The Eco-Team Report

The Rhino Tracking is going well. Our Earthwatch volunteers seem to enjoy the activity very much and found it very educational. I have managed to ID all 5 rhinos in the past month, Rob will confirm this when he returns from vacation. Picnic Dam is completely dry and cattle dam is starting to recede quickly. We managed to get a good location fix on Rhino 4 yesterday, which is good since it has been a while with the receivers and transmitters acting up.

An Earthwatch Volunteer assists with checking camera traps.

The Bellebenno girls (Chanel, Toblerone, Hershey and Nestle) are proving to be successful hunters and have killed nine Eland calves in the week from the 18th to 25th. Matti is currently working on producing maps of their movement around Bellebenno (stay tunned for the next journal).

Swing Gates are going smoothly, not many holes have been spotted which means the animals have been using them.

Game Counts. Circuit counts around CCF property and a 12-hour Bellebenno waterhole count went ahead last week. The Earthwatch group seemed to enjoy them very much. We saw quite a few interesting animals on the night counts including bush babies, aardvarks and HiFi, a wild cheetah, which was very nice. Around 150 Eland were seen on the 12-hour waterhole counts, which is good considering the current hunting pressure on them by Chanel and the Chocolates.

I think that’s about it for now.

Cheers
Kat