Safari Game Activities - Safari Diary

Game Activities

September 2010 - It's been fairly quiet on the reserve this month – with our resident elephants being as destructive as usual! When these mammoth creatures take a fancy to a particular tree we all certainly know about it. They rip up those trees to get to the juicy top leaves!

Our lions have recently moved territory from the Nature Guide Training School area to another part of the reserve. They're quite mobile at the moment and they're certainly not going hungry. The two young lions are still with their Mum and still part of the pride, but there will come a point when the young male will be kicked out – but not until he's about 18 months, at which stage he will be becoming sexually mature. Then he will move on, as he would in the wild. A bachelor male will stay alone until he's five or six years old, when he can physically challenge other males to take over a pride. Interesting times ahead for him...

We've been lucky enough to see lots of our only female cheetah on site this week. Every morning when we wake she's been around our camp. What a treat.

Finally, it's been game counting time. It's quite a task, as you can imagine with 22,000 hectares to cover. We usually just head out in game drive vehicles and target the plains where we know most of our animals hang out and start counting.

19^th June - We've had two unexpected surprises this week with sightings of the elusive leopard. These ferocious big cats are known to inhabit the Big 5 Entabeni Safari Conservancy but are fiercely shy. However we're excited to report that the tracks of a female leopard have been spotted near the Extreme 19^th green. What's more, we've also learned that a feisty young female has also recently killed a blesbok antelope on the Upper Escarpment. We have a male leopard on site who often walks up the path near the Extreme 19^th so we regularly see his tracks, however we don't usually see much of the females on the reserve so both these sightings are very exciting.

Our Brazilian guests have had a whale of a time out on game drives this week. They have been incredibly lucky, seeing everything from elephants and hippo to lions and cheetah as they go tracking our Big 5 and other animals across the reserve.

7^th May - Game Management are celebrating this week after the birth of a baby rhino on the reserve. The little fellow was born on Wednesday night and as far as we can see he's doing very well. At this stage we don't know whether he's a male or a female but there's plenty of time to find out.

For now – as with all animal births on Entabeni - the area where he and his mother are has been closed to visitors. The reason we do this is because, while everyone is obviously very excited about our new arrival and wants to go and see him, this could have devastating consequences for the little one. Too much disturbance in the form of visitors can result in his mother taking this as a sign of danger and abandoning him.

She doesn't understand that the guests don't mean any harm by the family and only want to take photographs so as Game Management, we must do our utmost to protect them and ensure they continue to feel safe.

This baby rhino will be fed by his mother for between 12 and 18 months and he will stay with her for about two years. Even if she has another baby in that time this little one will still be with his mum for the foreseeable future.

9^th April - We've taken delivery of a rather big baby at Game Management recently: an eight-month-old, orphaned white rhino.

The young male's Mother was shot by poachers on 15^th July last year on Nwanedi Game Reserve in Limpopo. He was then cared for locally by Wild Care Africa, before taking up residence at his new home at Entabeni in one of our boma.

He's quite a size, despite his young age, but baby rhino are sometimes only fully weaned at two years old so we're having to continue to bottle feed him at the moment. But we're also starting to introduce him to grass and pellets, as well as lucerne and he's already settling well into his new home. What's more, he thoroughly enjoys his daily walks with us on the grass outside his boma!

We've currently got five white rhino on the lower escarpment and four on the upper escarpment and our plan, of course, is to release this little fellow on to our 22,000 hectare here at Entabeni.

There are, however, also black rhino, although we don't have any on our reserve. But as you'll see from the following facts we've put together, they are quite different creatures:

Young white rhino walk in front of their parents whereas black rhino young walk at the back
White rhino have a square lip but black rhino have a hooked mouth
White rhino eat grass however black rhino eat branches, twigs and leaves
The white rhino can't swim. They can't lift their heads higher than their shoulders because they are grazers

26^th March 2010 - IT'S all about the elephants this week as our ground-breaking research with these mammoth creatures continues at full steam.

Controlling the elephant population in South Africa has long been a controversial subject but Dr Gabriela Benavides and Natasha Nienaber believe they may have the answer.

You won't ever have met two people more happy to see elephants defecate than Gabriela and Natasha.

The duo from our Game Management Team are testing an innovative contraceptive vaccine with the aid of both the lower and upper escarpment's resident elephants. And their findings could revolutionize elephant population control across the globe.

Mexican veterinarian Gabriela is on loan to Entabeni Safari Conservancy from the University of Pretoria. She and her co-researcher Natasha have been extremely busy since their research project began last August.

Gabriela explained: “There are a lot of elephants in South Africa and not enough large areas of land where the elephants can be moved to deal with overcrowding.

“Culling has been stopped; surgery to control reproduction is expensive, and the use of steroids can have an impact on the whole food chain, as it passes into the elephants' faeces.

“This immuno-contraception we are testing on our females is the most promising way of controlling their population. The initial dose was given through darting then a booster after five weeks. It's hoped that the contraception will last for a year but we're still waiting to see.”

Dedicated duo Gabriela and Natasha have monitored the elephants on a daily basis since their project began and they will continue to do so until August this year, when their ground-breaking work will conclude.

Every day they track the elephants then feed them pellets. For up to two hours a day they watch the elephants feed, relax and rest. Then when the elephants depart they collect the faeces that have been dropped.

These are then frozen and sent to the University of Pretoria, where the levels of progesterone present in the faeces will be tested later this year to establish whether or not the elephants are still having menstrual cycles.

Watch this space to find out how their research progresses …

12^th March 2010 - She may be the fastest land animal in the world – but our only resident female cheetah was going nowhere when our Game Management team caught up with her recently.

With the aid of local vet Manie, of Limpopo Wildlife Services, the team carried out some much needed testing on our favourite feisty feline to ensure she stays in tip top condition.

Prior to her re-introduction to Entabeni Safari Conservancy in 2008, our female cheetah was fitted with a radio collar to allow the Game Management team into the mind of this majestic creature.

Mapping her daily movements and hunting patterns through this tracking technology contributes towards increasing knowledge about what is an endangered species of big cat, as well as ensuring her environment is meeting her needs.

We're pleased to say the female, who is now four-years-old, has continued to adapt to her surroundings here at Entabeni. And, as conservationists, we still feel it's important to keep monitoring the female's progress – to continue to learn about what she likes to eat; the habitat she likes to be in and how she behaves at different times.

However, if you put a collar on an animal it's your ethical responsibility to remove it when the battery is dead and this is exactly what happened recently.

So we called in Manie and his team to dart the cheetah and we changed her collar. At the same time we took a blood sample to check whether she is pregnant or not and Manie also fitted a contraceptive implant which will last for about a year.

It's very exciting being part of a procedure like this however you have to remember that you are working with a wild animal and you need to work as quickly as possible so that she can be revived and you can be confident that she is well again.

Fascinating fact: Did you know that the black spots on a cheetah's fur coat are also present on the cheetah's skin underneath? Look at this picture we took during the cheetah darting …

26^th February 2010 - WE'VE got a Safari Diary with a difference for you this week – but we're sure you'll agree the story of this antelope-eating python is well worth telling.

This feisty, 3.8 metre-long, female snake looked rather swell as she slithered on to the Big Five Entabeni Safari Conservancy from a neighbouring farm.

As you can see from our pictures of her huge belly, the South African python had recently eaten. Did you know that they swallow their prey whole then leave their stomachs to do the digesting?

Here's a few more facts for you about this fascinating creature:

The South African python can grow more than four metres in length
It eats anything from monkeys to small antelope such as duiker
After feasting on her prey, this python may well not eat for many weeks to come
This python will have dislocated her lower jaw to swallow such large prey
You can tell this python is a female because the last piece (or tail) of her body is short and fat – the male is long and small
A python will attack humans if they are threatened or hungry
The python is a non-venomous snake however it can inflict a nasty bite
The python's mouth contains 240-260 teeth which it uses to hold down prey
The python usually strikes at dusk or dawn
The python is a constrictor. It literally squeezes the life out of its prey – every breath you take, the python will squeeze a little harder
Such a female can weigh up to 55kg

29^th January 2010 - Ever wondered how a lion cub learns to hunt? We're lucky enough on the reserve at the moment to be seeing for ourselves just how this happens.

Our one-year-old cubs are getting quite mature now and they've been taking their first tentative steps towards making their own kill. They're not actually bringing down their own food yet (they're still reliant on their Mum for that), but they are involving themselves more and more in the family's hunt for supper.

Already we're seeing them beginning to stalk game. Their Mum is still very protective of them so she only allows them to get involved if she thinks the situation is safe. At the moment they're mostly stalking fowl and wart hogs as she won't allow them to take on any other animals yet. The moment she starts hunting anything bigger they know to sit still.

For now the lioness is catching, for example, a young blesbok calf or a mature zebra without killing it then letting the cubs come in and take over, killing the animal. It's really interesting to see but it's a very dangerous time of their lives. When our adult male was the same age as our current cubs his Mother got a bush pig and handed it over to him to teach him to kill. Him and his two sisters were playing with it, trying to kill it, but they didn't know where to bite the animal. During that time the male got bit by the bush pig on his front paw. He still has a limp today as a result of that incident.

But it won't be long before our young cubs are allowed to take part in their first full hunt. I'll let you know when that happens!

15^th January 2010 - What a week for our resident cheetah brothers. This impressive duo made quite a kill when they brought down an adult male waterbuck on the reserve. It's the biggest beast they've ever taken down on the reserve and it's four times the weight of the cheetah so it's quite unusual for cheetah to do this. Remember waterbuck are usually fodder for lions as lions are quite capable of bringing them down. But the cheetah are doing very well on the reserve. They are rarely without food, making a kill roughly every four to five days. In fact their hunting skills are so honed now that they don't always stay so long on the carcass to finish off their kill, hanging around for only a couple of days before they leave the carcass and head off hunting again. The female cheetah, in contrast, will spend up to three days feasting on her kill. I think it's because there's so much out there on the reserve for these cats to eat, also the female is a bit more skittish than the males.

There's been further cause for celebration at Entabeni this week as the elephants have started to broaden their horizons and explore this wonderful reserve. For some time they have stayed close to the mountains, preferring the shelter this affords even these enormous creatures. But they've started to use the southern side of the reserve now, showing just how comfortable they are becoming with our surroundings. They are getting used to the area and to the game vehicles and looking for new areas to feed.

Finally, our lioness has started teaching her cubs how to hunt. But more about that next time …

January 2010 - Update

LIONS

The two big resident male lions often challenge each other for dominance but in the same sense they have formed a strong coalition and fights are short lived. The big female gave birth to two cubs and introduced them to the rest of the pride in May 2009. They have now grown into sub adults and their mother now has to teach them how to hunt. Guest and rangers have witnessed these young cubs unsuccessfully trying to hunt on their own. Joining the males and big female the reserve also has two other female lionesses which bring the pride to a total of seven lions.

ELEPHANTS

There are currently 10 elephants residing on Entabeni’s lower escarpment of which all are female except one small bull. Since their release in June/July 2008 they have adapted well to life on the reserve. The elephants utilise a variety of different habitats but favour the woody areas below the escarpment.

Currently, the Pretoria University, in association with Entabeni Safari Conservancy, is running a research project to test a new contraceptive which will assist in making elephant management decisions in the future. These elephants are seen and fed on a daily basis as part of the research project. The upper escarpment is home to a population of 6 elephants whom are mostly seen during the winter months. In summer they find shelter in the deep valleys which are largely inaccessible to vehicles.

CHEETAH

Two male cheetahs were released onto the reserve in February 2009. They originally came from the Eastern Cape with no experience of lions but quickly learned to avoid them and are now flourishing on the reserve. They are very relaxed around the game drive vehicles which have created great sightings for the guests visiting the reserve. When they were released the males were still of young age but over the year have grown not only physically but also in confidence and now take on larger prey such as wildebeest yearlings and impala rams. In addition to the males the reserve is also home to a female cheetah. In December 2009 all three the cheetah were seen together for the whole day at the main gate however it is not known whether actual mating took place. The reserve monitors the three cheetahs on a daily basis and record information such as kills, location, condition and interactions with any other species.

RHINO

There are currently a population of five rhino on the lower escarpment of which one is a 9 month old calf.

The calf is a little bull and always stays close to his mother’s side. Although the mother is fairly acceptant towards the bull if he ventures to close to the calf she gives him a stern warning. The upper escarpment boasts with four rhino one female with a beautiful long horn. Due to the increased rhino poaching incidents over the year the reserves Rhino population is a valuable asset to conservation.

LEOPARD

Over the past few months leopard sightings have increased especially in Yellowwood kloof where management knows of a big male leopard utilising the area as part of his territory. On different occasions a male with a female have been spotted roaming on the reserve.

BUFFALO

The upper escarpment has a population of buffalo that consist only of a few bulls. Guests are mainly taken to Legends Wildlife Centre which has a large breeding herd of buffalo for viewing.

VULTURES

The number of vultures visiting the reserve has grown over the last year. On one occasion over 30 vultures where seen on a giraffe carcass caught by the lions. Regular sighting have been seen on the cliffs above the Wildside Camp where it’s thought that they have a nesting sight.

Rare species such at pangolin and bat-eared foxes have been spotted on the reserve. Wild dog sighting of three different occasions on the upper escarpment have been recorded.

Brown hyaena is one of the many specials to look out for on a night drive.

GENERAL GAME

All the plains game are in relatively good condition. Currently there are a lot of wildebeest and impala calves around from the calving season. Entabeni boasts with a wide variety of different species such as zebra, wildebeest, blesbok, impala, warthog, kudu, eland, rooihartbees duiker, steenbok and klipspringer that can be seen.

Game Management Team researcher Natasha Nienaber opens her big cat diary as she prepared for the release of two male cheetah into the conservancy.

October 2008

Our tw Cheetah Release o male cheetah arrive in a transport cage on 3rd October 2008. I can barely contain my excitement.

My first thought – as we sit face to face – is just how small these two brothers are. They are 18-months-old but they were very young when their mother left them.

However, they are already self-sufficient and they know how to hunt. They are also litter mates, what we call a coalition, so I have a good feeling that their release into this Big Five game reserve will be a success.

Although they were sedated before they were placed in their cage and transported here, they are now wide awake and sat watching me.

In a moment I will release them into a 1.2 hectare boma, which will be their temporary home for the next four months as we prepare them for their walk to freedom.

These boys will now be my responsibility and this is why I came to Entabeni Safari Conservancy 12-months-ago, to monitor the cheetah. To me, cheetah are very special creatures not least because they are so vulnerable to extinction.

It will be my role to gather information about them. I just hope I can go some way towards saving these beautiful creatures from extinction.

I keep one side of the cage they are in closed so they will know which way to run out from. Then I open the crate.

Their first instinct is to run. They head for a corner of the boma where they obviously feel safe. This is a new environment for them; they have no idea who I am yet so everything is new, including me.

But cheetah are capable of forming strong bonds with people and as I watch them watching me, I truly hope that over time this will happen.

In the afternoon I return and place a piece of meat in the boma for them then leave.

Although I desperately want to see how they are getting on, for the next two days I leave them alone so they can get used to their new home.

Then my work will really begin.

November 2008

It's been an interesting four weeks since the boys arrived.

When they first arrived they would frequently spit and hit their front paws on the ground at me. But as time has gone on this has got less and less. I visit them every day and as they've got used to me being around, they've become visibly more relaxed.

While they are in the boma it is my responsibility to ensure they have fresh water and food. I clean their water every day and feed them twice a week.

And they are starting to come pretty close to me at feeding time. Still, although they're getting used to me and my vehicle, it's important to never forget that while cheetah may not be as dangerous as lions, they are cats who are capable of hurting you. You have to respect these animals.

When I approach them with the food I blow a whistle three times. That way they associate the whistle with being fed and not my vehicle. Remember, they will eventually be released into the conservancy and we want our guests to be able to watch them safely from our game drive vehicles.

Later I take the bones and skin they have left away with me to prevent disease. There are no other creatures in the boma who will eat the remains the cheetah leave behind so I have to do this for them.

One of the important things I have had to consider in planning their release is that these cheetah have come from a reserve where there weren't any lions. To a lion, a cheetah is competition so they are a real risk to these boys.

But sooner or later our lions will pick up their scent and realise there is something new here. Then they will come to the boma and get their first introduction to each other.

Hopefully the cheetah will learn to stay away from them when they are released.

December 2008

I spend most of every day with my boys now – just sitting and talking to them. I sit for hours and talk to them. And when I run out of things to say I read to them.

I'm reading them Born Free; it seems very appropriate.

I'm also starting to learn their personalities; I can even tell when they are happy. It's the same as with a pet dog. You check that they are eating; that they look well in themselves.

One of the reasons I spend so much time with them is that if anything happens to either cheetah and we have to get a vet on-site, this way they will already know who I am so we can get close to them if necessary.

Cheetah are a good tourism asset and we want our guests to be able to see them. So it's important that the cheetah get used to our game drive vehicles.

I start to introduce the vehicles to them by driving into the boma with a game ranger. Over the next few weeks I also start to visit them with one or two different people, so they get accustomed to different people and different voices.

January 2009

It's time to start exercising the cheetah. They haven't hunted for themselves now for three months so they are getting a bit lazy and soon they will have to make their own kills.

So I tie a piece of meat to a rope and pull the rope with them from the back of the vehicle. This way they begin re-building their muscles.

By now I'm regularly going to see them in the boma with other game rangers. They know the sound of the game vehicles and they've become very relaxed around them.

One week before their release we place a collar on the subservient male. The reason for this is that I work with telemetry and it is this that will enable me to monitor their progress when they are released.

Telemetry works just like your TV. The aerial picks up a signal from the battery-operated collar that the animal is wearing. You point the aerial in the sky and it will tell you which area the cheetah are in. On open, flat grassland it can pick animals up as far as nearly five kilometres.

There's a lot of controversy around collaring animals but as long as you are ethical about it and are monitoring the animal – and either remove or change the batteries of a collar where the batteries are dead – it allows researchers like me to gather valuable information about these creatures that we can use to conserve them.

February 2009

It's 3rd February and the day of their release into the reserve. It's a day I will always remember.

I'm excited but worried like a mother at the same time. I'm also sad because I know from now on I won't get to see my boys every single day.

I call them to me - “Come boys” - and feed them a small piece of meat so they won't go out of the boma completely hungry. At the same time I also know that there are plenty of small game on the reserve that the cheetah will be able to catch for food, such as impala and blesbok. It's an easier time for them to kill or hunt now than in the winter.

At 8am exactly I open the gate and out they walk. They seem a little bit nervous and take it step by step. Suddenly they have all this space to walk in. They seem a little bit skittish. It will take them a few days to acclimatise.

I follow them most of that day. At night I leave them but then I go back out to find them because I hear that the lions are close by and I want to make sure the cheetah are okay.

There's not much you can do if they do come into contact with each other because you can't interfere with nature, but luckily they pass each other. I'm so relieved.

The first two weeks after release is the most dangerous because lions will kill cheetah and this happens frequently. I always make sure I know where the cheetah – and the lions – are before I leave them at night time but I still have many sleepless nights during those initial few weeks.

Now they are out in the wild I have the opportunity to gather information about which habitat they prefer; what they are eating and how often. This helps me establish, for example, if there is enough prey on the reserve for them. Saying that, they've already made their first kill – a wildebeest calf.

I still see my boys every day at the moment. One day they even came and lay by me, by my vehicle door. It was nice to know that they still recognised me.

March 2009

The boys have quickly settled into their new home and their new-found freedom.

I know that they make a kill about once a week; that they like the open plains and that they like to practise hunting on each other. I've even watched them stalking each other as they play.

The brothers have a very strong bond which is clear to see. They will even enter into a “gentlemen's agreement” when it comes to mating with our resident female cheetah.

She was successfully re-introduced in 2008 and has adapted extremely well to her environment. But I still believe these two males will be together for life.

They've come a long way from the Eastern Cape to join all of the Big Five and other large predators already resident in the conservancy. And although I don't get to see them every day, I still catch up with them as much as possible.

For now, though, they must live their lives as wild cheetah.