Urgent - Prevent cruel poaching of rare wildlife

Dear Friends,

How grateful we are to have increased our monitoring with 2 more outdoor cam cameras, to prevent poaching of our precious wildlife during this difficult time. Thank you for helping us obtain these essential outdoor auto-capture cameras!

Due to your support, we have been able to acquire two new cam cameras. One is a Scout Guard Bolly Black Flash and the other one is a UO Vision Black Flash, a  more advanced cam that also sends signals to our cell phone of any action videoed during the day or night. Both of these cams operate by capturing night movements without having a flash that may warn off anyone walking past. We see many different species on the cams and it's always exciting to see leopard during their night prowls. 

The cam cameras helped us identify a hyena that entered our property from a surrounding area, that unfortunately had a snare around her neck. We were deeply distressed to see how she was suffering. We immediately notified our Regional Conservation body. Ezemvulu KZN Wildlife. They brought in a predator cage trap and baited it to hopefully capture her by luring her into the cage. Unfortunately, this was unsuccessful. Subsequently, the cage was removed but the bait was left in place. Our new cams clearly showed the movement of hyenas that were trying to approach the bait through a hole that they had dug under the fence. A voice cry apparatus was then set up to hopefully attract the female that had a snare on her neck. To date unfortunately we continue trying to lure her, and updates will be submitted.

Preventing suffering caused by snares is extremely important for the humane management of the wild. Of course, it is important to prevent the animal from being snared before it happens. Therefore we also have night watchmen that patrol and keep poachers away. Any intrusion is reported immediately and thankfully we have had no incidences since the hyena.  These loyal animal lovers' well-being, wages, and jobs also help them to provide for a number of extended family members as well. This is greatly appreciated.

We would like to invite interested volunteers that may wish to assist with snare sweeps and the deciphering of the cam reports. In the meantime, we are managing this on a daily basis with my personal observations and checking program.

Without your support, we would not have the encouragement to continue doing our very best!

Heartfelt thanks once again!

As always we report firstly, with a big thank you to all who have helped us protect our wildlife and the biodiversity of our Sanctuary.

Keeping our wild safe is always on our mind: I was pleased last night to see that one of our special wildebeest “Frankie” a lone bachelor who is particularly friendly, was resting safely close to our homestead. Then I relised that it was going to be an extremely dark night. Soon the stars were magnificently bright but as there was no moon this would discourage Poachers who prefer a bright full moon. I had been anxious because of recent events:

Last week, we had an uneasy 2 nights. It was full moon and we had a message from our neighbour telling us that poachers had set a line of snares and that one of his nyala had been killed. A bunch of about 30 wire snares were retrieved at the poacher's entry and exit point on his fence line. We were on high alert as It takes just one evening for a group of poachers to set snares that our wildlife could be caught in! We ensured that our anti-poaching patrols were diligent and we also helped by doing vehicle patrols around the reserve ourselves. The next morning, we made certain that a day guard patrolled to do a snare sweep check and also to make sure that there were no intruder footprints. Thankfully all was well.

We never relax our awareness. And this seems to be helping, together of course with your support.

Great news is that we received a disbursement on 2021.04.28 from GlobalGiving, with funds that you donated. We have decided to use this towards acquiring another outdoor monitoring camera to assist us with monitoring the security of our wildlife.

The monitoring cam cameras are movement sensitive and they capture any movement in the camera’s visual field, both during the day and at night. Sometimes the wild are interested and look right into the lens. They actually each have a personality, believe it or not, and often their antics make us smile. Mostly though we get feedback of peaceful movements of the animals and also of course snaps of the guards doing their most important patrol duties! We would like to set up as many cam cameras as possible.

So life in the bush is never without a dull moment. Each day that we manage to ensure that the biodiversity of our wild and all our precious animals remain safe, we are overjoyed and most grateful for the ongoing help that enables us to do our very best to protect this beautiful “Piece of Eden”

Heartfelt thanks once again.