Venetia Wildlife Reserve
Venetia is located in the far north of South Africa only 30 km from the borders of Botswana and Zimbabwe. It is a 35,000 hectare (60 km x 60 km) private reserve owned by the DeBeers diamond company. To the south of the reserve DeBeers operates a large diamond mine, and in the initial phases of developing the mine DeBeers legally expropriated the land on which the wildlife reserve sits for the water rights. Throughout the reserve there are man-made dams and pumping stations to divert the water to the mine for its operations. Despite the changes the mine has afflicted to the ecology of the region by altering the hydrology, this reserve is unique to many other national parks and game reserves in South Africa: it is 100% private and closed off to the public. The only people occupying the reserve are those directly working on the management of its animals, or for the occasional mine tour. Unlike other game reserves, Venetia does not have to worry about guaranteeing sightings to paying customers, a process which usually results in other reserves stocking their game over their natural carry capacities.
Venetia also does not suffer from a huge public spotlight like Kruger National Park, where the actions of the park are monitored, and usually subject to the pressures of an uninformed public. One such example in Kruger was the massive amount of pressure in the last ten years from environmental groups to prevent any harvesting or culls on the elephant populations within the park. The South African government abided to these pressures, and now Kruger is losing its grass land to desert and erosion, as large unchecked elephant populations have grazed and trampled large areas of the park. So despite the unfavourable environmental press mining will occasionally receive, Venetia reserve is truly trying to operate in a natural setting that I doubt would be here if DeBeers wasn’t.Lion Behaviour Monitoring
The mainstay of the work that I am taking part in here at Venetia is lion tracking and behaviour monitoring. Lions are the apex predator at Venetia, and while there are cheetahs, leopards, wild dogs and other carnivores, none of them surpass the lions as top predator. Monitoring the movement and behaviour of the lions is very important to understanding the population dynamics of almost every other animal on the reserve (with perhaps the exception of the elephants). Currently the reserve has one main pride of lions and couple of solo females. The main pride is made up of Blade (adult male), Theika (adult female), Pikinin (adult female) and three cubs, names yet to be determined. The two solo adult females are Tsotsi and Sala.
Blade, Theika and Tsotsi are all radio collared, and each day we head out on drive to find the lions, record their position, whether they have eaten recently, and behaviour while we sit with them. I have not had any close experiences with lions in my life prior to this, with the exception of the lions at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, but that hardly counts as an encounter (as I tend to remember a trainer was in the glass case attempting to get the lions to play with a ball for the rest of us gawking from the outside).Lions are large. I know this probably sounds rather simple, and shouldn’t be the first thing I notice, or rather I should have already expected, but nothing quite prepared me for their real world strength and size. One morning we were out on drive, and we happened to find the main pride very quickly. Since it was still early and cool, the lions were active, the cubs were wrestling with each other and the adults hadn’t yet flaked out for the day. Shortly after we arrived at the site the cubs took an interest in us and all three surrounded our Mahindra. Now, a Mahindra is a common 4x4 used on reserves in South Africa, and consists of a two seat cab in the front and an open pick up box in the back with two benches for additional seating. Since I was on telemetry duty that day (locating the lions by honing in on their radio collars), I was sitting in the open back. Once the cubs surrounded the vehicle, mum and sister had to come by and make sure everything was alright.
So mum decided to lay down right behind the vehicle, and with a low growling noise was discussing whether the humans in the back of Mahindra might make for good breakfast with her cubs. Ok, slight exaggeration, but still unnerving at the least. Mum and sister lost interest after a little while and moved on past the vehicle, while the cubs stayed, stalking and wrestling each other around us. The only one who hadn’t investigated the situation was papa, otherwise known as Blade. When Blade got up a walked towards us my heart sank a little and began beating out of my stomach. Blade is no house cat, and easily outweighs both me and Franco in the back seats of the Mahindra (did I mention ‘open top’?). Blade sauntered only feet away from the vehicle, while keeping a watchful eye on both Franco and I. Our driver Hank reassured us afterward that although the ignition was off, his hand was on the keys, ready to leave at a moments notice. Since I am alive to tell you this little tale, the ending isn’t overly dramatic (after a short stop to look at Franco and I a little closer Blade continued on), but the experience was still amazing. There is no doubt, lions are large.
Elephant Habituation
Another task that we take part in on the reserve is elephant habituation, where the goal is to get the elephants acclimatized to humans and vehicles so that they may go on with their normal behaviour in our presence, instead of responding to us. This involves us stopping and parking the Mahindra whenever we come across elephants on the drive. This may sound easy, but trust me it takes some steely nerves. The elephants here at Venetia are all orphaned elephants from Kruger National Park, where their mothers had been shot. To say the least, their interactions with humans has not been positive, and elephants are known for their long term memories.
When we encounter elephants their behaviour can be described in one of two ways: vigilant or aggressive. Aggressive bevaviour is when you need to be undaunted by size, as male elephants will usually mock charge our vehicles. I say mock charge, because they almost always (and lets hope it stays like that) stop only feet before the vehicles. In this situation we are stand our ground. Moving away is only a last option, as we don’t want to communicate to the elephants that their attempts are eliciting a response. When a 4 tonne elephant starts picking 15’ Mopane trees up, ripping them out of the ground and tossing them overhead, the vehicle doesn’t feel so safe anymore. We have had a couple close encounters so far, I am sure there will be more.
Vigilant behaviour can be funny. This where an elephant won’t approach you, but will change its behavior in your presence. This can be in the form of mock feeding, where an elephant is pretending to eat while watching you carefully. So carefully in fact, that most of the grass that the elephant is pretending to eat misses its mouth. Another form of vigilance is hiding. We have seen elephants cover their eyes with their trunk in a vain effort to hide, perhaps if it can’t see us then we can’t see them.
Chapter 58
I realize that this may be getting a little long winded, and I could type so much more, but I would like someone to read this at some point, so I will make an attempt to shorten by using the always wonderful bullet form:
- I actually get up at 4 AM for drives, maybe not happily, but I do do it. (It helps when we go to bed at 8 PM.)
- I am all about absorbing new cultural items, drinking the local brew, eating Kudu jerky, learning a little Afrikaans, but one thing I will refuse to do is the tradition of spitting giraffe dung (its chosen because of its missile shape and supposed cleanliness). Perhaps peer pressure will change my tune.
- Afrikaans music is horrific. Imagine non-stop Neil Diamond, but not Neil, much much worse
- A previous staffer built an outdoor gym using some pipe and a welding torch, and after afternoon naps I do dips and chinups. I am still working on the kick pad construction.
- Living in a cabin with all guys is a great and really bad idea all at the same time.
- I have read two books since arriving: my Christmas present the 47th Samurai, and the Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama. I highly recommend the latter if you’re interested in politics of any form, and well, the former will be added to the library here at Venetia.
- In the camp resides a 2 meter long bottle-nosed Cobra, as thick as my forearm; and I thought getting firewood at mum and dad’s in the snow was a challenge.
- Nickpilfold.com is the hottest website around.
PS.
As much fun as this is, I do miss everyone at home and I hope everything is going well in your respective lives. I will try to update this blog monthly, and while the email connection is weak here (running on a G3 cell card and antennae), emails are always welcome and will be read with joy.
