A Happy Hyena Thanksgiving

While you are all celebrating your Thanksgiving tomorrow, your thanks will be no doubt be shared by one lucky brown hyena now safe here at Shamwari.  As I reported on our most recent blog post, a hyena was spotted on a cattle farm just north of Shamwari, and the farmer gave the Shamwari conservation team the opportunity to capture and relocate it before he shot it.  We set a trap last Friday.  Last night we went to check on the trap - no luck.  The bait was still there, and no sign of a hyena.  We sat near the trap and played the sounds of distressed animals (not pleasant sounds).  We were not optimistic that we would catch the hyena, and started to doubt whether the farmer had actually seen one.

This afternoon, the Shamwari conservation team got a call from the farmer - the hyena was in the trap.  Seems like the sounds we played did the trick, and the camera trap we set captured this picture of the hyena at the cage only 20 minutes after we left last night!

Tonight the team retrieved the lucky hyena and brought him back to the Shamwari Wildlife Rehabilitation Center

So that he could be measured, tested, collared and photographed

Tomorrow we'll release him onto the reserve, where hopefully he'll be safe.  And with that, we will bid a fond adieu to Shamwari, and off we go on the next leg of our adventure!

To all our friends and family, we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!  Save us some turkey and stuffing!

 
 
 

 
 

Winding Down at Shamwari

Well, only 3 days left in our 8 week stay here at Shamwari.  Where does the time go?  On Thursday of this week, while all of you are eating turkey and watching football we'll be making last minute preparations for our upcoming adventure in East Africa.  We fly to Nairobi on Friday and begin our overland safari on Sunday.  5 weeks from today we'll be home.

The weather here has been awesome the last few days.  It finally feels like Africa - sunny and in the 80's.  Friday we headed out to a cattle farm just north of Shamwari.  The farmer has spotted a hyena on his property.  Rather than shooting it he called the conservation team at Shamwari to give them a chance to trap and relocate it onto the reserve.  So on Friday we collected some bait

And headed out to set the trap.  We'll see if we have any luck.....

I think I earned my dip in the lake after (and yes, I know, I'm beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus)

This weekend we went whitewater rafting on the Fish River.  The guys who run the company are very smart - they intentionally separate spouses into separate rafts which otherwise they say are referred to as "divorce boats."  

Here's Melanie and her partner going over one of the rapids as Melanie struggles fiercely to stay in the boat

And here's me and my partner experiencing slightly less drama

We capped off the evening with a delicious braii (South African for barbecue) including bacon-wrapped cherries - a new delicacy we'll have to share with you when we get home!

 
 
 

 
 
 

If the Lion Don't Get You, the Snake Might.....

This past weekend, Melanie and I drove to Tsitsikamma National Park for a weekend away.  It's about 3  hours from Shamwari along the coast west of Port Elizabeth.  The weather turned out to be pretty wet,, but we made the most of it nonetheless.

On Saturday morning we went for a 3 hour hike along the shoreline.  Despite some torrential downpours and having to take shelter under some trees from thunder  and lightning, we enjoyed the scenery along the way

And were rewarded by a beautiful waterfall at the end

There was a brief respite from the rain on Sunday morning which allowed us to go zip lining about 30 meters up over the forest canopy in the park

Monday morning it was back to the grind here at Shamwari.  One of the challenges in running a game reserve is keeping the right balance of animals.  Here, the lions have been a little bit too successful, so they decided to move one of their young adult male lions to a neighboring reserve.  After we found him and the vet got him with the tranquilizer gun, we loaded him onto the back of a pickup truck

And posed for a couple of photos before he woke up

While we didn't enjoy the weekend rain, it provided lots of large puddles for the elephants to splash about in.  The young ones seem to enjoy splashing about in puddles as much as young humans do!

The most recent excitement we've had was today just before lunch when we found one of the deadliest snakes in South Africa in a tree that stands about 15 feet away from the entrance to the building we eat all of our meals in.  Apparently there is no anti-venom to treat this snake's bite.  Lets hope his stay is a short one!

 Hope all is well back in America!  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Saving Private Rhino

Thanks to the mistaken belief in parts of Asia that powdered rhinoceros horn is a cure for cancer, rhino poaching has become an epidemic in Africa.  The reserve we are staying at has a large, armed anti-poaching unit.  Even still, they lost two rhinos to poachers two years ago.  More than 800 rhinos have been poached so far this year in South Africa alone.  Perhaps not surprising given that rhino horn is worth more per ounce than gold.

On Monday of this week we took part in a large effort to take DNA samples and insert microchips in the rhinos at Shamwari.  It was a large effort that started with a vet with a tranquilizer gun in a chopper

Once each rhino went down, we headed in.  Step 1 was to blindfold and put earplugs in the rhino to limit the stress level

We had to keep them wet to prevent them from overheating

While we drilled their horns to obtain DNA samples which will be kept in a central registry to help with tracking illegal horns when they are recovered

And injected microchips in their rump to help with identification

All in all we darted and processed 8 rhinos.  A successful morning!

 
 
 

Just another week at the office....

Its Saturday morning, and we're chilling this weekend after a great week of hard work this past week.  Lots of new volunteers arrived on Monday from Germany, Switzerland and the UK, and 1 from the US.  This eco-volunteer thing is very popular in much of Europe (though we haven't had any French volunteers yet), much less so in the US.  We are now up to 21 volunteers, ranging in age from 18 to 60+.

In addition to the animal monitoring we do every week (elephant, rhino and predator), this week we had a variety of projects

One of the rangers on Shamwari has a particular interest in owls.  She was able to raise a bit of money to buy some wood and nails, and then provided those supplies to a couple of local schools for the kids to build owl boxes.  Apparently, in the local culture owls are associated with death, so part of the motivation behind the project was to educate the local kids that owls are not evil.  A healthy part of what Shamwari does has a goal of building an appreciation for nature and conservation in the local communities, as well as in the paying guests.  Here we are installing one of the boxes next to one of the lodges.  The hope is that by attracting owls they may be able to better control rodents around the lodges without the use of chemicals.

We also worked up a good sweat clearing brush, chopping down non-indigenous trees and removing old fence lines, as well as continuing our work in the local township planting a vegetable garden and spending time with the kids at the daycare center.

Thursday was a particularly interesting day.  Melanie, I and one other volunteer spent the day feeding the cats at the Born Free Education Center.  The Born Free Foundation operates what is essentially a "retirement home" for large cats that have been rescued from zoos, circuses, people's garages, etc. and which cannot be re-introduced to the wild for a variety of reasons.  Our job was to cut up large chunks of horsemeat and feed it to the cats.

The fact that the cooler where the meat was stored was on the fritz so the meat was moldy, rancid and covered with maggots didn't seem to bother the cats (though Melanie did regret eating breakfast before we went)

Our day on Thursday was topped off by a campout in the bush - in a spot with fresh leopard tracks.  Only one time did we hear an animal rustling in the bush next to our camp that required our rangers to grab their rifles.  Thankfully, whatever it was decided to stay away from our stickbread.

All in all, not a bad week at the office!
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Lord of the Rings

This past weekend, Melanie and I decided to get away from Shamwari for a couple of days and explore the area.  We rented a car and drove about 3 hours to a little town in the mountains called Hogsback.  The town has something of a mystical quality to it, and is reputed to have served as JR Tolkien's inspiration for Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings.  Its populated by a bunch of hippies who are into crystals, incense, and fairies (as you can imagine, we fit right in!).

We rented a thatched roof cottage on the edge of a bluff with a spectacular view

Went hiking to one of the many waterfalls

And visited the fairies in the forest (Melanie woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare last night - I think it was inspired by the fairies)

Also spent a morning birdwatching and an afternoon horseback riding in the forest.  The scenery was spectacular, and the horses were well-behaved!

 We topped off a great weekend with massages at the best local spa (though we skipped the option of the fairy card reading)

At the very end, we discovered a backpackers' camp.  Next time we're staying there, for this one special amenity

Well, we still have some catching up to do on the blog, but that'll be all for tonight.  Tomorrow morning we have to get up just after 4 am to go out on the annual game count here.  Gonna be a long day, but I'm sure we'll sleep well tomorrow night.

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 

Lord of the Rings

This past weekend, Melanie and I decided to get away from Shamwari for a couple of days and explore the area.  We rented a car and drove about 3 hours to a little town in the mountains called Hogsback.  The town has something of a mystical quality to it, and is reputed to have served as JR Tolkien's inspiration for Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings.  Its populated by a bunch of hippies who are into crystals, incense, and fairies (as you can imagine, we fit right in!).

We rented a thatched roof cottage on the edge of a bluff with a spectacular view

Went hiking to one of the many waterfalls

And visited the fairies in the forest (Melanie woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare last night - I think it was inspired by the fairies)

Also spent a morning birdwatching and an afternoon horseback riding in the forest.  The scenery was spectacular, and the horses were well-behaved!

 We topped off a great weekend with massages at the best local spa (though we skipped the option of the fairy card reading)

At the very end, we discovered a backpackers' camp.  Next time we're staying there, for this one special amenity

Well, we still have some catching up to do on the blog, but that'll be all for tonight.  Tomorrow morning we have to get up just after 4 am to go out on the annual game count here.  Gonna be a long day, but I'm sure we'll sleep well tomorrow night.