Botswana's Moremi Game Reserve has been graced with the arrival of three rhino calves.
In 2016 several black and white rhinoceroses were translocated to the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana, South Africa. Aided by luxury safari lodge Sanctuary Retreat, the mission aimed to protect and preserve the species, which is one of the most endangered in the world.
Through a tracking program designed to record the growth of the rhino population, Sanctuary Retreat’s Monitoring Assistants Ollie and Kandu have discovered that three rhino calves were born in the last eight weeks. The revelation is exciting news for the rhino population and the worker’s who strive to protect it. “Rhinos typically have a gestation period of between 15 – 17 months, and females don’t usually give birth for the first time until they are around 6.5 – 7 years old,” Kandu explains.
“Added to that, the interval between calving is 3 – 4 years. So we expected we might have to wait a lot longer than we have to see any babies born in the Reserve from the rhinos introduced last year.”
To determine whether rhinos can thrive in a different location, Ollie and Kandu must closely study the rhinos’ eating habits and breeding patterns. Before they began work at the 5,000 square kilometers Moremi Game Reserve, the pair trained with the Mombo Rhino Monitoring Team and Botswana’s Anti-Poaching Unit to ensure they were fully equipped for the job.
With further monitoring and assistance, it is hoped that the Moremi Reserve rhino population will continue to grow.
More On Rhinos In Moremi Game Reserve in 2018 :
Mary is a shy, 20-something-year-old vegetarian from Zimbabwe. She’s expecting her first child, she’s a lover of the outdoors, and if she stepped on a scale without breaking it in half, she would weigh in at approximately 860 kilograms.
Seventeen years ago, neither Mary the black rhinoceros nor any of her kind could be found in the wilds of Botswana. Yet she, along with an impressive group of her species, are now thriving in the country’s Moremi Game Reserve thanks to major efforts by Rhino Conservation Botswana, its dedicated partner Sanctuary Retreats and two enthusiastic young conservation officers.
“They are like our children,” conservation officer Kandu (known by his first name only, due to safety reasons) says when asked if he’s chosen a favourite rhino of the lot. “We are happy when we see any of them.”
Today, Kandu and his co-officer, Olly, have risen before dawn, as they do every day, to track down wild rhinos in the 2,000 square kilometres of reserve terrain on the eastern side of the Okavango Delta in Northern Botswana.
The goal of each excursion, which guests of Sanctuary Retreats’ Chief’s Camp are invited to participate in, is to seek out the small number of white and black rhinos that have been released into the area recently and document their movements, well-being and, perhaps most importantly, their social behaviour.
The Moremi Game Reserve is saturated with all of Africa's iconic animals, including giraffes, lions, elephants, leopards and hyenas.
The Moremi Game Reserve is saturated with all of Africa's iconic animals, including giraffes, lions, elephants, leopards and hyenas.
Chief’s Camp, a safari retreat in the Mombo Concession of the Moremi Game Reserve, promptly joined forces with the organization and hired the two officers to monitor the area’s rhinos full-time.
“We had a black rhino charge our vehicle a few months ago,” mentions Olly casually, as he makes a note of Mary’s geographical co-ordinates in his notebook. “It started dragging its horn on the ground, and then came at us full-force before stopping at the last second.”
Was the 34-year-old scared when the massive animal, which could easily destroy the open-air research jeep, came barrelling in his direction?
“Those are behaviours we like to see,” he says, explaining that this type of display proves the naturally defensive mammal was finding its place in the wild. “Also, we’re still learning about the rhinos ourselves, and it’s much better to see those things practically than to just talk about it to others.”
Due to serious efforts brought about by the Botswana Rhino Conservation Program, rhinos are beginning to flourish in Botswana.
Today, we are lucky to have found Mary early on in our drive, with the help of a static-fuelled call from another Sanctuary Retreats guide who’s spotted her out on a game drive. She is browsing the trees and bushes about half an hour out from our Chief’s Camp base. It’s almost 20 C out despite being 7:30 a.m., and the colouring on Mary’s swollen belly indicates she’s helped herself to an early morning mud bath.
The air is heavy with the scent of wild sage. The dry, sub-Saharan landscape is stone-still apart from the flybys of insects and the tail flick of a leopard we see relaxing by a nearby tree. We approach the massive female from our knees, at a distance of nine metres, when the conservation duo is able to confirm that she is, in fact, Mary, by noting the three unique notches on her right ear.
“Unfortunately, there is a belief that has grown that a rhino’s horn cures cancer,” Kandu says, pointing out the massive accessory between Mary’s eyes that has doomed her kind to near-extinction.
Chief's Camp guides provide visitors with extensive knowledge about the area's wildlife.
The conservation officers go on to explain that despite zero-tolerance poaching laws, the continent is facing a poaching epidemic, with an estimated three rhinos a day still being poached in South Africa. It was poaching alone that rendered the black rhino locally extinct in Botswana, after the species enjoyed an extensive history in the country.
With the support of the Botswana government, Rhino Conservation Botswana took up the enormously costly and complex task in November 2001 of beginning to translocate vulnerable rhinos from South Africa and Zimbabwe into the Okavanga Delta — a land which is both ideal for rhinos and one that is virtually unreachable by poachers.
“There is lush grass here and many bushes,” Kandu says, “We are in between The Delta, with rivers over the side and in between. We’re very protected.”
“We are very shy of giving away the numbers of rhinos we now have here, because that sometimes encourages poachers,” Kandu says. “I would say that we have more white rhinos than black rhinos, and we know white rhinos are doing very well because we have seen young ones.”
Olly takes a stroll within the bomas, which were constructed to hold translocated rhinos for about a week before release.
When the guides decide it’s time to leave Mary to her bush-centric breakfast, we drive the half-hour out to the bomas, or livestock enclosures, where translocated rhinos are monitored for two weeks before being released into the wild.
Today, the bomas are quiet and empty, but on the occasion that a new rhino arrives in the Moremi Game Reserve via C130 cargo jet, the area comes alive with locals, journalists, and resort guests who observe. Members of the area’s antipoaching units and rhino conservation representatives stand on guard for the animals 24 hours a day.
“It’s amazing to see them that close,” says Olly, who was present for a rhino delivery and eventual release in 2015. “It was such a happy moment, when the rhino went out into nature. Even for some local people who came, it was their first time ever seeing a rhino.”
Heading back to Chief’s Camp, we search for more rhinos by keeping an eye out for their dung piles, or “middens.” I’m told that these are communication tools for the animals, and can indicate where they soon may return.
Tracks in the sand also are closely examined — with those of rhinos showing hooks in the padded stamp of their hooves. There are GPS anklets on some of the rhinos used to collect data on their movements, but the conservation officers prefer to locate them through natural methods.
“Some years back, elephants used to be hunted all the time,” Kandu says, stopping at a midden to examine its freshness. “We introduced a very strong antipoaching campaign, and because of this, the population is very high. We are trying to replicate that with the rhinos.”
The 4x4, open-air Sanctuary Retreats vehicles provide up-close and personal encounters with the area's wildlife.
Continuing back to home base, our jeep is in plain sight of many giraffes, buffaloes, zebra, and elephants, but Mary proves to be our only rhino find of the day. Kandu and Olly drop me off at camp with the hopeful thought that in the long term, rhinos will be as easy to spot as any of the species who saturate this vast, sun-drenched landscape.
Later that same afternoon, on a separate game drive, the jeep I’m riding in will be briefly mock-charged by a bull elephant, whose forested territory we have accidentally encroached upon.
The four-metre giant will stamp heavily and trumpet at us after appearing suddenly from the thick bush on the left side of our vehicle, which in turn sends leaves and dust flying into the air before he retreats quickly back to his herd in an instinctual moment of self-protection.
At the time, I will fail to sustain a small scream and silently, perhaps melodramatically, count myself lucky to have survived within the confines of my vehicle. But I will also remember quickly how lucky I have been to witness the natural order of things in the Botswana bush, and to have seen these animals at all in my lifetime.
Lions -- The Famous Residents of Moremi Game Reserve
The Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana is known for its huge herds of plains game, stalked by predators – lions and hyenas. We were staying at Duba Plains in Kwedi Concession with Wilderness Safaris, just on the edge of Moremi. Our visit, though, was at the end of the rainy season, so much of the land was waterlogged. Many of the animals don’t like constantly wading though water, so the big herds had wandered off to higher ground.
The lechwe were there, of course; they love the water. We also saw small herds of tsessebe, wildebeest, impala, zebra, kudu, waterbuck, and buffalo. The birdlife, too, was amazing with lots of migrants.
One of the special reasons for visiting the African bush during the rains is to see the young as they are born and start to find their way in the world.
For us, I think, the memorable part was to see the lions. We got so close to them in the safari vehicle and watched them for hours. First, we came across a mother who was wandering through the long grass with three youngsters trailing behind. She lay down and fed them; not in the least bit bothered by our vehicle. She is so used to the Wilderness Safari vehicles and the occupants taking photos of her.
Later we found her again. She had left her cubs and had joined some other females of the pride to hunt. They were sitting on the top of a hummock surveying the scene. Their bodies were covered in flies – a sign that the smell of their last kill was still around them. They seemed irritated by the flies and could not relax. One of them decided to get up and have a go at another meal – she could see some warthog in the distance.
We watched as she set off on the hunt, another lioness joining in, going out towards the flank. The other two lionesses couldn’t be bothered and just sat and watched with us. The pair of lionesses on the hunt crept through the grass, crouching down occasionally and watched their prey. Actually, they didn’t do too bad, but when they were within about 20 meters of the warthog family, it got wind of them and hightailed it into the distance. The lionesses watched their meal disappear through the trees.
The lions in this area of the Kwedi Concession have a rather concerning habit. The females kill each other’s cubs. No one seems to know why this has started to happen. There used to be a pair of male lions which ruled over the pride for many years; they were known as the Duba Boys. They died a while ago, and since then there has been no male constantly with the females. There is one female, called Silver Eye, who is generally thought to be responsible for the death of the cubs.
Now, in order to save the lives of their cubs, the lionesses keep them well hidden and away from the others. The team at Duba Plains sincerely hope that the cubs we saw with their mother will survive this year and help to create some new dynamics within the pride. Only time will tell.
In 2016 several black and white rhinoceroses were translocated to the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana, South Africa. Aided by luxury safari lodge Sanctuary Retreat, the mission aimed to protect and preserve the species, which is one of the most endangered in the world.
Through a tracking program designed to record the growth of the rhino population, Sanctuary Retreat’s Monitoring Assistants Ollie and Kandu have discovered that three rhino calves were born in the last eight weeks. The revelation is exciting news for the rhino population and the worker’s who strive to protect it. “Rhinos typically have a gestation period of between 15 – 17 months, and females don’t usually give birth for the first time until they are around 6.5 – 7 years old,” Kandu explains.
“Added to that, the interval between calving is 3 – 4 years. So we expected we might have to wait a lot longer than we have to see any babies born in the Reserve from the rhinos introduced last year.”
To determine whether rhinos can thrive in a different location, Ollie and Kandu must closely study the rhinos’ eating habits and breeding patterns. Before they began work at the 5,000 square kilometers Moremi Game Reserve, the pair trained with the Mombo Rhino Monitoring Team and Botswana’s Anti-Poaching Unit to ensure they were fully equipped for the job.
With further monitoring and assistance, it is hoped that the Moremi Reserve rhino population will continue to grow.
More On Rhinos In Moremi Game Reserve in 2018 :
Mary is a shy, 20-something-year-old vegetarian from Zimbabwe. She’s expecting her first child, she’s a lover of the outdoors, and if she stepped on a scale without breaking it in half, she would weigh in at approximately 860 kilograms.
Seventeen years ago, neither Mary the black rhinoceros nor any of her kind could be found in the wilds of Botswana. Yet she, along with an impressive group of her species, are now thriving in the country’s Moremi Game Reserve thanks to major efforts by Rhino Conservation Botswana, its dedicated partner Sanctuary Retreats and two enthusiastic young conservation officers.
“They are like our children,” conservation officer Kandu (known by his first name only, due to safety reasons) says when asked if he’s chosen a favourite rhino of the lot. “We are happy when we see any of them.”
Today, Kandu and his co-officer, Olly, have risen before dawn, as they do every day, to track down wild rhinos in the 2,000 square kilometres of reserve terrain on the eastern side of the Okavango Delta in Northern Botswana.
The goal of each excursion, which guests of Sanctuary Retreats’ Chief’s Camp are invited to participate in, is to seek out the small number of white and black rhinos that have been released into the area recently and document their movements, well-being and, perhaps most importantly, their social behaviour.
The Moremi Game Reserve is saturated with all of Africa's iconic animals, including giraffes, lions, elephants, leopards and hyenas.
The Moremi Game Reserve is saturated with all of Africa's iconic animals, including giraffes, lions, elephants, leopards and hyenas.
Chief’s Camp, a safari retreat in the Mombo Concession of the Moremi Game Reserve, promptly joined forces with the organization and hired the two officers to monitor the area’s rhinos full-time.
“We had a black rhino charge our vehicle a few months ago,” mentions Olly casually, as he makes a note of Mary’s geographical co-ordinates in his notebook. “It started dragging its horn on the ground, and then came at us full-force before stopping at the last second.”
Was the 34-year-old scared when the massive animal, which could easily destroy the open-air research jeep, came barrelling in his direction?
“Those are behaviours we like to see,” he says, explaining that this type of display proves the naturally defensive mammal was finding its place in the wild. “Also, we’re still learning about the rhinos ourselves, and it’s much better to see those things practically than to just talk about it to others.”
Due to serious efforts brought about by the Botswana Rhino Conservation Program, rhinos are beginning to flourish in Botswana.
Today, we are lucky to have found Mary early on in our drive, with the help of a static-fuelled call from another Sanctuary Retreats guide who’s spotted her out on a game drive. She is browsing the trees and bushes about half an hour out from our Chief’s Camp base. It’s almost 20 C out despite being 7:30 a.m., and the colouring on Mary’s swollen belly indicates she’s helped herself to an early morning mud bath.
The air is heavy with the scent of wild sage. The dry, sub-Saharan landscape is stone-still apart from the flybys of insects and the tail flick of a leopard we see relaxing by a nearby tree. We approach the massive female from our knees, at a distance of nine metres, when the conservation duo is able to confirm that she is, in fact, Mary, by noting the three unique notches on her right ear.
“Unfortunately, there is a belief that has grown that a rhino’s horn cures cancer,” Kandu says, pointing out the massive accessory between Mary’s eyes that has doomed her kind to near-extinction.
Chief's Camp guides provide visitors with extensive knowledge about the area's wildlife.
The conservation officers go on to explain that despite zero-tolerance poaching laws, the continent is facing a poaching epidemic, with an estimated three rhinos a day still being poached in South Africa. It was poaching alone that rendered the black rhino locally extinct in Botswana, after the species enjoyed an extensive history in the country.
With the support of the Botswana government, Rhino Conservation Botswana took up the enormously costly and complex task in November 2001 of beginning to translocate vulnerable rhinos from South Africa and Zimbabwe into the Okavanga Delta — a land which is both ideal for rhinos and one that is virtually unreachable by poachers.
“There is lush grass here and many bushes,” Kandu says, “We are in between The Delta, with rivers over the side and in between. We’re very protected.”
“We are very shy of giving away the numbers of rhinos we now have here, because that sometimes encourages poachers,” Kandu says. “I would say that we have more white rhinos than black rhinos, and we know white rhinos are doing very well because we have seen young ones.”
Olly takes a stroll within the bomas, which were constructed to hold translocated rhinos for about a week before release.
When the guides decide it’s time to leave Mary to her bush-centric breakfast, we drive the half-hour out to the bomas, or livestock enclosures, where translocated rhinos are monitored for two weeks before being released into the wild.
Today, the bomas are quiet and empty, but on the occasion that a new rhino arrives in the Moremi Game Reserve via C130 cargo jet, the area comes alive with locals, journalists, and resort guests who observe. Members of the area’s antipoaching units and rhino conservation representatives stand on guard for the animals 24 hours a day.
“It’s amazing to see them that close,” says Olly, who was present for a rhino delivery and eventual release in 2015. “It was such a happy moment, when the rhino went out into nature. Even for some local people who came, it was their first time ever seeing a rhino.”
Heading back to Chief’s Camp, we search for more rhinos by keeping an eye out for their dung piles, or “middens.” I’m told that these are communication tools for the animals, and can indicate where they soon may return.
Tracks in the sand also are closely examined — with those of rhinos showing hooks in the padded stamp of their hooves. There are GPS anklets on some of the rhinos used to collect data on their movements, but the conservation officers prefer to locate them through natural methods.
“Some years back, elephants used to be hunted all the time,” Kandu says, stopping at a midden to examine its freshness. “We introduced a very strong antipoaching campaign, and because of this, the population is very high. We are trying to replicate that with the rhinos.”
The 4x4, open-air Sanctuary Retreats vehicles provide up-close and personal encounters with the area's wildlife.
Continuing back to home base, our jeep is in plain sight of many giraffes, buffaloes, zebra, and elephants, but Mary proves to be our only rhino find of the day. Kandu and Olly drop me off at camp with the hopeful thought that in the long term, rhinos will be as easy to spot as any of the species who saturate this vast, sun-drenched landscape.
Later that same afternoon, on a separate game drive, the jeep I’m riding in will be briefly mock-charged by a bull elephant, whose forested territory we have accidentally encroached upon.
The four-metre giant will stamp heavily and trumpet at us after appearing suddenly from the thick bush on the left side of our vehicle, which in turn sends leaves and dust flying into the air before he retreats quickly back to his herd in an instinctual moment of self-protection.
At the time, I will fail to sustain a small scream and silently, perhaps melodramatically, count myself lucky to have survived within the confines of my vehicle. But I will also remember quickly how lucky I have been to witness the natural order of things in the Botswana bush, and to have seen these animals at all in my lifetime.
Lions -- The Famous Residents of Moremi Game Reserve
The Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana is known for its huge herds of plains game, stalked by predators – lions and hyenas. We were staying at Duba Plains in Kwedi Concession with Wilderness Safaris, just on the edge of Moremi. Our visit, though, was at the end of the rainy season, so much of the land was waterlogged. Many of the animals don’t like constantly wading though water, so the big herds had wandered off to higher ground.
The lechwe were there, of course; they love the water. We also saw small herds of tsessebe, wildebeest, impala, zebra, kudu, waterbuck, and buffalo. The birdlife, too, was amazing with lots of migrants.
One of the special reasons for visiting the African bush during the rains is to see the young as they are born and start to find their way in the world.
For us, I think, the memorable part was to see the lions. We got so close to them in the safari vehicle and watched them for hours. First, we came across a mother who was wandering through the long grass with three youngsters trailing behind. She lay down and fed them; not in the least bit bothered by our vehicle. She is so used to the Wilderness Safari vehicles and the occupants taking photos of her.
Later we found her again. She had left her cubs and had joined some other females of the pride to hunt. They were sitting on the top of a hummock surveying the scene. Their bodies were covered in flies – a sign that the smell of their last kill was still around them. They seemed irritated by the flies and could not relax. One of them decided to get up and have a go at another meal – she could see some warthog in the distance.
We watched as she set off on the hunt, another lioness joining in, going out towards the flank. The other two lionesses couldn’t be bothered and just sat and watched with us. The pair of lionesses on the hunt crept through the grass, crouching down occasionally and watched their prey. Actually, they didn’t do too bad, but when they were within about 20 meters of the warthog family, it got wind of them and hightailed it into the distance. The lionesses watched their meal disappear through the trees.
The lions in this area of the Kwedi Concession have a rather concerning habit. The females kill each other’s cubs. No one seems to know why this has started to happen. There used to be a pair of male lions which ruled over the pride for many years; they were known as the Duba Boys. They died a while ago, and since then there has been no male constantly with the females. There is one female, called Silver Eye, who is generally thought to be responsible for the death of the cubs.
Now, in order to save the lives of their cubs, the lionesses keep them well hidden and away from the others. The team at Duba Plains sincerely hope that the cubs we saw with their mother will survive this year and help to create some new dynamics within the pride. Only time will tell.
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