although the invitation to reach out and stroke him was enticing, we knew better, nobody in their right mind would ever dare … Except Dino, that is. The incident at the snake pit all but forgotten, he was now straining against the protective railings in an effort to get closer to the lion, something I guessed most kids would do. However, when he began reaching out as far as his short little arms would stretch to try and touch the lion’s paw, I picked him up, put him on my shoulders and turned to Meagan: ‘That’s the last straw, let’s get the hell out of here before the Cesare bloodline in Africa ends with us today!’ I said.
Elephant Field Tests a Tyre
August 2003
There are aspects of man’s modern throwaway society which have disgusting side effects on wildlife, I have seen warthogs living near human habitation with pieces of PVC piping stuck on their legs, usually just above the hoof. This is a result of the animals stepping through off-cuts as they rummage around feeding. Their predicament becomes more life-threatening as the animal grows and, if not removed in time, will result in a painful build-up of pressure due to impeded blood flow. The final outcome can be the eventual loss of the hoof, infection and possibly even death. I have seen photos of a tree monitor with its head stuck inside a tin can which, had it not been removed, would have caused the animal to die a slow death from starvation. The list of man’s garbage finding its way into the environment causing untold damage to wildlife, particularly in our oceans, is seemingly endless. The following incident is a manifestation of our disgraceful disregard of the consequences of our thoughtless throwaway habits, and, horror of horrors, it happened right on our doorstep!
An elephant was observed to be wearing what appeared to be a tyre on its right front foot. It had been seen in the vicinity of our southern gate by a number of people entering the reserve and obviously required immediate intervention so was reported to the manager of the area to obtain authority to gain access to the elephant and then attempt to remove the hazard. The elephant had been seen on numerous occasions and all the feedback indicated that he did not appear to be suffering or to be unduly hampered by the tyre.
What was of concern however, was that not only was it unnatural and unsightly, but the elephant was a young animal, with some growing to do. The steel belts that reinforce the tyre would tighten as the diameter of the elephant’s foot increased. This natural process would eventually impede blood flow, leading to complications that could well end up gangrenous.
As this animal found itself in this predicament as a direct result of man’s pollution of the environment, we needed to intervene, and try to remove the tyre as soon as possible. Fortunately we were busy with a zebra capture operation at the time, and so had immediate access to a helicopter. I suggested we postpone the capture for a couple of hours and commission the pilot to locate the elephant. Once it was located, we could then bring in a vet, dart the elephant and remove the tyre.
Everyone agreed and the wheels were set in motion. The elephant, a young bull of approximately 18 years of age, was located not far from the reserve’s railway gate and then was duly darted. The terrain through which he was now moving was very rugged, uneven and strewn with rocks. The elephant was running at a fair pace, and I was worried that he would trip and fall. Despite staggering and tripping over the rough ground as the drug started taking effect, he managed to stay upright until the toe of his back foot hooked the back of the tyre on his front foot and pulled it off, much like you would remove a muddy gum boot. After a few minutes he began slowing down until finally he stopped, staggered a little more, and then fell, stiff-legged, over onto his side.
While the elephant was tranquillised, we used the opportunity to take routine blood samples. Everyone present, mostly young students, had a unique opportunity to touch his rumpled skin and marvel at the delicate eyelashes blinking over hauntingly intelligent brown eyes. To see and feel such a massive animal up close for the first time is a memorable experience for anyone. Lying on its side, an elephant appears anything but the formidable icon of Africa that it truly is. It looks vulnerable, and, of course, it is just that in this situation.
As soon as the blood samples were taken and the necessary checks completed, the elephant was revived and released. Within 30 seconds of the drug being reversed, he began to get up. A minute later he was on his way. He now leads a more natural life cruising around on his God-given all-weather slicks, with naturally self-replenishing tread which is 100 per cent bio-degradable, to boot. Later, we back-tracked the elephant to retrieve the tyre he had so unceremoniously removed. It was a radial ply Dunlop SP 73.
Olifants Rangers Versus Poachers Disunited
Inspired by an August 2001 newsletter
Any career, occupation or sport needs to be stimulating and challenging, especially if physically demanding and carried out in adverse conditions. Being a member of the anti-poaching squad on Olifants has its own challenges, its own highs and lows. The following illustrates the emotion these men have to deal with most often, and that is frustration.
Members of our anti-poaching team take their job seriously. Years of regular hot-pursuit action and less regular apprehension of poachers have kept both sides on their toes and this has honed our team into arguably the best anti-poaching squad in the area. Numerous awards and certificates of commendation bestowed upon this unit from the SAPS and DEAT bear ample testimony to this claim. On the other hand, this has also made our adversaries proportionately more wily.
The poachers have become like the black-backed jackals of the Free State and Northern Cape, which, after years of persecution, have adapted to their circumstances and developed survival skills far surpassing those of their game reserve cousins. This makes our task that much more difficult and we have to keep abreast of their latest devious techniques all the time. Frustrating as this is, it poses an ongoing challenge for our anti-poaching unit.
There is no one better on your side in the fight against poaching than an ex-poacher who has turned ‘state’s witness’. I have often thought about the poachers we’ve caught who are now in prison. Some of these men are experts in bush craft, and having them languish in prison is, to my mind, a waste of valuable bush knowledge. It would, surely, be worth developing a way to use these skills appropriately or pass them on to students in some way or another. The overall benefit to conservation could be significant.
Of course, those of them who are plain good-for-nothing bastards deserve being locked up for a long time, but these could be weeded out, I’m sure.
Outwitting the poachers, locating and removing their deadly snares, finding their supply caches and determining their probable escape routes are some of the challenges with which the team is routinely faced. Since the incident some two years ago when a poacher was shot and wounded by our patrol, poaching activities have slowed down somewhat, especially on our side of the river. But criminals are criminals and it appears that they have rather short memories. So, we can’t become complacent.
Finding snares and bringing them in as tangible evidence of a successful anti-poaching patrol is getting more and more difficult. We have to maintain the sense of achievement and job satisfaction that comes with walking into the office after a couple of days’ work with a collection of cable and wire snares that would hold back a Springbok rugby scrum. But, to achieve this sort of end result, our team has had to resort to hot-pursuit operations which sometimes take them beyond our boundaries.
No names, no pack drill, the tracts of state-owned land across the river, in the vicinity of the railway bridge, are targeted by poachers. Although the game density is relatively low, the threat to the few animals that do inhabit these areas, as well as those that move across the Olifants River during winter from our side and get snared, is not acceptable. Knowing that the poache
rs are plying their trade of deceit and destruction merely yards away, and being separated from our anti-poaching team by mere political geography, can be understandably frustrating at times.
The arrogance of the poachers was becoming increasingly apparent; these ‘unproclaimed’ tracts of land appeared to afford them a degree of safety, a false sense of security – and, dare I say it, they appeared to be treating this like a big game. This unsatisfactory state of affairs did not sit well with the anti-poaching team. Due to their dedication to keeping our area ‘clean’ and ensuring there was not too much of a build-up on the other side, they decided to go across and sweep the area, removing as many snares as possible. Although the situation was pretty well under control, our team couldn’t take their eye off the ball, so to speak, so our anti-poaching measures had to be stepped up a notch or two. In addition, they would make their presence felt by conducting regular foot patrols, thus making it obvious to the poachers that they were not going to be allowed to re-group.
The majority of our anti-poaching patrols are conducted by pedal power. The rangers each have a bicycle of which they are extremely proud. Considering the rough terrain they need to cover and the constant maintenance needed, these bikes are kept in tip-top condition. The area on the other side of the river, however, is rougher still, with virtually no roads to speak of and mostly bush tracks and game paths, which makes foot patrols in this terrain more practical and effective than cycling. Once across the train bridge, the men would normally park their bikes and proceed on foot. These routine patrols were really working and for weeks there were only ‘clean’ patrols to report. It began to appear that our team was getting to the top of the league in this deadly game.
One evening just after supper, Meagan noticed there was someone at the back door, although I hadn’t heard anyone knock. I opened the door to find our anti-poaching team standing there looking tired and dejected. Joachim Timani, one of my top anti-poaching rangers and a former officer in Mozambique’s Frelimo army, came forward. Without lifting his eyes off his boots, he spoke.
‘Tina yenzile lo mastek,’ he said, which is Fanagalo for ‘we have made a mistake’.
I went cold when I heard this, thinking they had shot another poacher, and by the expression on their faces, it didn’t look like they had only wounded him this time. The dejected hang-dog look, the foot shuffle, the avoidance of eye contact and the body language usually meant really bad news. As the conversation went on and the full story came out, I lightened up, but held back the urge to burst out laughing, as this would only have added insult to injury.
What had happened this time round was that in this particular home game of Olifants Rangers against their traditional opponents, Poachers Disunited, the poachers had cheekily demonstrated new tactics and confidence to great advantage and had scored an away goal.
One of our ranger’s bicycles had been stolen by a poacher. He had doubled back on their tracks like a wounded buffalo, then, finding where the bikes had been left, took one and pedalled off into the sunset. The poacher would no doubt brag to his friends about his newly won prize – and because it isn’t a floating trophy, he would probably make full use of it in future poaching forays.
It wasn’t a problem replacing the bicycle, but it would take more than money to restore the wounded pride of our team. However, a valuable lesson in the dangers of complacency was learned and they now lock their bikes together when they leave them unattended for any length of time.
I cannot help wondering what will happen when our team catches up with the bicycle thief one day. Knowing these men as I do, I only hope they remember that we are living in a democracy and that even bicycle thieves have rights to a fair trial. More to the point is that in today’s justice system, carrying out the punishment happens after the trial and after sentencing as opposed to the traditional bush system, in which summary judgement and immediate punishment can be the norm.
Final score: Olifants Rangers 0 Poachers Disunited 1.
Lost in the Bush …
From notes made in the late 1990s
It takes a while to get to know your way around the reserve, especially if you don’t visit frequently. There are over 250 kilometres of roads and bush tracks making up the network on Olifants, and to the casual observer most of them look alike. To complicate things further, the vegetation growth changes from the way you remember things, which can make a quite dramatic difference from one season to the next. Long before, too long before the advent of GPS navigation, as a young ranger, whenever I drove or walked in unfamiliar territory, I always made a habit of making sure that before sunset I was in a specific area well known to me. When the light goes, so do all your reliable reference points. The shadows from your headlights or Q beam create strange and unfamiliar shapes which can throw your built-in direction finder way out of kilter. The bush can be daunting at the best of times, but at night it is especially so.
Although one can never get totally lost on Olifants, or any private reserve in the lowveld for that matter, it can be an extremely uncomfortable or embarrassing experience if you can’t find your way home or back to camp. At worst, you may need to spend the night in your vehicle and try again in the light of day.
Late one Friday evening, I received a radio call from one of the shareholders, who said she was lost and needed assistance.
‘Whereabouts do you think you are?’ I asked. I then continued by being a touch more specific: ‘What side of the railway line do you think you may be on?’
‘I have no idea,’ she replied.
I then told her to continue driving until she saw something unnatural or man-made, something like a name board or a pump, whatever. About ten minutes later, the radio burst into life again, and this time the voice had a lilt of optimism in it.
‘I’ve found a sign,’ she said excitedly, and repeated, ‘I’ve found a sign on a tree!’
‘Excellent!’ I thought.
‘What does the sign say?’ I asked.
‘Hang on, I’ll go and have a look,’ she said. A couple of minutes later, still excited, she reported, ‘The sign says Lonchocarpus capassa – Apple-leaf tree.’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but knowing how it feels to be lost, I led her to believe she had found a huge clue, and would soon be out of the woods, if you’ll pardon the expression. I had a fairly good idea where the reserve’s amateur botanist, Graham Vickers, had nailed most of these little green tree identification tags which he had printed. Unfortunately, though, there were at least a dozen apple-leaf trees out there with his tags on them. The good news was that at least she was still on the reserve, so it was back to gut feel and guesswork.
‘Is there an open area close by, or are you surrounded by thick bush?’ I asked.
‘On my left there is a large open area and on my right it’s very thick,’ she replied.
The odds had improved, and I now had a rough idea where she was, but it was still a gamble. I told her to keep driving, keeping the clearing on her left, until she reached a junction. It proved to be a good guess, because before long she drove out onto the railway road. As this is the main access road into the reserve, it was familiar enough to allow them to get home … but it’s not always as simple as that.
If you have ever had the experience of hearing an African lion roaring up close, I’m sure the following incident will get your sympathy and understanding. There is no animal sound on earth that commands a person’s undivided attention like that of a lion’s roar. It is difficult to believe that flesh and blood is capable of producing such an awesomely powerful sound. Once, in a disco, I had the misfortune to be trapped too close to one of those monster speakers. I could feel the sound waves hitting me each time a drum beat reverberated outwards. The same power and resonance produced by those enormous speakers is produced from a tiny little bone in a lion’s throat – and to hear two lions roaring in unison is a humbling experience.
Whether you’re a stockbroker from New York or a seasoned game range
r living among lions, the primeval fear and respect this sound evokes is indelibly tattooed on our DNA. Nothing else captures the ambience of wild Africa quite like it. Something is missing in my life if I don’t hear the distant roar of lions at least a couple of times a week.
Depending on terrain, wind direction, humidity, and one or two other variables, a lion’s roar can be heard by the human ear for up to eight kilometres and quite a bit further by other lions.
Early one evening, just as we were sitting down to supper, which is the precise time that chance and coincidence invariably combine, I heard some broken chatter over the radio. Even though I wasn’t on duty that evening, I hadn’t turned the radio off, and as it turned out, it was a good thing I hadn’t. I was asked to help locate people who were stuck out in the bush with their vehicle broken down and no one, including themselves, knowing where they were. To add to their predicament, their battery was running low, and although they had managed to get one last message through over the radio, they still couldn’t give us any idea of their location. Just before they lost all power, however, they said they were viewing lions. Their very last communication sounded ominous, that as it began to get dark the pride became bolder, moving closer all the time to the point that some of the lions had completely surrounded their vehicle. To add to the already tense situation, they said, the two large pride males were roaring.
I learned later that their radio hadn’t received my response, which was that lions are naturally more confident at night, and also that the younger members of the pride can be very curious, but not to panic, keep noise and movement down to a minimum, and I was on my way. No power meant no light. It must have been terrifying for them, sitting in an open vehicle, not being able to see the lions, but able to hear them roaring a couple of metres away. Ironically this is what helped us find the stranded group and eventually rescue them. The only clue we had as to their location was that they were sitting with a pride of lions. We drove out to the highest central point on the reserve, switched off and sat quietly, listening for the lions to call. I reasoned that if we could locate them by homing in on their roars, we’d find the vehicle.
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