JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
NEWSLETTER
By Trevor Lane
|
|
The weather forecast for this year was a drought year, and this has proved to be correct! January received patchy rainfall at best, generally as scattered storms. In mid February, the rains finally arrived, albeit briefly! We had several days of continuous downpour, and over 190mm was recorded at Shumba in Sinamatella over two days. The rivers all flooded, the roads became impassable and are no doubt damaged in places, and the dams and pans filled up. However, the rains then disappeared again, with endless days of scorching hot sunshine through to the end of the month.
However generally it looks like there is enough grazing and enough water to carry through the year, so we should be alright despite the drought.
|
|
|
As can be seen by the blue line on the graph the Zambezi River is very low this year which does not bode well for Kariba this year.
|
|
Unfortunately I cannot give the rainfall figure for the Chamabonda as an elephant knocked the rain gauge over, and the hyena then demolished it! However, the area is obviously low on rainfall, with the grass being stunted, and was already wilting in places by the end of February.
The water holes are all full and pumping well, which is good news as we expect an early return of the elephants, and early pressure on the water!
|
|
|
Therehas been a change in Area Managers at Robins, and we welcome Innocent Mupedze, and look forward to a fruitful relationship. We wish Hardwork Chikumba all the best for his new posting, and thank him for all his help when he was at Robins.
|
|
|
Top :Deteema Dam in mid January - very low and shallow. Middle
: The dam filled overnight and spilled in mid -February after a day of heavy rain. Bottom - mid-February, 2019!
|
|
|
After receiving close to 200mm in a couple of days in February, some pans were over full - Tsamhole (top left) and Manzinbomvu (top right)
|
|
|
After receiving close to 200mm in a couple of days in February, some pans were over full - Tsamhole (top left) and Manzinbomvu (top right) Although Manzimbomvu was over full, Dandari which is only 7 kilometres away, was only half full!
|
|
|
SINAMATELLA
Report by Stephen Long
|
|
Rainfall and water.
It seems that Sinamatella has been lucky this rainy season. We hear many reports from elsewhere involving the word 'drought', and indeed the rainfall figures from places even quite close to us are very poor. Meanwhile, our status, as shown in the graphs, is not too bad......
|
|
|
Obviously, we are still below average for the season as a whole but that is down to the low rainfall in November and December. Both January and February were above average. At one stage our rainfall figures here at Sinamatella Camp were looking good but when we travelled out to Shumba, only around 35km away, the picture was completely different with the natural pans mostly still dry and every sign that we should be concerned for the dry season ahead. Luckily our whole area had 100mm and above over a few days in mid-February, pans filled, the grass grew and we could relax a little.
|
|
As long as the rain hasn't gone away until October, we don't have too much to worry about - but I wouldn't complain if we were to get quite a bit more in the next month or so!
Our biggest game water works in January and February were at Mandavu and Masuma dams - in both cases working to ensure the safety of the dam walls. Masuma was the simpler of the two. On an inspection visit we realised that the hippos had once again created a pathway over the wall that had reduced its level below that of the spillway. One good fall of rain would have sent water pouring through the gap rather than across the spillway and probably caused a great deal of damage. We returned the next day and, to solve the problem, we filled the gap the hippos had made but also dug out years of compressed elephant dung from the gap where the dam is meant to spill, so making sure the water level didn't reach a danger point. Just two days later, heavy rain came and the attendant at Masuma reported the dam had risen to within centimeters of the hippo path but excess water was pouring out across the spillway. That was just about a perfect situation and I'd love to claim it was all down to pinpoint accuracy with measuring the relative heights of the spillway and the dam wall. It wasn't - we judged it by eye so there was a big slice of luck involved.
With the dam so full, we currently have the pump turned off but when we re-start pumping, we expect to have a better water supply, thanks to an upgraded pump donated by WWF and installed late in February. Many thanks.
Mandavu was a very different proposition. We often cross the dam wall but it had never entered my mind that perhaps we should be doing maintenance work on it, in fact I thought it looked in pretty good condition. An e mail from Colin Gillies of WEZ spoilt that fantasy! Colin was heavily involved in the rebuilding of the wall when it broke a couple of decades ago and he had been told what maintenance was necessary. If that knowledge was ever known at Sinamatella, it was not passed on through the personnel changes over the years and we knew nothing, so when I received Colin's mail I did what we all do these days when we don't know something- I asked Google. I should have expected that there would be masses of information on even something as obscure as earth dam wall maintenance but still I was surprised by the amount available. It didn't take much reading to whittle it all down to a few points relevant to us. Most obvious was that the trees growing on the wall, whose roots I had fondly imagined were binding the whole thing together, were in fact burrowing holes through which water would eventually flow and tear the wall apart. They would have to go. Likewise any termites, ants or larger burrowing animals. When we actually went out to Mandavu to inspect it with our newly-opened eyes, we found bad erosion of the dry face of the wall due to rainfall run-off and a lot of disruption of the rock-covering of the wet face (apparently the rocks are collectively known as rip rap and are there to protect against wave action).
|
|
Some of the unwanted trees and disrupted rip rap before work started.
With the 'to do' list rapidly expanding, we thought we should get on with it. Over several days of hard work, we cut down and removed all the trees and burnt or poisoned their stumps to prevent re-growth, we replaced the rip rap, filled the gullies with rock and made temporary diversions of the rainwater run-off. We still have to do a more permanent repair to the last item but are awaiting the return to work of one or other of the Parks tractors which are currently long-term casualties at the workshop. There are promises that one, or possibly even both of them, will be running soon so we will do the work in March.
Wildlife
As usual, January and February were very quiet months for game viewing. By mid February the elephants had started to return from wherever they spent the past few months and we have been seeing up to seventy of them feeding out on the Sinamatella flood plain in the evenings. Apart from that, we have seen very little except birds. Sue and I, accompanied by Cuthbert Maravanyika ( a student currently on attachment at Sinamatella), did the January waterfowl counts at Shumba, Masuma and Mandavu. Numbers in the Shumba area were very low. Elephant Pan, Dwarf Goose, Reedbuck vlei and Big Shumba Pan were all more or less dry and all we could see to add to the count were a few Blacksmith Lapwings.
|
|
Camp Hwange's pan was more interesting and Shumba Pan itself also held quite a lot of birds but still we left the area a little disappointed.
In contrast, Masuma had more birds than usual. There was nothing especially exciting but of course in a regular count such as these Wetlands International waterfowl counts, the numbers of the species that are present year after year are more interesting than the occasional vagrant. My favourite sighting in the Masuma area was a lovely little Dwarf Bittern that relied on its camouflage and posed very close to the car, allowing Sue to get a nice photo.......
|
|
The final count of a long day was at Mandavu where plenty of birds are more or less guaranteed and by the time we had finished there, the 'score' for the day as a whole was over five hundred water birds of thirty four species. Add to that the many non-waterfowl and the occasional mammal and it was a pretty good day.
For a lot more of January and February than I would like, I have been stranded at camp due to a lack of diesel and many vehicle breakdowns, so most of my animal sightings have been around (or in) the house. As I have written before, hyenas often wander past at night and we are entertained by the Dwarf mongoose, squirrels and dassies by day. One afternoon in February a wild cat chased a dassie into the wheel arch of one of our Land Rovers. I was attracted by the squealing and unfortunately (from my point of view) scared the cat away before I could get a good look. The dassie would have seen the incident differently of course. We were also visited by a bigger cat one night as the spoor of a lion revealed next morning, but we didn't see that one. Our assortment of semi-tame birds has also kept us entertained. The Red-headed Weavers successfully (but messily) raised three chicks in their nest above the veranda table........
|
|
|
Red-headed weaver chicks at 11 days........... 13 days..........
|
|
and out of the nest at 15 days.
All eight of the local White-browed Sparrow weavers came to beg for crumbs at meal times, getting bold enough to land right on the table if we were too slow crumbling bread for them. More annoying were the couple who Sue named 'Dumb and Dumber' - a pair of Red-billed hornbills who have been dithering for weeks over whether or not to nest in a custom-made nest box in the big Mopane by the house, and whiling away the time as they ponder that big decision by viciously and noisily attacking their reflections in our windows.
Miscellaneous
Looking back through my diary I think I could fill this section with tales of electricity outages, failures in the domestic water supply and vehicle breakdowns. We seem to have had more than we would expect of all of those. More of a problem for us though was a great shortage of diesel. Most of our diesel is usually supplied by neighbouring mining enterprises but in January and February they could hardly supply their own vehicles, let alone worry about ours so we had to fall back on what we could buy for ourselves in Hwange. That was never easy and always expensive but we managed to at least keep the rhino monitoring unit in action and also to do the most urgent of other jobs. Anything else will have to wait until things return to 'normal'.
A similarly difficult problem to maintaining diesel supplies, was keeping the Parks rangers on patrol supplied with their usual ration packs. Nick, Sue and Tshuma all managed to talk their way at various times into buying quantities of mealie meal when it was hard to come by (thanks to the store managers of TM Hwange and TM Victoria Falls for your understanding!) so sadza, the most important item, was always on the menu but some other things were unavailable and all were very expensive. By the end of February the situation seemed to be a little better and we can only hope it stays that way.
Early in January we embarked on a project to try out a few different techniques for rehabilitating some of the ground around Sinamatella that is damaged by sheet erosion.
|
|
|
RHINO MONITORING & PROTECTION UNIT
Report by Nicholas Long
|
|
|
We resumed operations on the 3rdof January and started off with the intention of concentrating on de-snaring and other anti-poaching activities along the boundaries of the park. We were rewarded early on in the month with the successful tracking and arrest of 2 poachers along the Deka River, they were netting fish along the river and had a lot of fish with them. They almost certainly also set snares but we could not prove that.
|
|
|
We removed quite a lot of snares near the river but none of them had been freshly set although there are definitely some out there as we saw a Painted dog with a snare and an elephant with one on its front leg. We also discovered that some of the poachers along the Colliery concession boundary are actively targeting young elephants with snares as we found where they had caught one and taken all the meat, but left the (small) tusks.
|
|
A few patrols were conducted in the known rhino areas but there wasn’t much to be found. The team was rewarded with just one sighting of a rhino though it was very brief as it picked up their scent and ran before any positive ID could be made. It is very difficult to find these animals at this time of the year as there is water virtually everywhere and there is a plentiful supply of food as well so they can move very widely.
Even without sightings of rhino or poachers, these patrols are always interesting and you never know what you are going to find. One day we found a baby baboon, on its own by the Deka river. We offered it food but it was too scared to take it and we sadly left it - knowing that it probably wouldn't survive…..
|
|
|
Of course we see plenty of animals but an unusual sight was a cheetah that had just killed a young male waterbuck. We managed to move away without disturbing it.
|
|
Amos Gwema and his Parks Hwange Investigations Unit have been doing a fantastic job in controlling the poaching in the Hwange National Park and surroundings, from 2013 to date, using informers and intelligence to apprehend poachers. As can be seen from the stats below, the poaching of elephant has declined considerably, and should decline even more with the recent arrest of a poaching kingpin from Dete.
For the period 2013 to 2018 a total of 287 accused persons were convicted to a combined total of 3175 years imprisonment with labour and most of the accused persons are still serving jail.
A big thanks also to Lisa Hywood of the Tikki Hywood Trust for informer rewards and field assistance to Amos and his crew, plus Nicholas Duncan of the SAVE the African Rhino Foundation who has assisted with reward monies, funnelled through the Bhejane Trust
|
|
Hwange Investigations Unit, together with ZRP Minerals, Flora and Fauna Unit, has another impressive sting operation, arresting four elephant poachers/ivory dealers near Dete town. These are part of the ivory cartel which has been operating out of Date, whose chief is already custody awaiting sentence. This should really curtail the ivory poaching in Hwange.
Four poachers/ivory dealers were arrested while one poacher, a Forestry game scout, escaped but is being sought. They were caught red-handed in a sting with three tusks, weighing 96kg, in the boot of a car. Three of the arrested were hardened poachers, while the fourth was a woman who was the go between the poachers and the buyers. The escaped ranger had been feeding the group inside information on patrol deployments, safe areas, etc - a warrant is out for his arrest.
Very well done to this team - yet another great result!!
|
|
|
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:
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.
Ian Thomson and Ian Gloss
The Muller Brothers and Master Paint & Hardware of Bulawayo for piping for Masuma dam
"Solid Performance" - Antoinette van Wijk - of Holland for a fundraiser in support of the RMPU
Andre Cilliers for his assistance
Michel Buenerd of Le Pic Vert, and Le Pal Nature Foundation, for funding what will be their 6th borehole and pump in Sinamatella!
Deb Chusid of New York for a great personal effort to raise funds to assist us
Piet and Anthea Erasmus
Dr Mark Bristow and Hunters and Guides for the financing of our Rhino Monitoring and Protection Unit
Wildlife & Environmental Society of Zimbabwe (WEZ), Matabeleland Branch. Thanks to Pete Kendall, Colin Gillies, and Stuart Johnson for their continuing support, and the donation of a solar unit for Njekwa
Nicholas Duncan and the SAVE The African Rhino Foundation of Australia – a staunch supporter.
RAM Petroleum
Ricky Forster and Forster Irrigation of Bulawayo
Makomo Mine – donation of diesel
JR Goddard - donation of diesel
Ian Gloss and Victoria Falls Liquorama
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.
Mike Karasellos for the grading the roads in the Chamabonda.
Sophia Joshi for her donation
Jeane Pierre Garrec and Naue Redor for their donation
Hwange Conservation Society (UK) - John Gillon
We had a donation from Dr Inka Maria Kreling-Boysen out the blue, with no explanation!! Thanks
Marina Cazes - thanks for your donation
A big thanks to Ministry and Parks Staff :
The Hon Minister - Ms Priscah Mupfumira
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, Ms Priscilla Mapfumira
Apologies if we have inadvertently left anyone out!! Your help is much appreciated
|
|
|
Bhejane Trust relies on donations to continue it’s operations, which includes our daily operating costs, as well as specific projects.
PLEASE HELP!!
|
|
|
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 : 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)
|
|
CONTACT DETAILS
Trevor Lane : trevor@bhejanetrust.org +263 777 057 024
Stephen Long : stephen@bhejanetrust.org
|
|
|
|
|
