Posted January 15, 2025 in News
Reserve News
The most amazing news this quarter was UmPhafa was declared a ‘Protected Nature Reserve’ creating another link in KZN’s expanding protected area network. UmPhafa contributes close to 9% of the province’s conservation target for Highland Thornveld, an iconic vegetation type in this region. The application process, site visits, management plans all took 3 years to achieve. As you can imagine we are delighted!
Animals of UmPhafa
We finally got our transport permits to take delivery of our new female cheetah, this should be in January 2025. The Interns built a new pitfall trap and we have so far been lucky enough to identify two new species for the Reserve – a common baboon spider and Boettgers dainty frog. Hopefully we shall continue to ID more new species in 2025.
We were delighted to witness the birth of two eagle owl chicks and followed their progress though the quarter. They have now flown the nest to their new home. We took delivery of three fabulous looking male Eland. They were brought in for new genes, so far though, they have kept to the area where we released them and have not ventured far.
In November / December we saw a lot of babies being born, hopefully with a game count scheduled for early January we can see just how successful our animals have been. Some unlikely visitors to the main house in December included a leopard, bushpig and a baby leopard tortoise all wonderful sightings.
Busy Field Rangers
The Field Rangers were delighted to receive 12 pairs of Vortex triumph binoculars, donated by Vortex. This ensures that each Ranger can spot poachers and animal problems from much further out and give an early warning to the Team to action. They walked close to 5000km this quarter and deterred several would-be poachers from coming in. With just 11 incursions into the Reserve, we have seen a big decrease in poaching activity, even over Christmas, our peak time for incursions. With the Rangers visibly policing our fence line this has aided the reduction in activity.
We are still in the process of arming our field rangers, having to go to Durban to officially register to carry firearms with the government department PSIRA. We are still working through this process so let’s hope in early 2025 our Rangers will be armed for defence purposes only. We put a call out on Facebook to our friends and families to see if anyone had a spare camera that our Rangers could use, we have been lucky enough to secure two cameras which are now in use by our Security Team to take pictures of poachers and interesting animal sightings.
Caring for the Reserve
It took a lot of planning and preparing of access roads but we managed to do a massive block burn in October, burning 888HA (27% of the Reserve), this area had not been burnt since 2017. As part of our water storage plan, we took delivery of 15 JOJO tanks which gives us an extra 70,000 litres of water storage across the Reserve which is vital in ensuring we don’t run out in the dry winter months.
We have finally switched off Eskom (the only electric supplier in South Africa). Following the installation of our solar panels a while back, we have now installed diesel generators as a backup when there is not enough solar – yes, it can happen on overcast and rainy days when not enough solar power is produced. You may ask why we switched off Eskom. In just two years they have almost doubled the cost of electric and as part of our green footprint, we wanted to move over to solar.
Borehole drilling continued this quarter at Sully, our Intern house, as the previous borehole we thought had dried up was just in need of a clear out. We took delivery of some new machinery this quarter: a brush cutter machine (looks like a lawnmower) but has a massive blade on the front allowing us to cut through unwanted alien plants, we also got a hay baler and a rake as we wish to use to start baling the grass ready for winter to assist our animals in getting through this season. We have received some rain but only half so far of what we got this time in 2023.
We also had a presentation by Cobus from the department of Agriculture and Rural development following our vegetation site assessments done in April. He informed us about the state of the vegetation and ideas of how to improve the habitat.
Community & Project Meetings
It’s been a busy quarter with UmPhafa being involved in over 10 meetings to discuss conservation of cheetah, lions, rhino, wild dogs etc. As well as meetings to discuss possible security enhancements for the Reserve for 2025. We also employed six local ladies to be alien plant destroyers for this quarter. With the growing season upon us the alien plants have again reared their ugly head.
Intern Programme & Researchers
We hosted just seven interns this quarter with most of them staying from 1 month to 3 months. It was great to have interns around for a longer period so we could get more work done and they could explore the area around UmPhafa. Tiffany our Student Intern cCoordinator, who joined us in January, left in December after completing her studies for the year. We wish her the best of luck in her future career aspirations.
The interns got down and dirty doing this quarter doing a multitude of activities from game count to biodiversity studies, maintenance, making plaster casts of animal feet, relocation of 210 fish to the dams affected severely by the cold this year, as well as helping Tiffany with her school lessons at M L Sultan. We also had nine teachers from M L Sultan join us for a morning game drive around the Reserve, many of them had not seen a giraffe before! We also took delivery of a life-size wire rhino for the interns to decorate in 2025 however they see fit! Makes a nice addition to the furniture!
Getting Social
Facebook followers have shot up this quarter to over 5500 which is a massive increase on last quarter. We are excited to get to 8,000 in 2025! We have tried to do more posts on both Facebook and Instagram this quarter. The most popular posts are the leopard, caracal and eland arrival. With the post about the number of animals we lost in the snow being one of the highest – this was a sad period for us.
