Conservation Updates

It was finding a large sheet of cork that led to my collecting insects. I brought it home from where I had found it amongst the rubbish behind the shops. It was obviously something out of the ordinary, and a treasure to a small boy, but I wasn't...

Everything about warthogs charmed and delighted my mother. She approved of their usually inoffensive behaviour despite their ferocious looks. “They're just like cousin Fred,” she informed us, referring to a distant relative that none of us younger...

In Europe and North America, ecologists, apiarists and others are concerned about the future of the honey bee, swarms of which have been declining. The loss of these pollinators is a potentially serious problem for fruit and vegetable farmers, and...

Everywhere one goes young animals are to be seen, and the talk at lunch-time centres around the lioness and her cubs and whether or not they have been seen during the morning. Beside the road to River Lodge a Cape Spotted Eagle Owl has a nest...

The south-east Cape coast is an area regularly beset by drought. The family farm diary bears witness to this, and it seems that hardly a year passed that was not “the worst in living memory.” Nonetheless for close on 200 years farming activities...

It was in April 1947 that Dr Robert Broom, the noted doctor-turned-palaeontologist, announced to the world the discovery at Sterkfontein caves, some 70 km south-west of Pretoria, of “Mrs Ples,” the fossilized skull of an Australopithecus...

It was Jane Goodall who first noted the different sleep patterns of zebra. She stated that when zebra sleep during the day, they remain semi-conscious and at the merest hint of danger or of anything out of the ordinary, they are immediately alert...

The farm Barville Park is situated just ten km east of Kariega Park. It was at Barville Park, in 1888, that my father was born in the historic, fortified homestead that still exists on the farm. His childhood years were all spent in the area. As a...