Namibia weblog 20065th June 2006 Michael writes....
We all travelled miles and it was a logistics nightmare for the transport organiser and treasurer (Michael) to work out how much mileage to pay everyone and who had to be picked up from where, especially as people were as slippery as amoebas and kept popping up in unexpected places and needing to be collected. Needless to say there were squeals of excitement to meet up again and we had a big celebratory dinner for thirty of us of chicken curry and dhal and rice (Rosanne catering manager) all sitting around an enormous fire swathed in blankets and funny hats under a steely winter full moon. We had all had the coldest of nights and were just thawing out, helped along by big mugs of tea and coffee and the brisk and sunny walk to the cheetah area the next morning. We stood outside a large enclosure and were told that these five particular cheetahs were the ambassadors for the Cheetah Conservation Fund, friendly, unlikely to attack us and willing to show off their high speed action. That said, we were guided into the field and stared about and were quite surprised to find that we were standing within meters of some cheetahs who were idle under trees in the morning sunshine. I felt quite awed by being so close without the usual protection of being in a car or behind bars. The two staff members set up a quadrant: four rotating points at four corners and a continuous thread running between them. Much like the method used for greyhound racing, a rag was tied to the thread and the rag hurtled along the ground looking very tantalizing and well worth chasing. The cheetahs lolled in the sun, totally indifferent to the gathered crowd and the busy rag.
One by one the cheetahs fell for the lure of the rag and showed the same pattern of first a clear eye contact, focus, tension, cautious approach and then a burst of speed to attack the fast moving rag. They knew it was a game, because sometime they would cry off at the last minute and lose interest and look nonchalantly at the rag. One looked excessively bored and chose to stretch itself on the termite mound close by, sharpening claws on the semi-concrete surface. It then climbed on to another mound and sat, king of the castle, to view the scene around it. We were the scene, and had been told to remain motionless so that we would not trigger an unwelcome interest in pouncing on us. I don’t think we felt afraid, but more were thrilled and awed to have this scene unfolding in front of us. The shape of these creatures in full motion is a spectacle. The huge chest muscles under its throat bulge with potential energy and the large ribcage must contain lungs large enough to power its typical burst of intense acceleration. The large chest tapers to the most slender lower belly and in contrast to this the thigh muscles are rippling with power.
So close, close enough to touch and stroke. I longed to reach through the bars and sink my fingers into the fur and to hear a purr. We had a series of presentations from the staff there. They are predictably passionate about the plight of the cheetahs. The cheetah situation is this: Numbers are dwindling globally, mostly because their natural habitat is shrinking as progress, man and his schemes encroach. Cheetahs cannot manage very successfully in large parks as they are bullied by the other large cats. Amazingly the largest number of cheetahs in the world live wild in the savannah and scrub bush mixture which is found widely in the northern central areas of Namibia. Here much of the land is divided into massive farms where farmers run herds of cattle and goats but also sometimes have game for tourists to enjoy and also have game who live there wild and free. If the cheetahs kill the wild hares, foxes, small creatures and little antelopes then everyone could be happy. The cheetahs have a huge territorial range and can cover hundreds of kilometers. They are solitary unless a mother is seen with small or teenage offspring. They communicate by spraying on a selected tree; a female in oestrus will hang around a play tree. They are quite wasteful with their kill, often just snatching a juicy haunch before running off. It is when the cheetah start to hunt and kill the cattle and goats or the expensively brought in game that the trouble starts. The farmers consider them as damaging vermin of no value and try to shoot them. I felt the same about foxes on our farm. The Cheetah Conservation Fund have a mission and approach it with missionary zeal. They want to educate the farmers out of their desire to wipe out the cheetah. Approach 1: persuade the farmers that they are fortunate to be guardians of an endangered species. It was fascinating to learn all this and to see how very endangered the cheetah is becoming. Etosha has only a very few, 80, i think. They were nearly extinct and now have a restricted gene pool which is leading to mutations, etc because of inbreeding. We later had a talk from a game farmer who is also a hunter (by bow) and who takes people out to stalk and shoot game as trophies. His perspective was totally different. He is as passionate about cheetahs as the conservationists at the CCF, but reckons that the farmers will never be persuaded to change their attitude unless the cheetah is seen to have some high monetary value. His suggestion is that the cheetah should be allowed to be shot as part of the trophy range for a high price and in limited numbers which will then prevent the farmers from shooting poisoning and trapping the cheetah in huge numbers which is what they are currently doing. If they have a high value then the farmers will worry less about the occasional loss of stock. We moved on to Etosha to meet the Research team and the Park Management personnel. We were met by a delightful researcher who explained that culling the elephants was not going to be necessary in Etosha (and this is what we were curious about) as there was a steady incidence of anthrax which kept the population in control. It also keeps the antelope numbers more or less steady, although he did seem to indicate that the current numbers of kudu are low because of rabies. It was quite a shock to think that Etosha is self-regulating in this way. The game farmer had his own views on managing numbers of game in Etosha as well. He had a big display collected over many years of all the medicinal grasses and plants which were once to be found in Etosha and now have disappeared. His view is that Etosha is fundamentally overgrazed. We were eager to hear what the Park Management team had to say, but they failed to turn up. It was fascinating to look around the Ecological Centre in Okuakuejo and see the assorted displays and information. There was a stuffed pangolin, plenty of reports about tagging and monitoring species and some hilarious pictures of cars which get stuck or skid off the road in the park. There was even a picture of a guy who was out of his car and setting up a tripod to take photos and a few meters behind him was a crouching lion! We were highly stimulated by all the information we garnered. There was time to take two game drives into the park and we were lucky enough to see some ostrich running away from a hyena, and two lions strolling through the long grass and then slinking down a little to stalk something we couldn't see. Two white rhino were grazing in the bushes and then we saw a black rhino and her calf.
More to follow...
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Global Education is a treat for all of us volunteers as it is where we get to arrange our own trip to find out more about a national issue. This time we had opted to investigate conservation and wildlife management in the big game parks and on small game farms. We booked in to camp at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in the central region of Namibia where the cheetah population is thrillingly high and where the highest numbers of cheetahs globally are found.
Suddenly one of the cheetahs was up and alert, looking at the rag and tensing itself, eyes narrowing. It moved forward in a stealthy low body pose and then shot forward to hurl itself after the rag, accelerating in front of our eyes to become the intense speed machine for which it is famed. It caught up with the rag, pounced, still moving forward fast, part of its energies trying to brake, part to keep propelling forward with its prey. A little cloud of dust rose around the tangle of paws and rag but the rag was victor and was pulled along out of the reach of the sprinter. The cheetah lurched forward and gathering speed, was soon closing on the rag and pounced. Its non retractable claws served as brakes and we watched as it twisted and gripped and secured its prize in another rising cloud of dust and action. The image of the wild creature in action was momentarily diffused as the cheetah was rewarded for its skill by an offering of a morsel of meat on a silver spoon taped to a very long bamboo stick. The cheetah, this time, scorned the meat reward and loped back to a shady place under the tree to watch the rag as it set off on another circuit.
It was awesome to be so close to this display of athletic speed and power. The few of us lucky to have already seen cheetah in the wild have never been so close to action to see the surge of speed, the panting, the sheer joy of this creature doing what it can do best: run, run, run. Later when we watched these same females, behind bars, eating large chunks of donkey it was similarly extraordinary to be watching close enough to hear the tongue rasping and the teeth chewing through the great lumps of flesh. They growled and snarled at each other when they perceived a threat to their meal: in the wild cheetahs are fast eaters, grabbing a snatch of a choice morsel before often being hustled away by a more powerful and dominant lion or hyena. One picked up its feast and carried it to a more secluded place.
We were visited by Sunday who is one of the guides from the nearby and high luxury camp, Ongave, and he brought Michael a birthday cake for his 60th birthday,: an elephant poo iced in chocolate and with candles! He acted as quizmaster for the highly competitive quiz we had written. So, it was an action packed and very interesting trip. Four days, two venues, full moon. The highlights were many and varied. For me, driving through the Waterberg flatlands under the mountain as dusk fell was fabulous. The plains were full of creatures grazing and the moon bathed the ground in a strange light. Seeing the giraffe carcass in the CCF coldroom....cheetah food for days and days to come. The candlelit campfire evenings with such a big group of assorted and crazy VSO friends. Rhino spotting...