Tembe Elephant Park sits right at the top of South Africa, beneath the border with Mozambique.
The park was set up in the 1980s as a safe place for elephants from both South Africa and Mozambique. Many elephants had been killed or injured during the Mozambican civil war, and those that survived were left quite traumatized by the war and understandably aggressive towards people. The park was set up to both give the elephants a safe and peaceful home and to protect the local people from being attacked by them or by the lions living around the community.
The park is home to over 200 of the largest elephants in the world, including some of the largest 'tuskers' (A 'tusker' is an elephant whose tusks weigh over 100lbs - that's over 7 stone!) As well as elephants and lions, a lot of other species live within Tembe, including Africa's smallest antelope, the Suni. It is also home to a protected 'sand forest', which is an extremely rare type of forest home to some unique animals and plants.
Tembe is known as a 'Big 5' Park. The term 'Big 5' is used to refer to 5 species that most people hope to see if they go on safari - lion, leopard, elephant, (black) rhino and buffalo.
Our home at Tembe is in a fenced camp set up as a research centre. We sleep in mini chalets and have our kitchen, lounge and bathroom in a separate building. (This makes going to the toilet in the middle of the night very exciting - a head torch is essential!) I am sharing my chalet with Heidi from England and the other volunteers here are Alice (also from England), Sam (from Canada) and Helen (from Australia).
The two monitors here are Clinton, who monitors the lions and wild dogs and Leonard, who monitors the elephants.
Our days at Tembe start quite early! Here is a typical week day:
2.30am: Get up (ouch!)
3am - 9am: Lion / Wild Dog monitoring session with Clinton
10am - 1pm: Elephant Monitoring session with Leonard
1pm onwards: Time to relax, eat and get an early night!
At weekends, we have an extra lion / wild dog monitoring session in the evening, instead of an elephant session. (This is not because the elephants go away for the weekend, but because the monitor doesn't work on Saturdays and Sundays!)
As those of you who have shared a house with me will know, I'm not a huge fan of getting up in the morning...so this timetable has been a bit extreme for me!
But it is completely worth it to see the lions and the dogs and we always take coffee and tea with us in the jeep to help with the waking-up process.
Driving around the reserve is a little like being on a beach because of the sandy ground and there are areas of swamp, as well as areas that look like you would imagine a 'jungle' to look. The vegetation is really green and lush here, so it looks beautiful, especially with the sun shining on it. However it also provides very good camouflage for elephants who hide in the bushes and step out right in front of the car! They are very, very good at hiding.
As with the project at Zimanga, some of the lions and wild dogs at Tembe have collars fitted that emit an electronic signal, so we are able to find out whereabouts they are in the park using the telemetry and then follow the signal to hopefully find them!
We also look closely for tracks in the sand, which can tell us who has been walking where and when! When we find the wild dogs, it is important always to count them to make sure that the whole pack is present (there are 15 in the Tembe pack) and check they are all ok.
We can then enjoy watching them and noting their behaviour. The dogs here are quite used to seeing the Wildlife Act jeep and aren't worried by it, so they often come right up to it to give it/us a good sniff!
The elephants don't have collars at Tembe, but they are pretty easy to find as there are so many of them. When we do find them, we get as close as we can (without upsetting them), so that we can identify them.
Like the rhinos at the Zululand Rhino Reserve, elephants are also identified by their ears. But whereas rhinos have had notches made in their ears, elephants are identified by the natural shape of their ears as well as any tears or holes in them. This is much harder than identifying rhinos, but luckily Leo the elephant monitor knows all the elephants in the park really well, so often recognizes them without our 'help'!
With all the animals, we spend a lot of time taking pictures of them to form part of their identification kits and to use to identify them later if we haven't managed to when we are out.
Some people have asked me how safe it is sitting on the back of a jeep that has no roof and only bars for sides when there are lions or other wild animals very close by. The answer to that is that (hopefully) it is pretty safe as long as you act sensibly and follow the monitor's instructions.
Apparently lions and many other animals do not recognize people in the jeep as individual people or as potential prey, but just see the shape of the vehicle as one big animal. However, it is always important to stay as still and quiet as possible and not change the shape of the vehicle by standing up.* If someone does that, the lions will probably realize that we are separate, smaller animals in the vehicle, which might make them see us as prey. Which wouldn't be good, obviously!
*You will see in the photo of me doing the telemetry, that I am standing up. You need to do that to get a good signal, but as soon as you get a reasonably strong signal for or see a lion, leopard or elephant you sit down!
The monitors are very experienced at reading the behaviour of the animals they monitor, so are very skilled at avoiding potentially dangerous situations or getting us out of them if they appear to be developing.
My Tembe highlights:
- watching two young ambitious male lions stalk a rhino - they decided it was too big to kill in the end and gave up
- being chased in the jeep by the wild dogs who obviously just wanted to play!
Language - Zulu
Lion - Ibhubesi
Wild Dog -Inkentshane
Good night - Lala kahle
Interesting Fact:
The term 'Big 5' was created when people from all over the world used to come to Africa to shoot and kill wild animals as trophies. (Yuk) The 'Big 5' species were those that were the hardest for the hunters to kill, either because they were so hard to find, so big or so dangerous. So they became the ones that all hunters wanted to find and kill, as it showed they were very skilled and brave hunters.
I don't like using the term because of its links to hunting, but it is a very well used term.
More recently, the term 'Little 5' has started being used. The 'Little 5' are five much smaller creatures who share part of their name with the 'Big 5'.
The 'Little 5' are:
- Ant Lion (insect/fly)
- Leopard Tortoise
- Elephant Shrew
- Rhino Beetle
- Buffalo Weever (bird)
:-)
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