Pangolin – See Animals Wild

June 5, 2023June 8, 2023

You think pangolins greatest threat is the poaching? not everywhere, what is worse?

Pangolins are bizarre animals!

A wild pangolin out during the day, a rare site indeed Credit David Brossard

How many of you knew about a pangolin? How many of you knew about a pangolin before say 5 years ago when their poaching became big news.

Generally the reason that they are little known about, is that they are secretive, and one of the most strictly nocturnal animals in the bush.

Despite this, seizures of tonnes of pangolin scales are regularly made on the way to Vietnam or China (and other similar parts of Asia). To be clear, in pretty much all of these countries the authorities are making lots of effort to stamp out this trade.

So this is why it is so horrifying to hear that poaching is not the primary human cause of death.

Electric fences!

Now it should be noted, that there is a wide range of predators in the African bush. We all know about lions and leopards, and even cheetah.

What about the smaller species?

The caracal, and serval are both cats that are incredible jumpers, and as such usual fences will not cause them a problem as they can jump over. Black backed jackals? Well these canines, are essentially the equivalent of the northern hemispheres red fox. Certainly, it is true that these animals might be a threat, but they are too savvy to be blocked by a fence, and anyway, live happily both sides of the fence as it is.

Electric fences are used in South Africa far more than other countries in Southern Africa: South Africa has about 6,000,000km of fencing, while Botswana has 3000km and Namibia 1100km.

So what can be done?

Well Pangolins are not a tall animal, but tend to travel on their hind legs. Raising the lowest strand of this fence from 20cm to 30cm would likely eliminate these deaths.

Why are they specifically at risk? Very sadly, by walking on their hind legs they expose their belly, when on the move. They struggle to see the strands of the wire, so the first thing that they know is it touches their sensitive underside. What is worse, Pangolins roll up into a ball when scared, but in this case this does not help, as this will leave the pangolin hanging from the wire. As the shocks keep coming the pangolin stays, and often starves or dies of thirst.

June 13, 2022June 28, 2022

Rare sightings, where even a wildlife guide gets excited Aardvarks and Pangolins – and seeing them in the zoo

When you go on safari, as with other places there are animals that while fascinating you can be almost certain you will not see.

I am not talking about Black leopards, or white lions – rare genetic mutations which are therefore not always present, and when they are, there might be one or two in the whole of an ecosystem. In recent times, when a black leopard was sighted, a British photographer flew out specifically to stake out the area it was in to get his shot. He did succeed, but spent a whole trip getting the picture (Will Burrard Lucas) flew to the part of Kenya where it had been sighted, and put up camera traps which caught the creature). These are almost impossible to see, as they tend to occur very rarely. The white Lions of Timbivati are very good for this private reserve as it is almost impossible to see wild white lions anywhere else.

No, the animals that are rarely seen (and perhaps for most would not feature on a list of 100 animals they would like to see) tend to be nocturnal. I am talking of animals like the Aardvark and the pangolin. Often these species are also extremely fussy eaters, which means that not only are they incredibly hard to see in the wild, but they are incredibly hard to keep alive in captivity – increasingly zoos are starting to get these fascinating animals, as the unfounded belief that pangolin scales can treat a variety of conditions has pushed all species nearer to extinction (so it is becoming increasingly necessary to have a captive population to back up the wild one).

In the UK, the only place that you can see an Aardvark is in Colchester zoo, where they have a group of them. Knowing this, Colchester zoo is one of those that I will visit as often as I get the chance, and spend a significant amount of time by the Aardvark burrow hoping to see them awake.

Our visit last week was incredibly lucky, as the Aardvarks had to be weighed, so they all had to wake up and be moved around. I hope to put together a video after the summer, with pictures of Aardvark burrows in the wild, and the animal in captivity. If I am very lucky, I will be able to add in some wild Aardvark pictures but this is very unlikely.

Either way, a video will be coming in the Autumn – to our youtube channel. Do subscribe so as to not miss it (there are many more videos in the pipeline) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsz9rwvtlpsdQgB-52CY-_w

This link will take you to our youtube channel.

We have 2 trips planned in the next few months. Later this week, I am travelling to Spain in the hope of seeing bears and wolves, and over August, my family are travelling to Kruger national park. Our aim is to film many videos during these trips, and be able to add greatly to what is listed on the channel.

January 6, 2018December 3, 2023

Review of Kruger National Park

Size [usr 4.5]
Facilities [usr 5]
Range of animals [usr 5]
Road quality [usr 4.5]
Wildness [usr 3.5]

Kruger is one of the few national parks in the world that is large enough to have a sizeable population for some of its rarer animals. It is also part of the Limpopo transfrontier park which includes the Limpopo park in Mozambique, Gonarezhou National Park, Manjinhi pan Sanctuary and Malipati Safari area in Zimbabwe as well as the area between Kruger and Gonarezhou, and the Sengwe communal land in Zimbabwe and Makuleke region in South Africa. The area of this whole piece park is 35000 square km. There are plans to increase this in size to close to 100,000 square km. About 18,000 square km (half) of this is the Kruger National Park.

The Kruger Park on its own is the equivalent of an area roughly the size of Wales. It has 138 different species of mammal roaming free. This includes 6 species of Cat, 3 of Dog (two of these are jackels) and many species of Antelope.

The Cat species include Lions (about 1500), Leopard (about 2000), Cheetah (200), Caracal, African wild cat, and Serval. Lions are easily found and generally do not fear cars, we saw lions at some point on most days we spent within the park. Leopards are far more secretive and we had been in the area for almost 3 months before we saw our first one. That is not to say that they are always this hard to see but often keep themselves hidden. There is a section of the river which claims to have the worlds highest density of leopards in the world.

Cheetah are very hard to find in the park because as there is much vegetation you can not spot them from a distance like in the Serengeti. Because there are very few of them sightings are a rare treat, though because they hunt mostly by sight, they are most active in the day, and often hunt during the hottest part of the day when the lions and leopards are resting. When we had our sighting of cheetah within Kruger, they were clearly looking for food and were standing on a small mound on the side of the road. We followed them as they slowly went off after prey in the distance, but quickly lost them.

The last major predator is the African wild dog. African wild dog are highly successful pack animals. No African mammal is successful more often when hunting. However unfortunately this means that they are highly mobile and while we narrowly missed them on many occasions, we never got lucky with these fascinating animals. The Kruger has a relatively stable population of 350 animals, however they are very susceptible to illnesses, and due to the shape of Kruger, there is always the risk of rabies or canine distemper being spread through the population from strays living around the park. In 1992, the wild dog population of the Serengeti disappeared in one year. Because that park is connected to others wild dog are slowly returning. There are proactive projects trying to improve the health of dogs around remaining national parks containing wild dog, in the hope of saving this fascinating mammal.

It has both white rhino and black rhino populations, though the black rhino population remains low. Rhino have been targeted in the last decade. It is believed that by grinding down rhino horn and drinking it many illnesses can be cured. While this is rubbish demand meant that rhino horn was for a time more valuable than an equivalent weight in Gold. More absurd is the fact that White Rhino horn is made of keratin, the same substance that make up our fingernails (and you will get the same medicinal remedy by grinding up your fingernails and drinking them). At one point the poaching was running at one thousand animals a year, though thankfully this number has reduced. Black Rhino also once existed within the area in great numbers but were eradicated. They were reintroduced and there is a population of around 400-600, that has grown from a founder popuation of 90 between the 1970 and 1990s. Black rhino being browsers rather than the grazing white rhino (misnamed, White was a mistranslation of the Africaans name Weit meaning wide) and as such their droppings are easily differentiated. We encountered black rhino droppings a few times so knew that there was at least one animal in the area we spent much of our time, but they are very shy spending much of their time deep in cover so not seen very often.

When the park was enclosed it was worked out that the carrying capacity of the park was 7000 elephants. Currently the number exceeds 16000 which is roughly twice the calculated carrying capacity of the reserve. Up until 1990 regular culls kept the elephant population limited, but since then the size has doubled. However this is a rather difficult problem to work out as the elephants are not living in the same way that they would have lived hundreds of years ago. Elephants are very destructive, regularly pushing down trees and generally changing the area as they see fit; at a certain point in the elephants would have migrated out of the area for some time allowing the land to recover. Once the elephants were fenced in this was not possible. The hope is that this migrating behaviour can be restarted within transfrontier parks like the Kruger, though this behaviour might take many years to start.

On a smaller scale, due to the fact that large parts of the reserve have never been anything other than wild, this means that the ecosystem functions well in the natural way that it did for millenia before humans appeared. As such apart from all the big animals to be looking for, there are also dozens of smaller animals to be looking out for, animals such as Servals, Caracals, Civit cats, Genets, African wild cats, Pangolins, Aardvarks and many many more. This makes the reserve an exciting place to drive through; you never know what animal might walk out into the road (or be spotted in the nearby bushes).

Practical review

The Kruger is possibly the easiest large nature reserve in Africa to visit. This is because the majority of the roads are tarmacked and most of the rest are dust paths that are still easy to drive. Almost all the roads you are allowed to drive are easily driveable in a 2 wheel drive, therefore there is no need within the Kruger for 4 wheel drive, though the extra height of the vehicle comes in useful because it makes it easier to see over bushes and other cars.

The campsites have electric fences around them so there is no need to hire guards to look after yourself, this also makes Kruger probably the most child friendly large reserve as within the safety of the camp, children can play close by without needing to look out for animals all the time. There are about 12 main campsites but many of these have satellites camps that allow for a more wild feel (less easily child friendly).

For those looking for a wilder feel, some of the camps have satellite camps that are far smaller with fewer resources, but this means that often the animals come closer.

Each campsite has a sightings board, which contains a map of the park and pins of different colours to allow you to say where you saw different animals. This means that with some planning each morning you can make sure you look through parts of the park where sightings are most likely. This means that even if it is your first visit you can often have sightings just like a seasoned wildlife guide.