MAY 2018
NEWSLETTER
By Trevor Lane
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As can be seen from the graph, the Zambezi peaked in mid-May and is on it's way down now. It was an early rise with a late peak, and the effects can be seen in Kariba, which is now sitting at 82% as opposed to 55% this time last year
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As a byline - We met some kids trying to raise money for a boxing tournament in Victoria Falls.We agreed to sponsor the medals and they put the Bhejane Trust logo on these medals. We went to the tournament which was very good despite funding restraints, and came away feeling it was money well spent!
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Bhejane Trust - Fighting for Wildlife
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We have finally got our brochure published, and are in the process of distributing it, hopefully where it might be advantageous!!
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We have an ongoing maintenance program in the Chamabonda, where with the aid of volunteers we have painted the frames of all the solar units, and touched up the paintwork at No 3. We also dug up all the old piping into the trough at No 3 and put in a new pipe and valve. We have put in retaining walls where pans had elephant damage to their edges and were draining out. The hide at Timots (No 4 ) is nearly complete - just to connect the plumbing.
Thanks to Mike Karasellos, we are grading the roads from the access roads to the end - this will be completed in June
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KAZUMA PAN NATIONAL PARK.
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I visited Kazuma Pan in mid May with Patrick Williamson. The roads need a lot of attention, but Parks have started grading them. The grass seeds in the radiator!!
The area obviously received heavy rain this season, as there s a lot of water standing around, and the pans are all overflowing. Roan Pan was backed up into the treeline. The Depression has a lot of standing water across the whole width, while the Kazuma Corner Pan is so full the trough has disappeared under water.
The pumps at Roan Pan and Kazuma Corner Pan are still working, and despite the full pans I left them running as they tend to silt up if left standing
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Top Left - Roan Pan - over-full! Top Right - The Depression - holding a lot of water
Bottom Left - Corner Pan Bottom right - Corner Pan
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Corner pan and overlooking the Depression
Thanks to Patrick Williamson for the photo
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CHIZARIRA NATIONAL PARK
NATIONAL PARKS RESCUE (NPR)/BHEJANE TRUST PARTNERSHIP
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Our partners, under the guidance of Mark Hiley and Mark Swannack, have been extremely busy at Chizarira, and a huge amount of development and improvements have been made. I do not have space to put in Chizarira into this newsletter and will do a supplementary on all the achievements here in the near future.
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On our maintenance program this month, we cleaned up the graves of Percy Crewe, which is at Nantwich, and of H G Robins, which is at Robins camp. We have also tidied up the plaques designating the boundaries of Robins's land when he bequeathed the land to the government of the time
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Top - the grave of Percy Crewe. Bottom - the gravestone of H G Robins
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The new Lessee's of Robins Camp are pushing hard with developments and the new camp is really taking shape. The camp is going to be very comfortable when complete, and will have 40 rooms on offer. This exciting development can only be good for the Robins area, a long neglected area.
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The new restaurant going in in front of Robins Tower
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We are putting in a small solar unit and pump donated by the WEZ game counters last year, at Deteema to service the picnic site. We have dug the trench and are waiting on piping to install and then to connect it up
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Report by Stephen Long
Game water.
For a while it looked as if we might have some unseasonal rain to report on in May.....
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In the event only the tiniest drizzle fell 'though the clouds lasted for many days - greatly reducing the flow rate at some of our solar pumps. In spite of that, most of the pumped pans are looking excellent and there is still not too much demand from elephants at most places. Masuma, however seems to be an exception. In our regular Masuma 24-hour count on 25th May we recorded over two hundred elephants but not much else - more or less the same pattern as in April and a lot more than is normal at this time of year. However, Masuma is still more or less full right up to the low spot in the dam wall where the hippo enter and leave. In mid month we received a report via a tourist that the dam wall had broken. I had visions of the water surging out and pouring away down the Lukosi River, leaving a sad muddy puddle and a lot of disgruntled animals but further investigation revealed that they were simply reporting this low hippo path. Just to make sure, Tshuma went out to Masuma straight away and once again filled the gap with awkward shaped rocks and the hippo have consequently chosen a new and more sensible entry and exit.
One or two water problems remain from last month or earlier and Mashambo pump is the biggest headache of the moment. It runs off a mains supply and has been out of order for a couple of months with no power coming from the transformer, the pan is almost dry and the ZESA technicians have been unable to solve the problem. I'm really disappointed with the loss of Mashambo as it had previously been one of our more successful new installations, attracting far more animals than I had expected. Perhaps we will have better news on this one in June.
If Mashambo has been a problem lurking in the back of my mind for a couple of months, Bumboosie South has been there much longer and at last it seems we might be able to make some progress on sorting it out. We were very lucky to have an offer of help in May from Sandy Elsworth, a borehole rehabilitation expert. He visited us in mid month, along with his sister/assistant Liz and we spent a very enjoyable couple of days investigating some of our problem boreholes. Top of the list was Bumboosie South where we had more theories as to the source of the problems than we knew what to do with - and no real idea how to find out which (if any) was correct. Sandy uses a camera which can be lowered down the borehole giving lots of information about the state of things underground. I have to admit that a 20 minute movie of the inside of a borehole is not exactly riveting viewing but it is very informative and we learnt a lot.
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At Bumboosie South it revealed that the borehole is apparently in perfectly good condition - even the fabled 'mermaid' that gets the blame for some of the difficulties was not at home - and it is likely that the problems we have faced have been more to do with the pumping equipment than with the borehole itself. We plan to get it test-pumped and if the yield is good enough, we'll get a pump in as soon as possible.
Sandy's investigation of Masuma number 2 borehole showed more or less the same story as at Bumboosie South but at Mafa's Pan which was drilled just last year, the picture was very different. Here the camera showed that the borehole drillers seem to have made a major error in installing the casing so we will be contacting them to get the situation rectified. Whatever happens, it will be too late to get the borehole running before the pan goes dry and we have to accept that we have probably lost Mafa's Pan for most of this season. Many thanks are due to Sandy and Liz for their help - and for smiling through my apparently highly optimistic estimation of the state of some of the roads we used . Without them we would still be fruitlessly discussing what to do about Bumboosie South, Masuma 2 and Mafa's. Now, even if none of those is yet running, we know how to proceed and we know once and for all that there are no mermaids, tokoloshes or aquatic goblins hiding in any of them.
Wildlife
Towards the very end of May we started to see the beginnings of the dry season build up in animal numbers. Elephants could be seen regularly during the day and around a hundred buffalo appeared on the Sinamatella flood plain one morning. For most of the month however, as we travelled around, sightings were confined to a couple of impala and a warthog - hardly inspiring game viewing. The few tourists that came to Sinamatella probably saw more or less what we did but that doesn't excuse the bad behaviour we saw one day as we returned to Sinamatella from Masuma. Near the turn-off to Robins we noticed tyre tracks going off into the bush. Not far along the road we saw the same thing, then again a little further on, then we saw a vehicle at least a hundred meters off the road with the occupants watching some lions doing what lions do best - sleeping.
It was clear that the lions had been trying to sleep for some time but had been harried from one place to another by people driving off road to see them - indeed the driver that we saw told us there had been three other cars around the lions when he got there. I'm sure he and the others thought they were doing very little harm but the view of the lions from the actual road would have been perfectly good - though it was now somewhat spoilt, for us at least, by having a silver blue Toyota as part of the back-drop.
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Worse, the lions had clearly been disturbed multiple times and the more often that happens, the more likely they are to run away at the sight of vehicles, spoiling the chances of future visitors getting a good lion sighting. The Parks rule 'no off road driving' is there for good reason.
Our May volunteer group were probably a bit disappointed at the lack of animals to be seen. Throughout their stay we didn't see a single zebra, which I found very surprising and there was not much else that was exciting. Even giraffe mostly kept themselves hidden but we did see a couple of them which the volunteers very efficiently added to the ever-growing database. We also continued Baobab mapping which we had started in April and the usual bird and mammal monitoring projects all of which the volunteers added to the computer in a tenth of the time it would have taken me. I really wish I had their computer skills (see comment at the end of this section).
I mentioned last month that this seemed to be a good year for stink bugs. I was wrong - it turned out to be a verygood year (or a very bad year - depending on your point of view). We had a few bug-free days at the start of the month then on the 12th, around midday, we heard what sounded like a swarm of bees approaching but was actually stink bugs by the hundred, then by the thousand. During the day they were not too annoying but when the sun went down and we put lights on, they homed in on us and they were everywhere. We try to grow a few decorative plants on and around our verandah which is a constant struggle against the dassies, the grysbok and sometimes even the elephants. In May it was a struggle against the stink bugs. Not content with settling all over the house to wait out the winter, thousands of them decided to have a last snack before hibernation and our house-plants were conveniently nearby. Several were killed outright by the onslaught, we wait to see if the aloes (pictured, with bugs) will survive....
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Miscellaneous
The road grading that began in April continued into May. On the 31st Trevor and I travelled out to Inyantue to check on a borehole site and it was a pleasure to use the road via Tshakabika which has been graded all the way. Unfortunately the motorised grader returned to Robins long before all the necessary work was completed but grading continues using the tow grader. There is still plenty to do but all the concerned 'stakeholders' have chipped in to supply diesel etc and Parks are still employing contract staff to work on the roads so there is hope that most of it will be done.
Also continuing into May from April was the severe transport problem. The Parks mechanic got the enormous tipper lorry working but it is too big and too thirsty for much useful work. Otherwise only Bhejane vehicles were running and even we faced a lot of problems. Our plans to send away one vehicle at a time for repair really haven't worked out well as everything takes so long (sourcing spares in Zimbabwe is not easy at the moment). Luckily Parks have been very careful with their transport planning and once again the 'stakeholders' have chipped in where possible. We are especially grateful to Nengasha Safaris who have helped several times with anti-poaching deployments right out to their area - a long journey that none of us really enjoys at the best of times.
Finally, if there is anyone from Microsoft reading this, I have a suggestion. You've had Windows 98, Windows 7, Windows 8 etc but how about 'Windows over 60'. It would have one vital feature. After the operator has clicked 'yes' to that question 'are you sure you want to permanently delete this file?' it will then say ' just stop and think for a minute. You probably don't really want to delete it at all do you?' If I'd had that feature on my computer I wouldn't have had to write this newsletter twice.
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I visited the Ranthambore National Park and Tiger Sanctuary in India ( after watching a couple of IPL games!), and it was a very interesting experience on mass wildlife tourism.
Ranthambore itself is a small park of 492 sq km, but has two adjoining conservation areas with a total area of about 1330 sq km ( about the size of Sinamatella) and has a total of 60 tigers (45 adults and 15 cubs).within this area. Every tiger is known by name and monitored continually, while poaching is under control Howvever, they are facing the same problem as many African Parks of the tiger population having reached its capacity, and what to do with the excess tigers - some have been relocated to new tiger reserves that are opening up.
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The Ranthambore area is divided into 10 sectors for tourism purposes, and the game drive vehicles are each allocated a sector on a daily basis to operate in, which they have to adhere to. Game drive vehicles are either little Suzuki Maruti Jeeps with 6 people crammed onto 2 benches, or cut down busses which take 20 pax at a time
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Tiger watching in Ranthambore!
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Ranthambore attracts, by local accounts, up to an incredible 300,000 tourists a year! This is mainly a local market, although there is a big foreign market. This is why the Park is divided into sections, with strict rules, so as to distribute the numbers. There are no private vehicles in the Park. Each section has some resident tigers, though sightings are by no means guaranteed.
An economic evaluation (Wikipedia) of the tigers of Ranthambore puts the value of the Park at 8.6 billion rupees ( about $124,000,000) annually for the local economy, which put a value of over 2 million dollars on each tiger!!
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Ranthambore is very scenic and is also steeped in history, with old temples in the Park, and a massive fort on top of a hill - this fort is of unknown history but is at least 1000 years old and is a revered temple
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Our traffic cops would have a field day in India!!
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Congratulation to Parks Investigations out of Hwange for some great undercover work - they arrested two pairs of individuals in separate incidents involving pangolins. Unfortunately one pangolin was recovered dead, but the second one was recovered alive and has been rehabilitated. All four poachers are facing nine years each.It appears the pangolins are required by Traditional Healers for a ritual known as "blasting" where the healer somehow extracts money from the pangolin, be it alive or a skin. This has caused the price of pangolins to skyrocket, and sellers are believed to now be demanding up to $5000 a pangolin - a very serious problem.
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We have had an amazing period of support from all our friends, new and old, out there, and we really appreciate all this support. Our heartfelt thanks to:
Piet and Anthea Erasmus for yet another generous donation - much appreciated
Nick Price and the PGA Tour for two generous donations.
Mark Bristow and Hunters and Guides for the financing of our Rhino Monitoring and Protection Unit
Patrick Jacquemin for his donation to Sinamatella and Robins, which includes funds for patrol rations for the Parks rangers
Mark Unwin and the Clarkson Family Trust, for yet another generous donation.
Michel Buenerd of Le Pic Vert, and Le Pal Nature Foundation, for funding what will be their 6th borehole and pump in Sinamatella!
Marcelo Kim - a most unusual donor!! Marcel is getting married in April ( our very best wishes) and he has asked his guests to donate to Bhejane in lieu of wedding gifts!!! Hopefully we will get some happy wedding phots in April!
John Kiggen - building support at No 4, Chamabonda
Wildlife & Environmental Society of Zimbabwe (WEZ), Matabeleland Branch.- we still have two pumps to put in from WEZ which will be done in May. Thanks to Pete Kendall, Colin Gillies, and Stuart Johnson for their help
Nicholas Duncan and the SAVE The African Rhino Foundation of Australia – a staunch supporter.
Sandy Elsworth for the borehole survey at Sinamatella and Robins
RAM Petroleum
Ricky Forster and Forster Irrigation of Bulawayo
Makomo Mine – donation of diesel
Ian & Sue Thomson – more assistance forthcoming, with building a new hide in the Chamabonda
Ian Gloss and Victoria Falls Liquorama
Dave Carson and Camp Hwange for helping fund our Sinamatella Rhino Monitoring Unit and game water supplies.
Paul (Sudza) Howard for his donation of T shirts and golf shirts for the Rhino Monitoring Unit. (There will be more on this in the June newsletter)
John Karasellos of Hisspan Motors for his continuing assistance and support.
Mike Karasellos for the grading the roads in the Chamabonda.
A big thanks to Ministry and Parks Staff :
The Hon Minister - Mrs Oppah Kashiri- Muchinguri
The Director General - Mr Fulton Mangwanya
The Chief Conservator - Mt Arthur Musakwa
The Regional Manager, - Matabeleland - Mr Samson Chibaya,
Area Manager - Zambezi --Mrs Constance Gurure
Area Manager, - Robins and Sinamatella - Mr Hardwork Chikumba
Area Manager - Sinamatella - Mr Marvellous Mbikiyana
Area manager - Chizarira - Mr Brighton Joroma
and all their guys on the ground for all their support and assistance.
To my wife Liz for her continual support in all my comings and goings!!
And a big thanks to the Minister of Environment, Climate and Water
Apologies if we have inadvertently left anyone out!! Your help is much appreciated
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Bhejane Trust relies on donations to continue it’s operations, which includes our daily operating costs, as well as specific projects.
PLEASE HELP!!
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Donate to help us save our wildlife heritage - any donations would be gratefully accepted . Donations can be through our “PayNow” button on our website “bhejanetrust.org” or direct to our bank account:
Bank details :
Bhejane Trust,
FBC Bank,
Galleria Building, Parkway
Victoria Falls
Zimbabwe
Branch Code : 8512
Swift Code : FBCPZWHA
Account No : 6145093780178
Bhejane Trust office address:
231 Sopers Crescent,
P.O.Box 210
Victoria Falls,
Zimbabwe
Note - we do not have postal codes in Zimbabwe (00)
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CONTACT DETAILS
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Trevor Lane : trevor@bhejanetrust.org +263 777 057 024
Stephen Long : stephen@bhejanetrust.org
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