Posted April 25, 2025 in All
Top Reserve News This Quarter
The introduction of our first ever female cheetah (Ashia) was the highlight, released into the Boma in February and released on to the Reserve in March. We have observed her closely as she has walked about a third of the Reserve fence line to date. She is in great condition and we are excited to see her roaming the rest of the Reserve in the coming months.
The lowlight was the passing of Tiny, the little intern cat that touched the hearts of so many interns over her 15 years at UmPhafa. She was an intrepid explorer, a friend and a comfort to so many. She will be sorely missed.
Animals Of UmPhafa
With the amount of rain we had during the first 3 months, our Ryefield wetland area is doing well so much so that three new bird species have been spotted! -The African Jacana, a Dwarf Bittern and Lesser Moorhen.
Cats, cats, and more cats – with the introduction of the cheetah and then numerous sightings of leopard over the last three months we seem to have had a population explosion – not to mention we got two new Sully House cats, (Intern House), Zama and Mouse, who are definitely making themselves at home with the interns. We have made the decision to try and move some of the leopard off so we are hoping we can do this in the coming months.
We’ve had at least two new born giraffes for the start of the year and we are sure there are more to come!
Busy Field Rangers
UmPhafa secured training for our Field Rangers from a company from the UK called Savsim, Alan joined us for two weeks and gave our rangers training on firearm usage and control, patrolling and ambush techniques, hand signals and a whole lot more! They also did a lot of physical training work.
Unfortunately, we lost a Field Ranger this quarter, he went on to improve himself so we recruited for a couple of positions, with over 333 CVs it took us a while to whittle them down so we could interview in early April. With unemployment in South Africa currently over 40% there are a lot of people looking for work!
We were also delighted to receive two new donated ‘silent’ ranger camera traps that we shall be setting up along the fence line to spot would be poachers coming in, and we have also secured aerial patrols for the Reserve over the coming months in conjunction with Project Rhino.
With a reduced number of incursions this quarter we did have a few instances where we had to do reports at the local police station. In March we had drunken drivers skidding along one of the roads bordering the Reserve and they came straight through the fence causing over R10000 worth of damage. We also caught a poacher inside the Reserve, he had unfortunately got a porcupine and was in the process of skinning it – he is currently awaiting trial.
Caring For The Reserve
With a massive amount of rain received this quarter across the Reserve the focus has been on road and fence repair as the power of the water has put fences underwater, swept them aside and made the dongas even bigger and the roads impassable! We have fixed 143 Mitre drains (these help to drain the water off the road to reduce the erosion) and we have created 44 new ones.
We have employed ten ladies from the community this quarter who have either been clearing Acacia Karoo or Lantana and are doing a fine job of spraying and clearing these Alien plants / bush encroachers.
We also took delivery of our new Agri drone which we are hoping to use to spray the alien plants thus speeding up the process of destroying these aliens and improving the habitat for the animals.
Community & Project Meetings
Again, another busy quarter with UmPhafa being involved in over 12 meetings with discussions ranging from cheetah, predators, security on the Reserve and we also hosted several meetings at our Bush camp.
A local community leader visited in search of their Chief / King, they walked some of the hills around Elworthy until they think they located his grave. More research will be required though!
Intern Program / Researchers
We hosted four interns this quarter and they were the lucky ones to see the release of the cheetah into the Boma as well as the release of Ashia into the Reserve. They were then responsible for finding her almost every day for several weeks with the help of Wildlife Act who came to do some training on the telemetry with them and to ensure she was eating and looking after herself.
We had a new student Intern Coordinator join us – Ethan, we wish him the best with his studies.
We also had some new designs done for our T-shirts for sale in our UmPhafa intern shop – they include a cheetah and giraffe and are already selling like hot cakes.
Getting Social
We have got another 101 followers on Facebook and 53 in Instagram – we are continuing our posts of a couple each week to let everyone know what is happening on the Reserve. Favourite posts were about Tiny our intrepid explorer and of course the leopard and cheetah
