Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Birds Catching Insects In front of Fire
Fire was also a method to smoke out large rats that were then cooked on a stick and
considered a delicacy. Whereas American Native Indians drove bison off cliffs, Southern
Africans used fires to drive animals, usually into dug pits, but also over riverbanks. In
Jock of
the Bushveld
Fitzpatrick describes how he and his hunting partner injured a buffalo and were
following it up when the local Africans further ahead set a fire to flush it out of the grass. The
problem for Fitzpatrick was that the fire was coming at them, carried by a strong wind, along a
grass plane between a kraantz (cliff face) and a crocodile infested river. They set an opposing
fire, stood on the burnt veld, and barely survived. A mamba came by between them, its head at
their eye level.
In 2001 a Berg katabatic dry wind (winds from high mountains that can be hurricane force
like those that struck Magellan in the Magellan Straits on the tip of South America at Tierra del
Fuego. Other examples are the Santa Ana, Mistral, and Chinook) from the western escarpment
fed the fire that ran out of control killed in the Kruger Park 19 people, 4 game rangers, 30
elephants, and 4 rhino. There was a lot of finger pointing and controversy about who was to
blame and lack of leadership.
The Land cruiser's loud hum and the noise from knobby tires leave us to our own thoughts
while looking out at the landscape.
Much research has been done for years on the Kruger Park on fires. Until 1980 the Kruger
Park was divided into 4000 hectare units that totaled 480 units for burning. The reason for
burning was to remove dead and undesirable plants, control ticks and tsetse flies (they take
refuge in dense shaded vegetation in the heat of the day), and try and control tree and shrub
growth into the grasslands that supported big populations of grazers such as zebra and
wildebeest. The problem was that the set fires did not control the overgrowth of Bushveld.
Indeed, as a child the areas in the southern Kruger Park between Malelane and Skukuza and
Lower Sabie were more open grasslands with big populations of grazers. Now, thorn shrubs
and trees have become much denser, despite the increase in elephant population. Fenced off
areas in the Kruger Park that are not open to herbivores have an eleven times greater density of
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