Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
warthogs sought refuge and had become quite fearless of humans. They had started biting her
and so to keep them away she would have to sometimes use the sjambok whip. There were
also 2 buffalos in the area that had become quite used to people named Flopsy and Mopsy.
These animals were given potato and carrot cuttings every now and again and the professional
hunters had become attached to them and come to consider them protected “pets.”
Unfortunately someone shot the 2 buffalo and the professional hunting team was very upset
about this.
Brent rejoined us with a Dakota .416 Rigby and permission from Blondie for me to use it to
take a buffalo if the occasion arose. We climbed back in what was fast becoming our trusted
stead and stagecoach, with the bench on top for riding shotgun. On the way to the camp we
came across a wildebeest herd. Someone commented that they are very awkward animals, as if
they had been designed by a committee from spare parts of the African Bushveld.
Traveling across Mazunga to our camp at Fimbiri, it was interesting to note the old
Leadwood post fences. Leadwood is extremely hard and relatively fire and termite resistant
and hence makes for good fence posts. The property they surrounded had been owned by the
Unilever Company and was later bought out by various investors and sponsored by
Renaissance Investment and Dubai World. As part of the development, a double 8 foot high
fence with a patrol road between had to be constructed around the property with electrical 3
strand wiring, powered by solar panels and car batteries. Clearly surrounding a property of a
million acres would have been expensive. One reason for the double fence was that it is a
government requirement put in place to prevent buffalo from wandering out of the game
reserve into local communities and potentially carrying foot and mouth disease, also known as
hoof and mouth disease, to keep the local animals out to prevent local cattle from getting into
the game reserve and intermixing with wild animals and spreading disease. These fences were
patrolled daily on a regular basis to check for any breakages or holes that may be cut in the
fence by potential poachers or fence flattening by roaming elephants looking for a new safe
refuge. As the elephant population exploded many spread from nearby havens such as Tuli or
Gonarezhou or Northern Greater Kruger Park, just the other side of the Limpopo. As an
introduction to Mazunga, Brent told us that there were 350 to 360 elephants depending upon
influx and out wanderings to the nearby game reserves, 57 white rhinos and 159 black rhinos.
The numbers of sable and eland are increasing, and there are about 11,000 wildebeests,
10,000 zebras, and 9000 giraffe. The populations were beginning to exceed the carrying
capacity of the conservancy.
Technically Mazunga falls in a belt of land known as moist Savannah which means that both
deciduous trees and thorn trees grow in the area and there is sufficient water for a wide
spectrum of wild animals. Typically it is not so dry that it is desert conditions. This belt of
moist savanna, a Caribbean word, locally known as Bushveld stretches north from about the
Kei River through the Lebombo plains of Zululand, Swaziland, the Kruger Park into Zimbabwe
and into the Zambezi valley and western Mozambique. The savanna biome occupies 12% of
earth's land but 60% of sub- Saharan Africa. In the more northern sections the some 27 species
of acacia thorn trees are less abundant while the mopane trees are the predominant tree type
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