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Reserve Events

  This morning the team were lucky enough to join with an elephant relocation operation. This particular bull elephant broke onto Pidwa a few weeks ago and has been having all sorts of fun breaking fences and causing havoc. Today it was time to return him home, a combined organisation effort between the Greater Makalali & Pidwa Nature Reserve and 'Elephant's Alive'. The Askari team were able to locate the bull first thing this morning and give coordinates to the helicopter pilot. Flying low to the elephant a tranquiliser dart is shot by a vet in the helicopter. The skilled pilot then uses the aircraft to steer the elephant towards a road. This bull fell about 50 metres into the bush...

10 February, 2016 /

This week the whole team got to sleep out in the wild with only a camp fire illuminating the surrounding darkness. With the clearest blue sky and not a cloud in sight we knew we were in for a treat come nightfall. We chose to head towards the Selati River where water has not flown all dry season, leaving only soft sand and rocky boulders. The team set up camp and built a fire for us all to sit around in the evening. We then paired up and played some ‘beach cricket’ and soon discovered the team had some spider-man like reactions when it came to catching in the field! After Ed and I claimed a convincing victory we all set...

08 November, 2015 /

“Lions have been sighted, 60 seconds and we’re off” We were fortunate enough to receive a call to a lion sighting not to far from Askari house and we all managed to drop our morning routines at get there in time. We found 2 lionesses sitting in beautiful sunrise lighting that illuminated their golden coated fur. A sudden shift in wind direction and a blanket of cloud over the rising sun caused a change in the lions mood, they had a kill in sight. Just 50 metres away from where they both lay were a zeal of zebra moving towards them. Only until what seemed the dying seconds before they were going to pounce did the zebra sense danger and gallop away...

22 October, 2015 /

This mornings plan for the team was to collect hundreds of rocks from the dried up river bed to repair roads throughout the reserve. Once we had filled up a whole bucky (car with an open back) of rocks we drove to the damaged sites. Roads often form tyre channels during the wet seasons due to the water loosening the surrounding earth. So whilst the ground is dry, we fill the tyre channels with rocks so that vehicles can continue to use the roads safely without ruining their steering columns!   After one bucky load of rocks and countless numbers of trees removed from the roads we received a message from the radio that Elephants had been spotted crossing a region of...

07 October, 2015 /

Spotted hyena, cheetah and lion were all encountered this week with each giving an incredibly unique sighting. Our first lion encounter occurred along a dried river bed where a male and female seemed to be relaxing after what looked like a large meal they’d devoured not that long before we discovered them. Similar to that of our cheetah encounter who was mid way through devouring its kill. Due to their low level status as predators, after every mouthful the cheetah lifted its head out of the carcass to check if any intruders were planning on stealing its food. Cheetahs use a large amount of energy when hunting and can easily suffer from exhaustion and eventually death unless monitored. Therefore they are prone...

19 March, 2015 /
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