Month: February 2021

The Aspinall Foundation, in partnership with WILDTRUST and the Wildlife Emergency Fund, collaborated with the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) in the successful translocation of three rhino from Bongani Mountain Lodge and the Mthethomusha Nature Reserve in Mpumalanga. The lodge was burned down by local communities in arson related attacks on the 31 January 2021, leaving the rhinos and other wildlife on the reserve at risk.

The rescue mission took place in three phases. The first phase included sending a team into the reserve via helicopter to assess the situation and to find the rhinos. All access roads to the reserve were blocked  by surrounding communities and the MTPA team and helicopter pilot could only access the reserve by air. It was determined that the rhinos were at risk and needed to be translocated.

During the second phase of the operation, two rhinos were captured and during the third phase of the operation, a single rhino was successfully captured. The team had to wait for the rhinos to be in strategic locations, close to the boundary of the reserve before the capture operations could take place. The rhinos were moved to Care for Wild, who are committed to providing the rhinos with world class, long-term care until such time that they will be placed in their forever home.

Dereck Milburn, Regional Director of the Aspinall Foundation said, ‘’Mthethomusha has very difficult terrain to work in but the mission could not have gone better. This was largely due to the expertise of the MTPA capture team lead by Ertjies Röhm, Chris Hobkrik and Gait-Jan Sterk along with Jana Meyer who flew the helicopter for most of the mission. Veterinarian Ben Muller ensured the well-being of the rhinos throughout the process. We are very thankful that we were able to make a difference to the lives of these animals’.

The Aspinall Foundation and the partners provided support to the value of R110 000 which included helicopter time, veterinary costs and some equipment whilst the MTPA provided a professional capture crew, trucks and crates. This is a very good example of how NGO’s and Government Departments can work together to make a difference in these emergency scenarios.

The CEO of WILDTRUST, Dr Roelie Klopppers, remarked on the importance of supporting community conservation areas. ‘We have been particularly successful in working with rural communities in converting land reform sites into biodiversity stewardship sites. The only effective way of conserving rhino and other endangered species is through the expansion of suitable habitat under protection. We need more positive collaboration stories such as this Mthethomusha incident. The WILDTRUST provided support for immediate action to move the rhino to safety and hope that we can assist in the ongoing work to develop the area as it is critical for community conservation.’

The MTPA have deployed significant additional resources in the reserve to stabilise the situation and protect the remaining animals.

Somkhanda Game Reserve, a 12000-hectare community owned reserve situated in the heart of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, is home to lion, black and white rhino, African wild dog and African elephants. These Big 5 animals are sadly on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species due to poaching, human-wildlife conflict, poisoning and habitat loss. It is for these reasons that they are listed as either near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically endangered. Added to these threats, the Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated their fate as rangers have lost their jobs due to loss of funding and with the tourism industry grinding to a halt, reserves in South Africa have had to look for alternative ways in which to fund the salaries of the rangers as well as protect the wildlife on these reserves. Somkhanda also protects some of South Africa’s rare biodiversity, namely the Lebombo Cycad (Encephalartos leboboensis) which is also on the IUCN Redlist as endangered.

Somkhanda lies within the Zululand Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) and Important Birds and Biodiversity Areas (IBA) and forms an important link in the Zululand Conservation Corridor linking private reserves with privately owned land as well as National (Pongola Nature Reserve) and International Reserves (Royal Jozini Big 6). As such, it forms part of the Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation Area, making this a unique biodiversity hotspot an emergency case that beckons to be protected.

WILDLANDS, a programme of the WILDTRUST recently secured a Rapid Action Grant through the IUCN Save Our Species African Wildlife initiative, co-funded by the European Union (EU), which will see a rapid transformation of technology used by the game rangers to boost the protection of this protected area and species. Furthermore, through this funding, the rangers employed on the reserve will continue to be employed as they support over 300 dependants in the local community.

Through this funding, the anti-poaching unit on Somkhanda have been upskilled and trained to use the Vulcan EarthRanger system for their monitoring and patrolling duties. This smart new technology integrates and displays all historical, real-time data, spatial information, and other threats available from a protected area, on a handheld GPS-enabled mobile device. The EarthRanger system empowers the reserve managers and rangers to take immediate, proactive actions to prevent and mitigate threat incidents.

Meiring Prinsloo, Somkhanda Reserve Manager commented, “this state-of-the-art monitoring and patrolling system, greatly enhances our situational awareness across the entire reserve and enables us to direct our boots on the ground more effectively. It is like having your finger on the pulse of the reserve security at all times, which is crucial in allowing us to effectively protect our wildlife and biodiversity.”

What this grant funding aims to achieve is multi-faceted as it will support the salaries of the rangers which have been heavily affected by the loss of income due to the Covid-19 pandemic halting the tourism activities through which the reserve depended. The reserve hopes that through the implementation of this EarthRanger technology, the rangers will be more efficient in their duties of monitoring and patrolling the reserve which will enable them to safeguard the wildlife and biodiversity, further enabling them to protect priority species on the reserve like the black and white rhino, the African wild dog, lion and elephant.

According to Dr Roelie Kloppers, CEO of the WILDTRUST, “the beauty of this technology is that rangers can capture valuable data on priority species, the state of biodiversity, incursions and general census data as part of their regular patrols. Moreover, it greatly increases the skills and job satisfaction of our rangers, as their routine fence and security patrols now plays a more significant role in collecting data on the status of biodiversity health in the reserve.”

The real results of this new technology are yet to be realised but Somkhanda Game Reserve have projected that should this system yield the expected results, the rhino population numbers will increase, all priority species monitoring will be greatly improved and wildlife crimes will be averted.

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This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union through IUCN Save Our Species. Its contents are the sole responsibility of WILDLANDS, a programme of the WILDTRUST and do not necessarily reflect the views of IUCN or the European Union.

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