RAIN, RAIN and more rain!! The story of February. We are now sitting on over 829mm of rain for the season to date - the wettest in a long time.
We are however taking advantage of the enforced downtime to catch upon all the paperwork, and restructure our operation as it has expanded without the systems keeping up. Our Board of Trustees has been very active here and a big thanks to them
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The Zambezi River is rising steadily, and the latest graphs form the Zambezi River Authority show some interesting trends.
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The Zambezi River flows at Victoria Falls a son 1st March 2021 - the flow is registered at 2776m3/sec compared to 929at the same time last year!
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Kariba Lake levels as of 1st March 2021. The lake is at 36.61% full, compared to 11.34% for the same time last year ( note : this is the percentage of utilisable water in the lake.)
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"TIMOT" - Tim Braybrooke's book is finally out. Tim was one of the original members of the old Rhodesia Game Department and dedicated his life to wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe. Timots Pan in the Chamabonda is named in his memory.
I ordered copies of the book through Amazon
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Zimbabwe recently held a virtual National Rhino meeting - an annual event hosted by the Zimbabwe Parks Authority which gives all parties involved in rhino conservation an opportunity to give an update on their current situation. The good news is that, after a bad 2019 when quite a few were lost to poaching, the rhino recovered well in 2020, especially the Black Rhino. Only 11 rhino were lost to poaching, but the poachers paid a heavy price with several shot dead, and more captured and convicted. The total rhino population now stands at 530 Black Rhino and 341 White Rhino – an increase by over 5% during the year - a great effort by Parks and all parties concerned!
However, the story in South Africa is gloomy, as it appears they lost (unofficially) 395 rhino last year. It is also depressing in Botswana, where it appears the poaching is going on unabated, despite the weather and the heavy rains. They are even shooting the dehorned rhino, which still have a substantial horn base to make the poaching worthwhile. Unfortunately, the future for rhino in Botswana looks bleak.
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More bad news on the rhino situation in Botswana. There have been 12 rhino poached in the last two weeks in the Okavango Delta area, including a family - male, female and calf - in one hit. Urgent action is required by the Botswana authorities, and they should bring in expert advice and assistance immediately, if any rhino are to survive.
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Rhino poached in the Okavango Delta in February 2021
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WE finished the refurbishment of the hide at No 3 and have added extra security to all the panels and pumps in the Chamabonda. We have now started the refurbishment of Timots Hide, which is quite tatty.. The rains have also caused a lot of damage to the roads which we will have to look at once the rains have stopped. However, the pans are as full as they have ever been.
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Repairing the trough at Timots Checking on the panels at No 3
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I recently took a trip into Kazuma Pan National Park with Nigel Thiesen - it was a very wet trip, with flooded roads and lots of mud!!. We could get to Parks HQ all right, but from there on was a mission and we had to go up into Kazuma Forest on the Kalahari sands - even on the sands the road was flooded in places. We managed to get onto the elevated border road across the Kazuma Depression. The Depression had a lot of water in it, but was shallow in amongst all the grass, which did not allow for any pictures.
The Kazuma Corner Pan was like a lake though, and really beautiful. There was however a disappointing lack of waterfowl around - maybe too spread out.
There is no way you can get around the Park at all, and I am not planning any return trip until later in April when it starts to dry out.
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Top :The Kazuma Corner Pan
Left : The road is under there somewhere Right : On the main road!!
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I went to Robins with Dave Carson for our annual Planning Meeting with the Area Manager, Mrs Moyo, and her team. It was a very good and productive meeting - thanks all involved.
We took the opportunity to go to Deteema Dam, which was spilling and had a small group of hippo in residence. We also went to Salt Pans, which are also full - these were the only accessible areas and we had to dodge storms while we were there!
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Cleaning under the panels - before and after!!
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Croc Pools - the clean up
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The unusually heavy rains we received through the first part of the season finally relented in February. We didn’t see the sun very often as there was always plenty of cloud but for actual rainfall, February was quite a bit below average.
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In a normal year that would have been cause for concern but this year it’s no problem. There is still water everywhere, including on the roads……
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As far as we know, all our water points are full. There are one or two that are only accessible with great effort and (more importantly) with considerable damage to the road but I would be amazed if they haven’t filled up.
Last month I reported on the situation at Masuma dam and I mentioned that we were working on a longer-term repair to the wall, which had been damaged by water flow. That work was completed in the first week of February and all being well, we won’t have to do it again for some years. One of our other dams, Inyantue, then needed the same treatment later in the month. No-one had visited the area for a while but Parks decided to deploy a call-sign out there and the day after they reached their base, they sent in a photo by whatsapp, showing water flowing across the dam where it had become worn down by elephants. Tshuma went out with our staff and a group of rangers and they spent a day filling the gap with alternate layers of rock and soil. The result looks good and should hold.
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The repair part-finished with the full dam in the background
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The repair completed.
Wildlife.
As we travel around at this time of year we usually see nothing much apart from mud, potholes and mopane trees. February mostly conformed to that pattern but from time to time we rounded a corner and found something a little more interesting to look at.
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Sue and I met this young spotted hyena one afternoon. It was as interested in us as we were in it so Sue was able to get some nice photos that counter the usual image of hyenas as ugly, cowardly sneaky creatures.
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We also met up with a lot of giraffe during the month, such as this group.
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Our statistics for the month and the last twelve month period show a steady increase. This graph plots the number of individual giraffe we have seen in every twelve month block since we started the project in 2017.
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It seems that either the number of giraffe in Sinamatella sector is increasing or we are getting better at finding them. We had wondered if the giraffe we used to see in the Chawato area would move across the Smith’s Mine Hills now that their home has been turned into an open-cast coal mine. In fact we have only found two Chawato giraffe in Sinamatella so far. Perhaps they are more tolerant of coal mining than I am.
In Sinamatella camp itself our friendly red-billed hornbill couple “Dumb and Dumber” have made use of the nest box we provided for them, as they did last year. Dumb walled herself in the box at the start of February and is still there now, with Dumber loyally supplying her with food – when he remembers. Her eggs should be hatched by now and she should be coming out soon to help Dumber with the feeding chores. I’m sure he will be grateful.
Miscellaneous.
Even though the rain eased off a little in February, travelling around didn’t get any easier. Sue and I spent some hours getting out of this mess……
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Every one of us was stuck in mud or a river-bed at one time or another, we occasionally had to go to someone else’s rescue and there were several evenings when I was anxiously waiting by the radio for news of one of our vehicles that was late returning from some outlying place. On one deployments day our Land Rover Tdi broke a CV joint near RHA mine in the Deka Safari Area and it was well after 9.00 p.m. before we got everyone back to Camp, then we had to return next day to recover the Land Rover. Times like that are hard on both the vehicles and the drivers and consequently we spent quite a lot of the month working on vehicles – with jobs ranging from a simple universal joint change to a more challenging gearbox replacement. By the end of February we still had one vehicle ‘down’ but the others were all runners in one way or another.
Finally for this month, right at the end of February Alan Jones and Colin Gillies came up from Bulawayo to fit new roofing on the two camp/picnic shelters at Shumba.
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At this time, with money and resources in short supply, kind efforts like this are needed more than ever and we are very grateful.
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RHINO MONITORING & PROTECTION UNIT
Report By Nick Long
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The team did a total of 430 km divided up to 15 foot patrols with 176 km and 10 vehicle patrols with 254 km. Of these, 18 were Rhino monitoring patrols and 5 were Anti-poaching patrols. We concentrated on Rhino monitoring this month trying to see if we could locate any of the rhino we know, unfortunately this was in vain as we only even saw Rhino spoor twice and in both incidences the spoor was a couple of days old. The problem we face is that the grass coverage at this time of the year is very high which makes tracking almost impossible and the availability of water for the animals is high as well so the Rhino go wherever they want and are not confined to certain areas.
As mentioned in the previous report we have embarked on a camera trap survey for the year and we collected the cameras we had set at the end of January. We had set 6 cameras on major animal paths, of the 6 only 4 got pictures and the other 2 where destroyed by elephants. From the 4 cameras we got a lot of pictures of elephants which we didn’t expect, we also got a few other species including Painted dogs, Kudu, Warthogs and a lion.
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Wild dogs and an Impala ram on the camera traps
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A family of Elephant’s going somewhere What was left of one of the camera traps
Our patrols are also made difficult by the terrain we work in. The mixture of rain and the lack of road maintenance has made it very difficult for us to get around and we have found ourselves in some rather difficult situations but thanks to a winch and the magnificent engineering of Land Rover we managed to get to where we needed to go most of the time.
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Stuck in the Lukosi River once again
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A very quiet month on the poaching side - the heavy rain, thick bush, and dispersed game all seems to have dampened the poaching pressure for now.
However, some good news - there was an incident in November 2020 where five buffalo and 2 kudu were snared in the Deka Safari Area and a combined Bhejane Trust/Parks team did a follow up and raided their village where the poachers came from, arresting three of the poachers who subsequently are serving 36 months for their involvement in the poaching.. One poachers escaped - a Trymore Sibanda - who has now been arrested and was convicted, receiving an effective 50 months.
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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 (in no particular order):
Patrick Jacquemin for his 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.
Lion Recovery Fund and Rhino Recovery Fund - a big thanks to Peter Lindsay and Markus Hofmeyr for the great support they have just offered the trust
Morne and Michelle Muller of Surgical and Opthalmic Supplies for their pledge of support for this year
Piet Weller, through Lionel and Annelise Finaughty for the offer to sponsor a wateroint in Kazuma in memory of Wessels Weller
Larry Norton for his offer of a percentage of sales of prints to go to the trust ( details will be in the next newsletter)
Frank Zindell of the Educasa Foundation and a longtime supporter has made a very generous donation, which is very much appreciated.Thanks to Stuart Danks of Simply Africa for facilitation
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!!! They have also just confirmed funding for a second RMPU unit.
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
SATIB and the Southern Africa Conservation Trust for their support on insurances - thanks to Brian Courtney
Ian Gloss of Victoria Falls Liquorama for his continued assistance
Pieter and Anthea Erasmus for their continued support, and for the use of their vehicle
Michel Buenerd of Le Pic Vert, and Le Pal Nature Foundation, for funding their eleventh borehole and pump in Sinamatella/Robins area!
Antoinette van Wijk of Holland for her sterling fund raising effort
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
John Karasellos of Hisspan Motors for his continuing assistance and support.
Hwange Conservation Society (UK) - John Gillon - for their generous support
Jeff Weigarten again for his donation
Sandy Elsworth for his donation
Inke Kreling-Boysen for her generous donation
Richard Scripps - yet another donation - thanks Richard
Esor Construction for their assistance on the Chamabonda roads
Clint Robertson and all the people who helped with the hides renovations and the night patrols in the Chamabonda
Elka Lenherr-Toedtii for another donation - thanks Elke
Thanks to our Board of Trustees for all the hard work they are putting in - Ian Gloss, Dave Carson, Dan Jones, Stephen Long and Trevor Lane
A big thanks to Ministry and Parks Staff :
Minister of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality, the Hon. Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndhlovu
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 Marvellous Mbikbiyana
Area Manager, - Robins and Kazuma - Mrs N Moyo
Area Manager - Sinamatella - Mr Mutandwa
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 (below) or direct to our bank account:
Bank details :
Bhejane Trust,
FBC Bank,
Sawanga Mall
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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