Hello! Sorry for not posting again sooner, I've been totally snowed under with work to do for the elephant project - research is now in full swing, but identification is still very behind so I've taking all my spare time trying to get further forward on that. Now that I've crossed the border to Zimbabwe, I'm setting up the elephant project on this side too, to find out which elephants are crossing and using both parks. However in order to do that, I have to have a full copy of the database from Zambia... 406 elephants to draw out ID sheets for, when each one takes a minimum of about 5 minutes! YIKES! So that's what I've spent a lot of my time doing in the past 2 weeks...

Squank! (M40)

Elephant research in the park is going well, and we're seeing at least one group almost every time we go out. Not just elephants either - giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, impala, baboons, LOTS of birds, waterbuck, bushbuck, and once last week, a lioness! It's interesting to see their interactions too - it's very rare that we see giraffes without zebra in tow, and there's usually wildebeest and impala with them too. Wildebeest follow zebra because the zebra trim the longer grass for them and then they can feed on the shorter growth underneath, but so far we don't see why they would join the giraffes. Bird surveys in the past couple of weeks have been good too, usually averaging about 15 species per hour long session. We usually do 1 hour out, then spend the rest of our morning doing more giraffe and elephant research drives - not complaining! 

Wildebeest

Martial Eagle

Giraffe

More giraffes!

Even MORE giraffes!

Baby waterbuck

A waterbuck which we couldn't
quite work out.... beard looks
like a male but no horns?

We've done a couple of game counts in the park, and I've been out on Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation survey once too. Human-Wildlife is interesting to see people's reactions, and occasionally we catch the odd cool animal on the cameras, but in general it can be quite tedious. It's a very long drive (about 80 km) out to the communities, and then driving around them it can be up to half an hour between each homestead, so in general it is simply a lot of driving for not a lot of time off the car. It's very rewarding though - you can really tell from how we're treated and how happy the homeowners often are to see us, that we are really making a difference to their lives, and that their livestock are so much safer thanks to the work that ALERT is doing.

Spotted hyenas

Hyena work has been fun, though slightly less productive at times than usual. We've now had a couple of sessions on which we've not seen any hyena. Having said that, last week we hadn't seen anything for ages, and I was just starting to think "we've never had a night drive and seen absolutely nothing" when we saw a family of 5 hyena, including 2 subadults and 2 juveniles, right on the road and we were able to sit with them for ages. They popped up out of a hole under the road so we think there is probably a den literally right underneath the main road from Vic Falls to Botswana! The previous week we also saw them - a group of 7 this time - but didn't get much further than that because a police car saw us stopped by the side of the road and sent us home because he was worried we were poachers.... only shots we could take were on cameras, but they followed us all the way home! That was quite scary... Hyena tracking I've done very little of in the past 2 weeks, as it is an activity for which I'm useful but not actually needed, so I decided that elephant IDs were a better use of my time.  

Lila with her grass bundle!

I've been to see the lions just once in the past fortnight, but it was a very good session. We started off with a lion walk, on which the cubs were a little bit mad and Liuwa was jumping on Lila quite a bit. We took them down to the river for a play, and we were gutted (and very glad!) to hear that when we arrived, we had missed meeting 3 wild lions (a big male and 2 cubs) just wandering through! We don't know what the cubs would have done if they'd met the wild group, but they probably would have wandered off with them which would have been a nightmare to try and get them back - at this age they aren't collared so they would be very difficult to track. Thankfully, no such situation arose.... but we were so annoyed to have missed seeing a wild pride! The rest of the morning we spent in the enclosure with Lila and Liuwa, playing with them with toys made of grass bundles tied to sticks. They had so much fun, and the grass was thoroughly destroyed! They really are just like giant pussy cats when they do that, though it reminds you how quick they can be, and how strong and sharp their claws are when they're hunting! 

I am actually in love with this photo...!

Dojiwe

Last thing to talk about for my 2 weeks was our visit to go and see a rescued orphan elephant. We had completely the wrong information - we thought she was a 15 month old elephant who they were planning on releasing back into the wild, so we were going to see her in order to discuss the release plans, and to find out if we could get the data from the collar they were planning on putting on her. It turned out she was actually 15 YEARS old, and had been living with humans since she was a tiny baby. She's completely domesticated, and is used to people riding her and petting her all the time, and most importantly, when scared she runs to people.... not an elephant that is going to be released! Instead of an actual release, the collar that her 'keepers' are fundraising for is for her own protection - she is allowed to just wander free if she wants to and sometimes will leave for a few days. The collar is so they can track her to make sure she doesn't wander into people's homesteads and then get shot. While it isn't quite the conservation project we were expecting, it's still a good cause. The elephant herself is gorgeous. Her name is Dojiwe, and she is just beautiful. We spent about half an hour watching her perform tricks and play with the water from the tap, then we went for a 2 hour walk through the bush with her and her handler, feeding her treats and taking so many photos we all struggled for batteries and memory space by the end! I absolutely loved my morning with her, and for her own sake I really hope that one day she does decide she wants to be wild, and manages to integrate with a wild herd. Just a wonderful day.

Sorry for yet another very long post, I hope I managed to sum everything up in not TOO many words!