KwaZulu-Natal Research: Part I

Clearly I have been busy and away, but now I have so much to tell.  For my program I have a research project to be done throughout the year with a paper due at the end and hopefully getting published in a scientific journal. Our projects are not just busy work, but studies that actually need to be done with a great opportunities to work with people in our field and make a lot of great contacts.  I was very lucky to get my first project choice of doing a population study of Suni in Tembe Elephant Park in KwaZulu-Natal, SA.

What is a Suni you might ask? Well it is an endangered tiny forest antelope found only in western coast of Africa from South Africa to Kenya.  These little guys tend to hide in very dense forest and sand forest making them very hard to study.  In fact only a handful of papers have ever been published on them leaving tons of questions and very little information on how to manage their possibly declining populations. 

When I first started this project I had dreams of working with “big sexy” mammals such as rhinos or elephants, but now I see so much potential for exploration.  Many of use think that humans have found everything there is to see on this earth and that the days of jungle expeditions finding new animals are over.  In the last 3 years in Tembe Elephant Park alone 3 new plants species have been found as well as a new primate species.  Thus researching this 12” antelope that’s afraid of it’s own shadow is addictively exciting.

In early March I gladly left the city at 3am to drive directly to KwaZulu-Natal, also known as Zululand or the Zulu Kingdom. Prior to going out to the main research site, Tembe, I had to hone my tracking and dung identification skills.  Although I consider myself a decent tracker in the states, being on a different continent with all new fauna brings me back to a novice level.  After a few nights at Thanda Private Game Reserve with my advisor I was sent to Phinda Private Game Reserve to meet with one of the country’s top trackers.  After a few hours in the sand forest I quickly picked up some invaluable skills on finding these tiny horses.  One of the main issues with the Suni is how close their dung looks to a similar small antelope called a Red Duiker.  So “Know Your Crap 101” started.

The reason I need to look at crap is because these animals are nearly impossible to find, let alone see.  Smaller than a lap dog, with a hoof less than 2cm long, the move through thicket without a sound. 

Once seen by another animal they immediately freeze blending in perfectly with their surroundings. Thus if you need to know how many there are and you can’t see them, you have to look for something they leave behind; luckily everyone shits!

After my lessons wandering the Phinda sand forest, I had 5 extra days to help out with the other research going on in the park.   The first few days I spend with one of the conservation managers, Ralph who was about my age, tracking the two wild dogs that had just wondered onto the park. 

Wild Dogs:

The Wild Dog or Painted Cape Dog is Africa’s most endangered predator, yet few know that.  For decades these animals have been killed on site and persecuted by farmers and even Wildlife Parks for being “devil dogs” and inhumane killers. Even 20 years ago parks throughout Africa were trying to eliminate any trace of them.  The reason is how they hunt and tear apart their prey, usually while they are still alive.  However these animals are perhaps the most charismatic and caring predators.  They are extremely clever hunting in cooperative packs with extreme precision and over long distances.  They are one of only a handful of animals in take care of their sick and elderly, by sharing all hunted food evenly with their pack.

Currently there are only a few hundred in South Africa, while lion, cheetah, and leopard number in the thousands. The reason why you never hear about them is that they are extremely hard to manage.  A single pack of dogs (3-7 dogs) can hunt over an area larger than 10,000km.  National Parks and Private reserves work endlessly to have positive relations with local people, who rarely value wildlife unless it means meat or money for them.  These dogs needing so much space almost always break out of parks and prey on local livestock.  Inside the park they can take so many prey animals, which many parks need to constantly restock their antelope numbers just to feed a small pack.  South Africa also lacks legal laws of ownership and responsibility for these dogs, so most parks are hesitant to commit to accepting a pack. There were once over 200,000 wild dogs across Africa, however that was when there were much less humans. Space was not an issue and herds of nyala and impala numbered in the millions.  Times have changed and because of people these dogs are fading away.

Thus when two dogs meet up in Phinda to create a new pack in unspoiled hunting territory, they acted fast to remove them prior to them denning down on their property.  Phinda prides themselves on great local community relations, which means they have no poaching issues despite having over 100 rhinos. So sadly we tracked the dogs for a few days and then early one morning at 4am, we moved out with a vet to dart the dogs and bring them to a new park.

The vet on site killed a male nyala as bait and the 3 of us were off to bring the dogs in. The dogs had smelled the kill and found us, making the job very easy. Two darts out of the compressed air tranq gun and the dogs were in a pleasant sleep and ready for transport.  For the 45-minute drive to the other park, I sat solo with the dogs in the bed of the truck to insure their vitals were good and they didn’t wake up and run off. I also had to site next to the half eaten Nyala who had also crapped itself while being eaten so it was a pleasant drive.

The male knocked out and ready to roll

Female running after being darted

Me with the dogs and nyala

Our precious cargo; critically endangered dogs

This story of moving these dogs is one that got no news coverage and was done under the cover of dawn.  Had these been lions or cheetah it would have been big news.  Currently there are no more homes to move dogs to, the bomas are full and parks are over capacity. They breed quickly, but there is nowhere for the new generation to go. For the first time we are considering killing a critically endangered species because of a lack of space.  Sadly the plight of the wild dog goes unnoticed.


Elephants and Rhino:
My last 3-4 days at Phinda I spent with the elephant & rhino researcher.  The two of us roamed the park looking for the herds of elephant and groups of rhino identifying them and tracking their movements. These was amazing because of how close we got to the animals and the hours spent roaming this amazing park. From open vast marshes to rocky mountains and sand forest we saw a lot and I got some great pictures.

Classic White Rhino

Young Bull Ele with Black Rhino in the background

White Rhinos with Cattle Egrets on their back to eat their ticks & mites

Extremely rare and endangered black rhino

As always, never a dull sunset in Africa

What was great, was the chance to see and get close to a family of Black Rhinoceros.  Only a few hundred exist in South Africa as they are being poached to extinction for their horn....I'll save that for another time.  The black rhino is known to be extremely aggressive with each other and really anything else that gets in it's way, from trees and dirt piles to people and cars.  Just before these pictures I watched the male black rhino charger a land rover. They can move at amazing speeds over short distances (35mph) and stop or turn in a single stride. It was incredible to watch this 2000lb animal accelerate to full speed in a single bound at this truck and do a 180 within inches of the side of it.  The expression on the people insides and their screams were pretty funny.



After a lot of fun and even at day at the beach swimming in the Indian Ocean I finally took off on a 3 hour drive north to Tembe Elephant Park. Tembe Elephant Park was created as a safe haven for Mozambique elephants during the Mozambiqian Civil War in the 1980's. The elephants happily fled to the safety of South Africa's sand forest after being caught in the crossfire of human conflict. From landmines to RPGs and machine gun fire the elephants were caught in the crossfire of human conflict. Many of the elephants still have bullet wounds from this and one elephant who recently died was found to have 3 kinds different generations of bullets in him: a muzzle loaded lead shot, WW2 .30 rounds, and  AK-47 7.62x.39. Despite their experience, they are some of the most gentle and docile elephants. They are also some of the largest! Not by height, but by the size of their tusks. This tusk size used to be normal, but now it is rare to find elephants with tusks this size due to human eradication of the largest elephants as trophies and ivory sale.  A "Tusker" is an elephant with tusks larger than 45kg (100lb)each. 

Tembe has over 260 elephants; 13 breeding herds and over 50 roaming bulls.

This is Siqualo and Isilo the two largest tuskers in the park

The first few days I again spent doing some monitoring with the elephant and lion/wild dog monitors. Every morning we would go out at 4am to look for lions and wild dogs and then again at 4pm and in the middle of the day for 4 hours I would go with the "elephant man" to monitor the elephants  the whole time picking their brains for knowledge on their animals and conservation opinions. 

Using Radio Telemetry to find the Lion prides

This is how amazingly camouflaged lions can be, it took about 15 min to spot her (this is with a full 300mm zoom), then 15 min later we saw her friend right next to her. 

However my job here was to find the Suni, their scat, and determine their numbers.  From that I can go back several more times and get numbers from different seasons and compare it to future years to see if the population is rising, declining, or stable.  Everyday I would walk transects through the sand forest with my armed ranger looking for Suni crap. 

An endangered leopard tortoise 

A Suni "Midden" or territorial crap-patch that is used multiple times

Lucas, one of my rangers soon after we wandered into a lion and then turned to leave only to run into an elephant

The rangers are great as they have a lot of experience tracking all the animals in the park and I get to learn and practice my Zulu with them.  I now know enough zulu to get by with my animal names and to be polite with greetings and words of thanks.  Luckily Zulu is a lot of hand gestures, so saying nouns and acting out verbs tends to work. Probably the two most importan words are "Lion" and "Thank you".  Lion because that's the main reason they are with me and thank you because Zulus are obsesed with giving and earning respect so by me being overly polite I've been hoping they are more likely to save my life and help with my work.

 There's so much more to tell, but I'll save it for another post. Enjoy the pictures, I have full albums on facebook. Hambani kahle!! ("go well" in Zulu)