Leaving for Zimbabwe

On the 21 of September I left for Zimbabwe to work for 2 weeks as a volunteer for Planete Urgence in Hwange National Park.

The details of the programme can be seen beneath (in french):

Historique du projet : Le parc de Hwange est situé au nord-ouest du Zimbabwe, proche du Botswana et de la vallée du Zambèze (et des chutes Victoria, à 200 km). C est l un des plus grands (1,5 millions d hectares, 8 ème parc en Afrique de par sa taille) et l un des plus riches d Afrique pour les mammifères. Le parc abrite la plus forte densité d éléphants au monde. La végétation est une mosaïque de forêts et de zones plus ouvertes, propice à une forte diversité d espèces. Dû à la crise économique en cours au Zimbabwe, le braconnage est redevenu une activité courante en bordure du parc. Les faibles moyens logistiques et financiers du département des parcs nationaux du Zimbabwe ne permettent pas aux équipes locales de lutter efficacement contre celui-ci. En plus d un braconnage de subsistance difficilement condamnable, une reprise du braconnage commercial notamment sur les rhinocéros est apparu.

Objectif final : Le projet est encadré par l'association D.A.R.T. (Dete Animal Rescue Trust). Cette ONG a été créée en 2000. Son action consite à assister les autorités du Parc, les chercheurs présents (notamment ceux du CIRAD) et les communautés locales dans les taches de comptage, d'immobilisation des animaux, de lutte anti-braconnage, de pose de collier radio etc. Le programme mis en place avec l'aide des volontaires va effectivement permettre d'apporter une réelle assistance aux activités de recherche et de conservation. DART a développé un savoir-faire important dans l'endormissement des animaux à l'aide des fléchettes et l'enlèvement des pièges qui restent accrochés aux animaux et qui les blessent. Ils ont également été récemment sollicités pour assister le Parc National dans des opérations de déplacements d'animaux des terres cultivables vers l'intérieur du parc.

Intervention du volontaire : Les volontaires vont ainsi apporter leur support aux activités d'observation, de tracking GPS, de tansect et de collecte de données pour entre autres : * Le projet de recherche (du Cirad entre autres) sur les Hyènes tachetées et les Lions. * Ainsi que pour les Cheetah et Leopards introduits récemment par le Chipangali Wildlife Research Trust * Assister l'association DART à patrouiller pour trouver les pièges et pour détecter et immobiliser les animaux blessés, * Parfois aider à la construction de plate-formes d'observation. Les activités varient selon chaque mission.

By showing pictures from the misson I will do my best to give you an impression of what a wonderfull time I had and who knows, maybe you want to go and try it for yourself....

Lodging

Hwange National Park is not a fenced park so a lot of animals can be found outside the parc where a lot a work is carried out as well.

We were staying in 2 different houses depending on whether we were working inside or outside the park.

The house on the picture to the right is called Farm 41 and is located outside the park. The garden is fenced but the gate stays open so the wild animals can come and visit any time.

The second house is in the parc. A lovely place with a beautiful view over open land.

Here as well the gate stayed open at all times but we had less visitors here than in Farm 41

Very exiting to check for footprints every morning to see who had "popped" by during the night

Tracking Lions

Hwange National Park is home to one quarter of Zimbabwe’s lions and, as elsewhere in Africa, survival of the population is threatened by over-hunting. Although hunting is illegal inside the park, it is permitted in adjacent hunting concessions. Lions from within the park are regularly lured out of the park (using bait), where they can then be legally shot.

To be able to collect information on the lions, some of the lions have been equipped with a radio/GPS collar.

What is a radio collar?

A radio collar is a leather collar with a small radio transmitter and battery attached. The transmitter on each collar emits a signal at a specific frequency, which researchers can track from a vehicle. When a researcher is trying to locate a particular collared lion, they will dial in her frequency and drive around her territory listening for the signal (little "beeps"). On top of the vehicle is a directional antenna, and once the signal is detected, the researcher simply drives in the direction where the signal is loudest.

Why use radio collars?
Finding a specific pride of lions isn't easy. Their territories may be as large as 400 square kilometers, and because lions spend most of their time asleep, they often hidden in the grass or on top of kopjes where they are difficult to see. In order to closely monitor the health of the lion population as well as the behavior of specific individuals, it is necessary to see them on a regular basis. This is only possible with radio collars.

The lions are regularly tracked from the ground using a hand-held receiver connected to a directional antenna to gather information on their social structure, reproduction, mortality rates, causes of mortality and feeding ecology.

So to be able to help on the lion research one of the first things we had to learn was to track lions.

Much of the time is spent looking for lions, not looking at them.

Kill-Sites

By plotting the GPS locations of the lions and the time spent at the same location, makes it possible locate their kill-sites.

Going to a kill-site can be very dangerous as this happens by foot and several security procedures have to be followed.

It is an obligation to bring an armed guard from the parc as the risk of encountering danger is high.

Everybody walks in a row looking carefully around for danger which can be a predator, an injured animal or even a single female elephant with her child which is very dangerous as they are quite agressive.

Once on the kill-site, the group spreads out to find the carcasse or the rest of the carcasse. After a lion-kill, the hyenas will come and take the left-overs, spreading the bones from the actual kill-site.

On one of the kill-sites we found the leftovers of a subadult female giraffe.

Quite impressive to garther all the leftovers.....

To be able to study the lion feed, all the lion feces found around the kill-site has to be collected and bagged. The bags are being transported to reserchers who will wash the feces and study the hair found in the feces.

The kill-site we were visiting here was a kill-site of a pride of 8 lions..... imagine how many bags of feces we collected...............

Giraffes

The giraffe is the tallest of all land-living animal species. Males can be 4.8 to 5.5 metres tall. Females are generally slight shorter

Giraffes have spots covering their entire bodies, except their underbellies, with each giraffe having a unique pattern of spots. The males have darker spots than the females. They have long necks, which they use to browse the leaves of trees.

They possess seven vertebrae in the neck (the usual number for a mammal). A giraffe's heart, which can weigh up to 10 kg and about 2 feet long, has to generate around double the normal blood pressure for an average large mammal in order to maintain blood flow to the brain against gravity. In the upper neck, a complex pressure-regulation system prevents excess blood flow to the brain when the giraffe lowers its head to drink. Conversely, the blood vessels in the lower legs are under great pressure (because of the weight of fluid pressing down on them). In other animals such pressure would force the blood out through the capillary walls; giraffes, however, have a very tight sheath of thick skin over their lower limbs which maintains high extravascular pressure in exactly the same way as a pilot's g-suit

The giraffe is very funny to observe as they will observe you as well for hours and just stare at you. They are very vigilant and nervous as they are the prey of lions.

When the giraffe drinks it is bending down and therefore very vulnerable as the lions can sneak in on them from behind and jump on their back.

They defend themselves against threats by kicking with great force. A single well-placed kick of an adult giraffe can shatter a lion's skull or break its spine.

The instinct of some other African animals is to stay close to the giraffe, for the giraffe's high vantage point can see predators from far.

Another dangerous situation for the giraffe is when they are in burned areas. As there a many tree-roots and branches there is a big risk that the giraffe will fall over these when they run trying to save their lives from hunting lions. The lions are aware of their weakness and will try to force the giraffe into areas like this.

Darting / Chemical capture

Since some of the lions were to have their collar changed, we learned the basics of darting.

When you immobilize an animal by using chemicals it is called Darting.

There are several reason to immobilize an animal:

• Research
  
• Translocation
  
• Removal of snare
  

BASIC ETHICS: Have an important reason to dart an animal !!!!!!!

The preparation of the wild animal for some form of chemical restraint, sedation or anesthesia most often must be made without the benefit of a physical examination to determine the physiological condition or specific needs.The drug to be used for darting depends on the animal.

A common drug to be used on many animal (not primates, lions and leopards) is the drug M99. This drug is 10.000 times more powerfull than morphine so one have to be very carefull when calculating the dose to give and as well being carefull not to injure yourself or others with the needle as this will put a person in immediate danger.

When the animal has been immobilized several physical safety procedures for the animal are to be followed:

Take care of what position you put the animal depending on what kind of stomach they have. The elephant for example cannot breath if he is resting on his chest.
Cover their eyes, it calms the animal, prevent from drying and dilate.
Some animals will vomit from the drug. Be carefull with the tongue that it doesn't fall back.
Monitor dangerous animals that they don't wake up.

SAFETY RULE: Minimum 4 persons in a Dart-team when darting a dangerous animal

Poaching / Anti-poaching

One of our tasks during the mission was anti-poaching which for our part consist of observing for injured animals and find and remove snares.


(Unfortunately we did not have the time to look for snares but the group before us had found and removed 50 snares)

Hwange National Park is Zimbabwe’s largest game reserve, but due to economic hardships in the country, the number of animals being snared for food by local people living on the boundary of the Park has increased dramatically.

Snaring is a very ancient method of hunting, whereby wire nooses are set on game trails leading to water, high up in trees to trap giraffe, around communal middens or dung-piles to target territorial antelopes such as dikdik and in freshly burnt grasslands where fresh green shoots attract large numbers of herbivores.

Sometimes extended brush fences are created to funnel animals into gaps riddled with snares, where they are trapped in large numbers. Snares are made of metal wires, often taken from burst tyres found on main roads, from abandoned telephone lines, fashioned also from nylon fishing line or rope, vegetable fibres, and for the larger species, steel winch cables. These cruel devices are non-selective in that a wire snare set for a small antelope can cause the slow and agonizing death of an elephant as the noose tightens and cuts deeper and deeper into a limb or trunk, sometimes severing it entirely.

Spotted Hyena

The spotted hyena, or laughing hyena, is the largest and best-known member of the hyena family. It is primarily a predator. Individuals have been clocked at over 55 kilometers per hour, and when hunting in packs are capable of taking down the largest of prey.

The spotted hyena is widely distributed within Africa south of the Sahara in a variety of ecosystems however, its population numbers have been greatly reduced in many savanna areas and the species has been almost exterminated in South Africa. The population of spotted hyena within Zimbabwe is estimated at 5,600 but is found here mostly within, and along the borders of, protected areas such as National Parks and Wildlife Conservancies and is classified by IUCN/SSC as ‘Lower Risk: Conservation Dependent’

The rapid decline of populations outside conservation areas due to persecution and habitat loss makes hyenas increasingly dependent on the continued existence of protected areas (IUCN 1998). As Hwange National Park holds around 20% of the hyena population of the country in one protected area, it is a very important stronghold for the species.

To address these issues and to give the DNPWLM tools for managing spotted hyenas in Hwange National Park the purpose of the Hyena Research & Conservation Project is to obtain in situ data on:

· Population and density of spotted hyenas

· Home Range distribution and size

· Diet of hyenas

· Interaction with other carnivores

· Social Behavior of spotted hyenas in the typical mixed woodland environment of Hwange National Park

A big opportunity on working on the hyena project appeared as guards from the park had found a dead white female rhino next to a pan one morning. It didn’t seem as it has been killed or attacked by other animals, so it was cut open to take samples of organs in order to be able to establish the course of death. When opening the stomach it appeared that the rhino was pregnant, almost end of the term which is 15 months. The baby rhino that was pulled out was dead as well. Heartbreaking to see, knowing that rhinos are endangered species and they only give birth every 4-5 years. The guards had cut of the horn and feet to prevent illegal hunters do to it. Illegal hunters will kill a rhino just for the horn, the feet are being used as trophies.

We arrived at the site in the evening and saw that the hyenas had already started the feast. Sitting on top of the car we were observing a group of 10 hyenas. 4 of them were eating the mother rhino while 2 others had dragged the baby to the side so they had peace to enjoy their meal.

Our job was to select one hyena and note down the time when it was eating and when it was lifting its head (to check for intruders and other danger). They actually lift their head 3-4 times per minute so it was quite a long report we were writing. Amazing how strong these animals are. The hyena has extremely strong jaws: It bites 3 tons per square-inch which is equivalent to +- 1 ton per square-centimetre.

As the rhino had been cut open by the guards, one hyena actually went inside the body of the rhino to get the best parts, the organs. We could hear the sound of the hyena biting into the dead body and could see how the body of a 1,6 tons rhino was moving. There we were, having 1st class seats to this spectacular event.

During our stay in the park we were lucky to see a female, male and baby rhino.

Later on in the week, while tracking a lion, we found the rest of a dead zebra. Brent took the gps coordinates and when arriving at “home” we reported to Jane.

This was another opportunity to work on the hyena project in the evening.This day showed to be a long day as we had been tracking a lion (which we never found) for 8 hours, had 45 min to prepare supper to bring with us in the evening, prepare our bags and then leave to work on the hyena project the whole evening. But it doesn’t matter. It is so exiting to be in the bush as you never know what you will see.

So, we went back in the evening and found the dead zebra.
Jane was going to identify the zebra by checking the teeth, the corps etc and take pictures of it. All zebras have different patterns. On the back of the zebra we could see wounds from claws, lion claws.
We were amazed to see how Jane “the bush-woman” was manipulating the corps with here bare hands. She really belongs in the bush and she knows her job very well.

The procedure for working on the hyena project is to first drive 1 kilometre away and note down all predators that you see within that distance. Then return to the dead corps and observe and note hyena activity.

It was dark so we used a big spotlight to search for predators while driving. Since we do not have the experience of being able to distinguish predator shining eyes in the dark from spring-hare or buffalo shining eyes, we had quite some remarks from Jane asking us only to put the light on the predators (which we still could not distinguish from the spring-hares).

Returning to the point where the dead zebra was, we had a surprise. The zebra had disappeared!! Before going on our 1 kilometre drive we had seen a hyena near the zebra so we figured that the hyena had moved it. Jane’s order was to find the zebra from the roof of the car with the spotlight.We found it!! A hyena had dragged it from the road to behind some bushes. Since we couldn’t see the hyena or the zebra we were just sitting listening to the sound of the hyena eating the zebra. More hyenas came to have a bite, one passed by with a big lump in his mouth. This is nature and it is such a privilege to be able to observe and feel it so close.