Conservation Updates

It often happened in the very early hours of the morning. I would raise my head from the pillow the better to hear. Moments later the rumbling, soul-stirring, throaty roar of an African lion would be repeated, filling the silence of the night. Reassured that all was well with the world, I would snuggle back under the blankets and, safe in my own bed, drift off to sleep again.

"Today we converge yet again on Kariega Game Reserve in support of the rehabilitation of Thandi the survivor of rhino poaching. Following the successes of various phases of her recovery, a recent set-back occurred when her face was damaged by a bull introduced to replace the breeding capacity lost by the poaching incident over a year ago. In a process which has involved ground breaking efforts to give her back a normal rhino life, we have been reminded just how much poaching took away from her and just how much more she still needs our support through her recovery.

by local conservationist, Bart Logie

I was sitting in the sun leafing through old maps trying to establish the historical distribution of elephants when my attention was drawn to the happy tap, tap, tapping of an olive woodpecker. To hear a woodpecker tapping at four or five strokes to the second, is one thing, but to see the bird is another.

After Kariega Game Reserve lost Themba and our other unnamed bull in a poaching incident last year, Kariega is very excited to have recently introduced a new white male rhino onto this section of the game reserve in the hopes of promoting breeding on the reserve.

Following the release of the two male servals in October last year, Kariega Game Reserve acquired two lovely female servals, Hope and Artemis, in April of this year who were recently collared and released onto the game park. We are very excited to track their movements and development and hope that their release will bring the two males, Kelpie and Killian, out into the open.

Kariega Game Reserve was very lucky to recently have a wonderful wildlife sighting of the rarely seen Cape clawlass otter which was spotted and photographed on the Bushman's River, here in the Eastern Cape. It proved to be a very special sighting for the game park with a total of five otters captured on camera both in and out of the river. Usually these water-dwelling mammals are extremely elusive and when spotted, they are most often alone.

The flash of light temporarily blinded the killer showing him poised with weapon raised, ready to strike. As darkness flooded back, so his jet black menacing form disappeared, and had it not been for the captured digital image we might never have known of his presence.

The rosy dawn had barely touched the hilltops when first we heard the unmistakable call of a black backed jackal, Eeeyaaa ya ya ya, surely one of the most evocative sounds of the African veld. That night, sitting around the camp-fire, we heard it again. Throughout South African country areas (except in forests and swamps) one is likely to hear their weird, wild cry.

It was on 14 December 1775 that a 25 year-old Swedish physician and naturalist Anders Sparrman, camped beside a small vlei* about 20 km north-west of Kariega Game Reserve. On that day at the University of Uppsala a doctorate was conferred in...

We were sceptical when first we heard the news: a schoolboy playing near the top of the ridge claimed that he had seen a leopard in the forest fringe, less than two kilometres from an urban area. The other great cat and ‘problem’ animal, the Cape...