Conservation...not what you think it is...




Up at 4.40am bright and early for my first proper day as part of the research & conservation team - this morning, its conservation work! Slightly concerned about what that might mean as I have already heard some worrying stories but I have come here to try new things, so I shall embrace it!!
Off we all go into the game viewer with Anton, our lovely guide (he wasn't so lovely a few hours later when he was determined to beat the concrete, but I'll get to that in a minute!) and off we  go, driving along in the bush at 6am on a beautiful clear African morning. After about 15 minutes of driving we arrive at our destination and I see the bucket of gloves, and the shovels. And the pick axe. Not sure about all this.


Thanda reserve has recently been extended and they have taken down the electric fence to join to two areas, pole removal is simply what it sounds like, digging the remaining poles that held the fence up out of the ground. So we split into 2 teams, thank heavens I was with the slightly less committed team when it came to their attitude; we could see the other team battling away at their poles and it sure did look hard work. So off we set to our pair of poles, marching through the actual wild bush on foot, quite exciting really! 
But let me tell you, I do not like poles. They are no fun to hammer at with a pick axe when you can barely lift the bloody pick axe off the ground, let alone 'find the swing and let it do the work for you', as Amanda so kindly pointed out. 

Amanda in the centre, cheerful as always!

With the help of Martjin the Maniac (who really enjoys hacking away at anything with a pick-axe or machete), we eventually got the crossbar pole loose. Now for the 2 sat in heaven only knows how much concrete! Away we go digging at the base of the first pole, this is hot and sweat work and its only 7am! Were struggling a bit with the 1st pole, so decided to have a sneaky go at chopping the 2nd pole off a couple of inches above ground and seeing if it would be easier to dig out of the ground that way. Turns out not really, so we decided to smash the stump of wood  down and then use our landscaping skills to cover the remaining concrete with some earth, rocks and very strategically placed bits of grass. First pole - done! 


The main aim is to ensure the animals can pass freely without injuring themselves on anything left behind by man, and I think we made a good decision to give in to the cement and allow it to remain! We start the same procedure on the 2nd pole, aware that the other team are having some difficulty with theirs. Figure we'd better make a big show of working really hard and celebrating loudly as if we have finally dug our last pole out of the ground, and then quickly covering up our cheating with the same plan as before. What a lovely rockery we created! Job done!


So we mosey on back to the other team where they are still hard at work on their 2nd pole. It was a beast of a pole, encased in so much concrete that the hole they had dug around it was so deep that they were stood in it up to their elbows!

Look at me, I'm actually helping!

The pic above is the dreaded pole in question. It just wasn't shifting, despite Anton's insistence that we keep at it. We even tried attaching a wire from the pole to the game viewer to try and shift it, but that just broke the wire. So in the end, it met the same fate as the other poles, and enjoyed the benefit of some strategically placed shrubbery. Thank heavens we only had time for one day of pole removal during my time at Thanda!

Maren wielding the pick-axe 

Amanda was determined not to let the pole beat her!

Teamwork!

Cheat Sheet


Bear in mind its only about 9.30am now! So back to camp for Tom & I to have some ID training with Anton. This is where we learn about the animals we will be researching and how to ID them. Not half as easy as it sounds, there are 6 bull elephants on Thanda and they all have names like Majimbos & Masinyavondo & Mpatha and you differentiate between them by a minuscule notch in the left ear, or a groove in the tusk, or a slightly longer than normal tail. Time I went back to Specsavers I think.


We actually really enjoyed this part and Tom came up with the great idea of making a cheat sheet for us to use when out on drive, and we also rechristened a few of the bulls for our own use. So Majimbos became Dracula (he has 2 tusks that point straight down) and Masinyavondo became Mosey because, well, you try pronouncing Masinyavondo in a hurry! The bulls all have Zulu names but I quite liked Amanda's names for the females - such as Tuskless Cow (she had no tusks but was still the Matriarch), short tusk, long tusk, odd tusk etc etc. You can guess how she came about the names, not exactly ethnic but much easier to remember!

Masinyavondo aka Mosey

Majimbos aka Dracula

Training was followed by lunch, followed by a nap and then out again at 4pm for the afternoon drive. We were looking for the North Pride hoping to see if the missing cubs were back, we had heard that one was, but one wasn't. It didn't take Anton long to find them, they were happily chilling out on top of a mound of earth where we would very soon be helping to build a waterhole!! But only 2 cubs instead of 3. The pride is made up of 2 adult females and 3 cubs, 2 girls and a boy.I was so excited to see them, lions are my 2nd favourite animals (after ellies, though sometimes its a tie) and I've never really had a good lion sighting, and definitely not during the day. Anton drove us so close to them, we must only have been 15m away. They noticed us, but were definitely not interested in us. They did look a bit sad though, missing their little brother :(

One of the North Pride female cubs

We moved on from that sighting and saw a herd of buffalo which was pretty good as they are another animal I haven't really seen before. Look at this charmer...

We then drove around looking for the ellie herd and eventually found them at dusk. It was quite dark by now so it wasn't great conditions for photos but it was a great sighting. One of the young juveniles likes to come over and inspect the vehicles, and he did that to us, giving us all a good sniff and actually touching the car with his trunk. Then 3 of the little ones decided to show us how big & macho they were and started practising their best charge faces on us, just about the cutest thing I have ever seen!

You can see how close he was to the vehicle

So the day ended much better than it began!