I thank you all for reading about Living My Dream…and must show you these pics now… as a massive storm is brewing over Lower Sabie, where I am now and will be until the 17th December…

I arrived here on Sunday and the first day was used to set up camp… the camping sites are not the best Ive seen, like little squares… but I got a nice shady spot… and thanks to friends for helping me unhooking the caravan and pushing it into place…

Monday I was on the road… and as said the most amazing sightings… so good and a thrill to see a Leopard, but one with a cub… I have never seen in all the years Ive been coming to Kruger!

And as I think that pictures speak louder than words… I will show you all the pics of my week… hope I don’t bore you to death!

The mother moving the cub to a more shady spot… as from this day on.. I only saw the cub higher up in the trees.. and

then the next day, close to where the cub is now… the mother showed herself to me..so in the open… I could not believe it..

With that I left… and found some lions on the road…I think that ppl get “silly” around lions, but I had a good spot… and then my cam went on the blink…think my setting were way wrong for this kind of light… but I could get this pic for you..

and off course the birds were around… I got this nice one of the Diedericks Cuckoo… in the sun setting…

And the Black Winged Stilt at Sunset Dam…

and then can you believe, another Leopard.. with yet another cub…

And another scary speciality in Kruger…well that is on the road, they are sometimes seen in camps… glad it was not my campsite… this Mocambique Spitting Cobra..

and the last but not least, no stay at Lower Sabie is complete without a sunset pic from sunset dam!

With that another week came to an end…and tomorrow (Monday) I will fetch my mother in law from the airport as she is coming to visit for the next 12 days.

Until next Sunday..

Martie

Prof Dave Richardson of the Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology at Stellenbosch University is the lead author of a ground-breaking paper that describes a tool to help policy-makers and scientists employ “managed relocation” to move species into “more accommodating habitat” where they are currently absent.

“We hope that the tool will help to reduce the polarity that has emerged in the debate on whether managed relocation should be added to the conservationist’s toolbox,” says Prof Richardson.

“Scientists are, for the first time, objectively evaluating ways to help species cope with rapidly changing climate and other environmental threats by implementing strategies that were considered too radical for serious consideration as recently as five or ten years ago,” explains Prof Richardson, one of the world’s leading minds on matters pertaining to invasive species.

“Our decision-making tool is ground-breaking because managed relocation has traditionally been categorically eschewed by scientists for fear that relocated species would harm receiving habitats by reproducing wildly out of control, causing extinctions of local species,” says Prof Richardson, who cites the way in which invasive alien trees have reduced water production from mountain catchments in the Western Cape as an example of the damage that translocation can do.

Now that is radical. It seems climate change is so rapid, that a more than 2 degrees C average global temperature increase this century is inevitable, that we are going to intervene radically in ecosystem functioning in order to help our fellow species survive. I wonder where we can relocate the polar bears to?

Ralph Pina is an ecoAfrica.com founder

White rhino in Kruger National Park, South Africa

The Times reports that:

The number of rhinos poached within SA National Parks’ land increased by nearly 300% in 2008 (36 rhinos) compared with 2007 (10 rhinos);

An estimated 50 rhinos were poached on private game reserves in 2008 ; and

Thirteen rhinos were shot dead on Christmas Day last year, including six on a private reserve in North West.

(Ignore the comments below The Times report – they are indicative of the mindset of disaffected locals who unfortunately have the time to pollute blogs)

Rhino have been to the brink and back before. When the Imfolozi reserve was proclaimed in 1895 it was the last refuge of the southern white rhino, estimated to be as few as 20 in number. Colonial hunters had shot them out throughout southern Africa. Thanks to the efforts Ian Player and those of his ilk there are now some 14500 white rhinos and 4000 black rhinos in the wild (consider however that there were 100 000 black rhino in the wild in the 1960s).

Through successful translocation programmes they have been distributed across southern Africa in national parks, game reserves and private reserves. The black subspecies is still Critically Endangered while the white rhino is classified as “Lower Risk – Conservation Dependent”. Our Kruger National Park Google Earth layer contains a wildlife census layer which shows some interesting distributions of rhino.

The Times story advances various reasons for the increase in poaching, but most worrying is the apparent lack of protection in formal protected areas such as national parks. SANP and agencies such as Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife need to urgently step up their anti-poaching patrols and look to the integrity of their parks and reserves. But perversely it may be the successful translocation of the animals to private reserves that increases vulnerability, as these protected areas are widely dispersed islands of conservation and will often not have the resources to mount effective anti-poaching operations.

Ralph Pina is one of ecoAfrica.com’s founders

So it is with anger that I witnessed the G8 powers’ leaders back away from substantive and immediate reductions in their countries’ emissions and vaguely promise halving of emissions by 2050. Halving with reference to what baseline? 2008 and not 1990? What about intermediate emissions targets? What happened to some of these countries’ undertakings under Kyoto? A spectacle of spinelessness.

Not that China and my own South Africa can simply claim the moral high ground and point accusing fingers at the rich nations. South Africa is one of the most carbon-intensive economies in the world, and China’s aggregate emissions are already approaching those of the USA, albeit on a much lower per capita basis.

But others are able to express outrage and apply pressure better than me. What interests me is the static nature of protected areas (PAs) like the Kruger Park in the face of changing climatic conditions. Protected areas are human creations and like human settlements their locations have been determined by our experience of relatively stable and benign climate conditions over the last millennia, but mainly the last 500 or so years.

In fact many PAs are what and where they are because the areas were less attractive and habitable for humans, more specifically colonial humans. They are opportunistic creations. The lowveld plain east of the escarpment where Kruger is located was a fever-ridden area for the boers at the time (the late 19th century) that the reserves that would make up the park were proclaimed. Modern-day Kruger is a north-south oriented, 300km-by-60 km sliver of land (see our Kruger Park layer in Google Earth for a spatial exploration) jammed between the escarpment and Mozambique. Although relatively large, its ecosystems and wildlife populations are artificially managed – man-made waterholes and fences determine the distribution and movements of wildlife.

Species have always migrated as climate has changed over the millennia, but neither national park boundaries nor national borders will be able to move. They are locked in. That is one problem; another is that climate may be changing faster than species can adapt. There is a further problem too: patterns of human settlement and land transformation have limited the options for natural systems. It is only fairly recently that conservation priorities have shifted away from conserving species and landscapes to protecting the integrity of ecosystem processes that ensure that Nature has options so that species can adapt. Re-establishing migration routes and ecosystem functioning are some of the rationales behind transfrontier parks such as the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park that comprises Kruger, Limpopo and Gonarezhou national parks.

It is predicted that as temperatures rise and rainfall decreases in the Cape, so fynbos plant species will migrate south-eastwards – that is if there are corridors for them to migrate along. Let us for a moment imagine a similar scenario for the vegetation in Kruger, where it migrates eastwards into Mozambique, into its mirror-image park, Limpopo National Park, and beyond. When the fences are eventually down, the herbivores will follow their food and the predators will as well, but Kruger’s tourism infrastructure and its restcamps won’t be able to cross the border. In fact it is highly unlikely that South Africa’s tourism and parks authorities would be pleased about ceding their tourism income to Mozambique. Rather, artificial interventions to retain species within Kruger might be intensified. [Note: this is not a scientific, real scenario, but a thought experiment]

We have fixed cities, parks and borders in space, but the elements and conditions that support life – biodiversity, ecosystems, biomes, climate – are not fixed in space, never have been and never will be.

Ralph Pina is ecoAfrica‘s chairman

We bid our goodbyes to the Klaserie and entered Kruger National Park via Phalaborwa gate.   The first 1.5 days were extremely disappointing and tiring to say the least as we had barely spotted Impala and Elephant.  On our final full day in the park, our guide had a good feeling about the day and he was quite right – not only did we see a huge Elephant herd, Buffalo bulls, Rhino and calf and 3 bachelor Lions, but we were graced with a sighting of the elusive Leopard precariously feeding on an Impala carcass high in a Sausage Tree, as well as of a small pack of four Wild Dog trotting off into the oblivion of the savanna.  It is true, the animal movements are extremely unpredictable making every sighting a very special moment in time!

It was my first experience staying in the chalets at the various restcamps.  Although we didn’t spend much time in the restcamps, both chalets were comfortable and restcamp facilities were adequate.

Our final trip back to Johannesburg entailed a trip back in time to Pilgrim’s Rest, and capturing the awe of God’s Window and Lisbon Falls.

We took back home to Cape Town many photographs and I clocked up to 40 lifers mainly all thanks to Rob, the specialist!  By the end of the trip my husband was enthusiastically identifying the various animals.  It was a trip I’ll keep very close to my heart!

• Lodges, camps, restcamps and trails camps (book online)
• Transport: roads, distances, routes, gates, airstrips (plan a trip)
• Ecology: rainfall, biomes, wildlife census – all graphically represented
• History: how Kruger evolved and its borders expanded since 1884
• National park, transfrontier park and game reserve boundaries

So there’s something there for the traveller and visitor, as well as the scholar.

Travel layer: lodge and camp locations

Travel layer: game lodge information

Ecological layer: animal census

Ecological layer: biomes

Transport layer: roads, gates , airstrips, routes, distances