There are two monitors on the project - one main monitor and one photographic monitor. I am one of 4 volunteers - the others are Luke from England - a photographic volunteer, Marie from Sweden and John from England.
On this reserve, the main job is to monitor the wild dog pack as well as the two resident cheetah, Kalahari and Scarlet. However there are lots of other animals here too. The dogs and cheetah are monitored using telemetry. This means that they either have an electronic implant or a collar fitted to them, which emits a signal. We then use an aerial to listen for their signals, work out which direction the signal is strongest and then follow the signal until we find them. We leave the house at 4.30am every morning (!) to find them as the dogs wake up and get moving early.
There are six dogs in the pack and they are amazing to see close up. African Wild Dogs are also called 'Painted Dogs' which I prefer, as their coats are so pretty. There are only 450 wild dogs left in South Africa, which makes them 'critically endangered' and in need of close monitoring. Our job is to find the dogs every morning and every evening to make sure they are ok.
We also pay regular visits to Kalahari and Scarlet the cheetahs - to make sure all is ok with them too. Kalahari is very cool. For the fastest animal on land, he is surprisingly lazy and likes nothing better than snoozing under a tree! That's him in the photo. He seems to like sitting by the fence of the reserve which is next to quite a busy road and watching the traffic go past!
We got to watch a very special event a few days ago. A lappet-faced vulture chick (another very endangered species) was tagged on the reserve and fitted with a special backpack and we were invited to watch. The tag and backpack mean that the vulture can be identified and 'followed' by the signal the backpack sends out (a bit like with the dogs and cheetahs) The chick was taken out of the nest (using a cherry-picker!) weighed and measured and fitted with its backpack before being put back into the nest.
During our time at Zimanga, we also got the opportunity to take a mini-break to St Lucia - a small town on the coast. It was beautiful. We stayed two nights and booked on a hippo cruise and whale-watching trip. Whale-watching was AMAZING! We saw a young hump-back whale jump out of the water ('breach') over 60 times! Definitely one of the highlights of my trip so far. :-)
Language - Afrikaans
Elephant - Olifant
Mongoose - Muishond
Thank you - Dankie
Interesting Fact:
One of the main reasons that whales 'breach' is to exfoliate their skin!
:-)
x
