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Much of the news from the Natural World is negative. The human population is growing in crowding out the Natural World, even when not foolish two positions have led close to the Extinction of animals because of supposed benefits that their body parts will bring humans.
The fact that the rhino poaching of South Africa has fallen for 5 years in a row is something to celebrate. However, despite this there is a lot that we still need to be concerned about.
In 2019 594 Rhinos were killed within the Kruger National Park by poachers. In 2015 a little over 1300 rhino were lost to poachers, in the same area. As such, cutting the poaching by more than half in the space of only 5 years is impressive ( though, it should be noted that the rise was more rapid than the fall has been), 594 Rhinos killed is still a huge number.
South Africa hosts over 90% of the world’s remaining Rhinos, which means that any poaching here has a large impact on the world’s population. It should be noted that the 594 Rhinos lost last year in South Africa Is the equivalent of 4 times the total world population of Sumatra and Java Rhinos that remain.
The Sumatran rhino was once found throughout out much of Southeast Asia including parts of India, Vietnam, China, Myanmar, Thailand as well as Borneo.
Now that the last known Sumatran rhino living in Malaysia has died it is thought that the Sumatran rhino is extinct on mainland Asia. As you can see by the list of countries that was found in it was once relatedly widespread and its decline has been rapid. While there is still a population of perhaps 80 living in Sumatra, its rainforest is still being cut down the main reason it is so endangered now. As one of the most ancient rhino species it is important that we maintain those members that have left to be able to form founding populations in the countries that is been lost from.
Whether this happens is anyone’s guess, unfortunately though given the demand for rhino horn and the decimation of rhino populations in all the countries they are found it is not certain that this population will will survive.
As is well known globally, the Kruger National Park in South Africa has had a very serious problem with rhino poaching over the last decade or so. A significant proportion of the remaining wild white rhinos live with in the Kruger so it is not a surprise that this is where much of the white rhino poaching has gone on.
At the same time, there has been a significant issue of man-eating lions within the Kruger National Park.
The Chinese government has put off a difficult decision it has to make on whether to lift the ban on trade in rhino horn and tiger body parts. Trade was banned back in 1993, but in October they announced that they would allow these parts to be used for scientific medicinal and cultural reasons.
Even in the current age where many species such as elephants and lions are facing steep declines in population and range, there are still many countries where it is legal to go and hunt them and other species. Unlike many conservationists I am not inherently against hunting, however the way it is done in many places baffles me. I realise with many people it is essentially “the bragging rights” that they are looking for. Shoot an animal and mount its head on your wall at home. One hundred years ago, when there were more animals left I could understand this idea, but nowadays, when we are likely to have to explain to our grandchildren if not children why these animals no longer live in the wild I don’t want one stuck to my wall! Continue reading “Does hunting pay its way?”
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.
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