MAY 2020
NEWSLETTER
By Trevor Lane
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BHEJANE TRUST WOULD LIKE TO CONVEY OUR SUPPORT TO ALL OUT FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS IN THIS DIFFICULT TIME, AND PLEASE STAY SECLUDED, SAFE AND WELL. WE ALSO EXTEND OUR SUPPORT TO ALL THE DEDICATED PARKS STAFF IN THE FIELD WHO ARE OPERATING DESPITE RISKS THEY MIGHT FACE.. MAY WE ALL COME OUT OF THIS IN THE END STRONGER!!
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The result of an unprovoked attack on a vehicle by an angry cow elephant. Not content with the damage the first time, it returned 40 minutes later and trashed the car again. A terrifying experience for the occupants!! This is extremely unusual behaviour in this part of the world, and I can only assume the elephant was carrying an injury of some sort - a snare or bullet wound!
Note : a dead elephant was found near the incident site a couple of days later, with a hole of unknown cause in its neck - more then likely the attacker.
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AGAIN! A very determined and professional gang of panel thieves struck again at No 3, smashing one panel and stealing four. They also tried to steal the pump and succeeded only in dropping all the cables and the pump to the bottom of the borehole. Parks mounted an immediate follow up operation but unfortunately with no result.
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Top : The damage done! Bottom left : Tony Smith and crew putting the pump back down. Bottom right - new pump head set in concrete, surrounded by rocks ( to keep the ele's away) and hopefully theft proof!!
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I was out of action when this theft occurred, but Ian Gloss, ably assisted by Tony Smith, leaped in to fill the breach, and made up frames of encased channel to hold the new panels, put up the new frame, fished out the pump and cables from the borehole and reinstalled them, while my team secured the well head and piping in cement and welded a cover over the pump head. They flipped the switch and the system was back in action! This saved the day as there was still good water left in the pan which has since filled up.
My team has proceeded to each of the other pumps in the Chamabonda to reinforce the panel frames and to cement in the well heads and weld down the pump covers. Hopefully these will now be protected against elephants, hyena, baboons and thieves!
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I took a trip out to Kazuma ( thanks to the assistance of Nigel Thiesen here) to meet the new ecologist, a young and keen Mukulul Ndlovu, We went around Kazuma together, which gave us the opportunity to look at all aspects from game water, roads, fire program, to hides, etc.
On the pumps, Eland Pan and Corner Pan were doing well, but Roan Pan had a broken pipe.
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Craig Gobey, of Kalahari Sand Drilling, very kindly offered to blow out the second borehole at the Corner Pan, which we drilled in 2019 but which had the top broken by elephants and then filled with sand so we could not get a pump down when we tried to install one. Craig has a unique rig which is tractor mounted. We thus went out to Kazuma and blew all the sand out the hole. A big thanks to Craig for this very generous effort - much appreciated.
After cleaning the hole, my team installed a pump and connect all the wiring and piping, and we now have a second pump supplying water to the pan. The team also cleared under the other pumps for fire protection, secured the solar panels and well heads, and generally tidied up.
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The unique tractor mounted rig blowing out the hole at Corner Pan No 2
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A quiet month in Robins, mainly due to a vehicle breakdown and the delays in repairing it with the lockdown situation. However, we assisted on deployments and on firebreaks plus checked on the pumps.
Generally the water situation is good throughout, though natural pans are drying out fast.
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After a few weeks in April when I spent more time than usual in Camp, May was a return to normal and we were all very busy. Two months into the dry season, with five months still to come, we have been trying hard (not always successfully) to get all our artificial water sources running at their best. As usual the elephants have contributed to the workload and I’ve no doubt they’ll carry on doing that right through to November.
On the plus side for the month’s work, we have re-started Tshompani solar pump, re-started Inyantue, repaired elephant damage at Mashambo, shored up the trough at Masuma, repaired elephant damage at Tshontanda and started our regular dry-season solar panel cleaning programme.
The job at Tshompani was simply a matter of installing a new pump, motor and inverter. We had help from Camp Hwange (for which, many thanks) and all went well. We will have to go back and put the pump deeper into the borehole at some stage but at least for now, it is pumping.
At Inyantue we have re-wired the solar array to run off just four panels until such time as we can replace the panels that were stolen in April. I am not very confident when it comes to electrics and I’m always nervous when the moment comes to switch on after I’ve made some wiring adjustment, but on this occasion it was worry for nothing as the pump started nicely. It runs well in the middle of the day on the reduced number of panels but is slow when the light is less bright so we are only getting around half the normal yield. While we were at Inyantue we welded pieces of angle iron across the heads of all the bolts holding the panels onto the frame. It doesn’t look pretty and it won’t stop a very determined thief but we think it will certainly make theft a lot more difficult.
We have been trying to fix up the trough at Masuma for some time. Elephants, sometimes deliberately but often accidentally, carry away mud from around the trough, eventually creating a big enough cavity for the trough to collapse. The simplest fix is to fill the hollow with rocks but that requires a tractor and trailer and a lot of manpower. It finally all came together in May and Tshuma organised that five big trailer loads of rocks were put around the Masuma trough which should protect it for some years to come.
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The elephant damage at both Mashambo and Tshontanda was the usual tearing up of pipes where the water flows into the pans. It’s easy enough to repair with a bag or two of cement and a lot of rocks, but difficult, if not impossible to repair strongly enough that elephants won’t do the same thing again. For that we simply have to hope it won’t happen too often.
Sadly there is a minus side to the game water work for May, and that is Tshontanda. Last year the pump at Tshontanda Vlei was overwhelmed by thirsty elephants and we saw some tragic sights with small elephants being bullied away from the water by their bigger relatives. We had hoped to drill a second borehole this year in order to improve the situation but the funding we’d hoped for is no longer available. Worse, the existing borehole is very rapidly failing as this graph of the daily yield shows…..
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We have an almost identical situation at Mafa’s Pan – the demand for water there is huge but we need funding for a new borehole before we can do anything about it. It may well be that neither of those sites will be in action this year.
Wildlife
On the night of the May full moon, we did the first of our dry-season Masuma Dam 24-hour counts for this year. With our volunteer project closed for the time being, we worked with rangers and the students who are currently at Sinamatella. The animal numbers were well within normal limits which was very good news, especially considering the early end to the rains. The critical numbers are elephants, of which we saw one hundred and forty seven and impala which numbered one hundred and thirty. Surprisingly there were very few warthogs and zero kudu. Sue and I did our usual dead-hours-of-the-morning stint and saw more than expected – as well as the usual scrub hare there was an elephant (just the one) to keep us awake for three cold hours. I’m not complaining though, there’s never a 24-hour count at Masuma without a magical moment of some kind and this time we had elephants arriving as the sun was setting……..
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….and a tiny baby hippo with its happy-looking mother to watch all day…..
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At Sinamatella, we are always entertained by the smaller animals. In May however, ‘entertained’ was not the word I would have chosen as the smaller animals most in evidence were stink bugs; thousands of them. They were looking for cracks and crevices they could creep into and overwinter as well as a snack or two to give them the energy supply to tide them over. Night after night they attacked some of the potted cacti and succulents on our veranda that the dassies haven’t already eaten until even quite large cacti were killed. They tried to do the same to our indoor houseplants but we managed to protect most of those. Here’s an idea of their numbers – a bunch of them that thought (wrongly) it would be good to hibernate under the cushion of one of our veranda chairs…..
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Our allies in the stink bug war were the Meves’s starlings who seemingly love the taste of stinkbugs. They searched them out wherever they could and some ate so many that they were killed, we assume by some toxic product of the bugs.
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At the other end of the size scale from the bugs, another major feature of the month was giraffe. We saw many more giraffe than we had in April and, finding a few errors in the data of our giraffe project, Sue decided to do a thorough data spring clean. We thought it might take a couple of days at most but in the end it took well over a week of endless checking of ID photos and data entry. At the end of it we can confidently say that Sinamatella’s giraffe numbers south of the Smith’s Mine Hills have held steady over the past three years and that, on average, approximately 180 individuals are recorded by us in any twelve month period. There are more males than females, presumably because they are more mobile so we record some that are just passing through. Juvenile mortality is very high at around 68% but that, apparently, is normal (though it may be an effect of our small sample size). We are no longer monitoring north of the hills as the new coal mine at Chawato with its associated traffic through Kwizizi has caused too much disturbance for giraffe and we can no longer visit all the places we used to see them, at least one of which is now a huge open pit.
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Miscellaneous
In recent months this newsletter has often mentioned the theft of solar panels. These thefts have become a major problem and the thieves seemed to be impossible to track down. After we lost three panels from Inyantue however, National Parks Investigations got word that they might be found at a homestead somewhere in the Mambanje/Makwandara area and a raid was planned. There was no National Parks vehicle available so I got the job of driving rangers and police to the site. We left Sinamatella at 3.00 one afternoon and we got back at 4.30 the next morning, hungry, worn out and empty handed. In the thirteen hours or so that we were out it felt as if we had driven over every road, most of the cattle paths and quite a few of the dry river beds between Sinamatella and Dete, had visited dozens of homesteads to ask for directions and disturbed half the district. We did eventually find the correct homestead at around midnight, the rangers and police carried out their raid but in spite of the bright moonlight they found nothing. The homestead is surrounded with granite kopjies and we all suspected that the panels are hidden amongst the rocks. Very disappointing.
Finally, I am often asked what is happening with the lodges at Sinamatella since they were leased out to a private company back in early 2018 and are no longer under the control of the Parks Authority. It has been over a year since anything was done. We don’t know what might be done in future but currently some of the lodges are untouched (though neglected and empty)…….
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Some of the lodges are partly demolished…….
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Some have been partly re-built…..
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One has been finished (but is not used)……
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And the restaurant has been destroyed…….
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It all seems a terrible waste.
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RHINO MONITORING & PROTECTION UNIT
Report By Nick Long
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Unfortunately we do not have a report this month from Nick
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Three poachers arrested in Bubye Valley Conservancy in February were sentenced in Beit Bridge court to 9 years for rhino poaching , plus 3 and 4 years (to run concurrently) for weapon offences - a satisfying result.
Hwange Parks Investigations have been busy. They arrested a Hwange man with 8 pieces of ivory - he is currently in detention awaiting sentence.
Investigations also arrested a suspect in the Lubimbi area in possession of 3kg of cyanide and two tusks. This suspect had travelled up from Bulawayo to deal with a gang poisoning elephant in the Lubimbi/Gwayi area, by supplying cyanide and buying the ivory. The four gang members escaped the arresting team but are known.. The arrested suspect apparently then took some of his own cyanide and is now deceased!
The theft of solar panels has also been of major concern, with a professional gang operating in the Matetsi area, stealing panels from solar water units, and radio transmitter stations. Solar panels were also stolen from a housing project in the Falls. Parks have deployed fully to try and apprehend these thieves but they are elusive. A large reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of the culprits
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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.However, we have received some donations into our account with no record of who it came from and we would like to be notified so we can at least acknowledge the support! Our heartfelt thanks to (in no particular order):
Elka Lenherr-Toedtii for her generous donation towards a complete borehole/pump setup
Simon and Portia Rowlands for a very generous donation towards s complete borehole/pump unit
Frik Muller and team for donated piping
Frank Zindell for his generous donation ,and promise of further assistance
Ian Gloss of Victoria Falls Liquorama for his continued assistance
Tony Smith for this help in the field
Pieter and Anthea Erasmus for their continued support, and for the use of their vehicle
Dr Mark Bristow and Hunters and Guides for the financing of our Rhino Monitoring and Protection Unit. Mark came out and pledged assistance for a further three years!!!
Michel Buenerd of Le Pic Vert, and Le Pal Nature Foundation, for funding their NINTH borehole and pump in Sinamatella, with their tenth coming up!
Wild is Life and Jos Dankwerts for their assistance in Kazuma Pan
Machaba Safaris for their donation and field assistance
Patrick Jacquemin has once again risen to the fore with a great donation to help our operational costs, and to put in a new borehole and pump, which will go in early this year
Mark Unwin and the Clarkson Family Trust, for yet another generous donation.
Deb Chusid of New York for a great personal effort to raise funds to assist us - she has held a fund raiser in New York.
Antoinette van Wijk of Holland for her stirling fund raising effort
Wildlife & Environmental Society of Zimbabwe (WEZ), Mat'land Branch. Thanks to Pete Kendall, Colin Gillies, and Stuart Johnson for their continuing support.
Nicholas Duncan and the SAVE The African Rhino Foundation of Australia – a staunch supporter.
RAM Petroleum
Jim Goddard of JRG for monthly diesel donation
Ricky Forster and Forster Irrigation of Bulawayo
Makomo Mine – donation of diesel
Dave Carson and Camp Hwange for helping fund our Sinamatella Rhino Monitoring Unit and game water supplies.
John Karasellos of Hisspan Motors for his continuing assistance and support.
Hwange Conservation Society (UK) - John Gillon
Daan Schoeman for his donation
Richard, Jane and Will Scripps for their donation
A big thanks to Ministry and Parks Staff :
The Director General - Mr Fulton Mangwanya
The Chief Conservator - Mt Arthur Musakwa
The Cluster Manager (Mat North) - Matabeleland - Mr Samson Chibaya,
Area Manager - Zambezi --Mr Daniel Sibanda
Area Manager, - Robins and Sinamatella - Mr Innocent Mupedze
Area Manager - Sinamatella - Mr Marvellous Mbikiyana
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!!
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 : FBCPZWHAX
Account No : 2245093780275
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
Trevor Lane : trevor@bhejanetrust.org +263 777 057 024
Stephen Long : stephen@bhejanetrust.org
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