Bumi Hills Anti-poaching Unit Quaterly Round Up January-March 2023

Our rangers have been extremely busy patrolling, as ever, as can be seen from the attached stats for January, February and March – 129 patrols over 5552 km, deactivating 101 snares and uplifting over 14 km of illegal monofilament netting from the waters of the Lake. There is literally no respite from patrolling – it has to happen, day after day, both on land and on water, if we have any hope at all of keeping control of our area. Our scouts work for 42 days at a stretch, after which they have two weeks’ time-off, with what we call an ‘Admin
Day’ included whilst on duty over this period, when a wellearned ‘day off’ is awarded. It’s not an easy job and we salute them.

Well, that was an action packed couple of months!
From brand new Landcruisers to boats stuck in a flash flood, from a new baby
banded mongoose for rewilding, to lion collaring, the first three months of 2023 have literally rushed past, much like these waves on a stormy day on the Lake.

Autumn is creeping stealthily in, after a rather patchy rainy season – we have
reluctantly accepted that the rains have come to an end now, with our final season total a rather sad 646 mm – the lowest for many, many years. Weather patterns are upside down all over the world, and Zimbabwe is no exception – it did become a bit annoying hearing our colleagues (collectively known as the ‘Bamba Zonke’ (to take it all)) on the Highveld complaining about too much rain, though, it must be said! However, for now the grass is still thick and green and the trees still well covered with foliage – but later in the year after winter, we may see some weaker animals battling to maintain condition, as the available food gradually withers under the intense sunshine.

In happier news – a year ago, the team from Animal Survival International visited us, and, as they were leaving, they said “What do you need? What can we help you with?” Jokingly, (or so we thought) we said “a new Landcruiser”. Consider it done, they said. And lo and behold, they were true to their word, and in February we took delivery from ASI of a brand new Landcruiser, which replaced our exhausted 35 year old vehicle. This is a huge donation, and we are incredibly grateful to this wonderful team, who continue to support us in any way they can. The new cruiser, named ‘Jeremiah’ sadly received its first scratch on its gleaming paintwork a week or so, resulting in much lamenting…

We worked on two animals recently – from the very small and helpless to the very large and most definitely not so helpless!
The first one was a young bushbuck, who had a piece of pvc plastic piping tightly caught about his ankle, which must have been extremely painful and would have resulted in the occlusion of blood vessels to his foot if not treated. We were able to remove it and set the little creature free – we like to think that the backwards look he gave us and the flick of his tail as he slipped back into the forested Musango Island was one of thanks.

And the very large was a fully grown lion! A bit of a back story here – lions have battled to get a foothold in the Bumi Hills area, as we are surrounded by hunting and communal areas – with lion on quota, there is always the
risk of one being hunted – we have lost three male lions over the past ten years in this manner. If they stray into the communal areas, where domestic livestock roam freely, the temptation to hunt these docile animals becomes too much, especially when a lioness is hunting on her own and feeding cubs, as has occurred a couple of years ago. ‘Luyando’, the lioness, was left on her own to bring up cubs after her pride was virtually wiped out by human induced mortality in one form or another. She then turned to domestic 
cattle/goats/donkeys, as it was so much easier for her to hunt these than wild game. Unfortunately, her daughters have been taught to do the same thing, and recently two of her descendants, ‘Rakesh’ and ‘Najaam’, who, once they had become habitual livestock killers, were destroyed by the relevant local authorities. We attach the full report on this terrible loss.

And finally, introducing "Percy"