Wildlife Corridors: the migrating herds need them more than ever

When Tarangire National Park was gazetted, back in 1970, few foresaw the looming population explosion, or the farms that would spring up in what were then, important wet-season dispersal areas for migrating herbivores.


That has now come to pass. Populations of migrants such as wildebeest and zebra have crashed, largely cut off from their ancestral calving grounds.

AWF (African Wildlife Foundation) recognised the need to protect important game corridors outside National Parks, in order to keep the old migration routes open. An important (if controversial) move was the purchase of Manyara Ranch, a 44,000-acre chunk of land occupying a central position in the vital Kwakuchinja Corridor, connecting Tarangire to the nearby Lake Manyara National Park.
http://www.awf.org/content/solution/detail/3505/

This is an attempt to achieve that holy grail of wildlife management – involving the local community in a sustainable conservation model, to the benefit of both people and wildlife. I wish them well. National Parks in Tanzania are, on the whole, in pretty good shape. Sure, there are inevitable issues, such as poaching. But I think most people are reasonably confident that, in 50 years or so, the parks will still be wildlife havens, providing enormous enjoyment to many visitors – and vital dollars to the national coffers. The future for wildlife outside the protected areas is much less certain.

There are similar projects afoot elsewhere in the region: north of the border, in Kenya, the Northern Rangelands Trust works closely with local communities, helping them to set up conservancies with fancy lodges so they can benefit from their wildlife resources. So far, NRT is involved in projects involving 15 communities, thereby helping to conserve hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in northern Kenya.
http://nrt-kenya.org/home.html

Here in Tanzania, high flying hedge fund manager and hunter / conservationist Paul Tudor Jones has been investing heavily in the Grumeti Game Reserve and Ikorongo Game Control Area, two degraded hunting blocks, lying just outside the western boundary of Serengeti National Park. The project has had its ups and downs but the proof of the pudding is in the eating: a few years ago, you would have been hard pushed to find much game in this area, so bad was the poaching. Now, it offers first-class viewing, with plenty of important species such as cats and elephant as well as hordes of plains game. Importantly, it now serves as an excellent buffer for the western Serengeti, which has historically suffered from massive poaching and wood cutting. And their conservation arm is leading the charge in the planned re-introduction of black rhino into the Serengeti ecosystem, to bolster the existing population.
http://www.lexdon.com/article/Grumeti_Reserves_and_Paul_Tudor/49004.html

What these projects have in common is the recognition that, outside the parks, successful conservation requires involving local communities and relies on the profit motive: I will protect that which benefits me. In other words, enlightened self-interest.

Contrast this with the situation elsewhere, in areas beyond park boundaries and lacking free spending conservation-minded billionaires: wildlife numbers are plummeting; the mechanisms and methods employed by wildlife authorities are, on the whole, outdated and simply not up to the task of conservation in the modern era. A lot of stick and not much carrot. And did I mention leaden bureaucracy?

Official policy has it that wildlife is a tremendous resource, a precious source of revenue, something to be cherished and nurtured – a blessing. The reality on the ground is somewhat messier: wild animals eat your crops and livestock; they are a threat to kids on their way to school, or women collecting firewood; and it is virtually impossible to make money from this ‘resource’, thanks to the convoluted and expensive bureaucratic procedures mentioned above. A neat example: a friend running a local NGO recently told me that the cost of creating a WMA (Wildlife Management Area) which is the legal process for Villages to regain control over their natural resources and develop commercial community toursim projects, could run up to a quarter of a million US dollars. Villages in rural Tanzania don’t HAVE that kind of money, which means that conservation can only happen in conjunction with large NGO’s with deep pockets.

Which means, once again, dependence on foreign aid…
What it really means is that wild animals are only really of any value dead, cut up into pieces and sold off to townies as bush meat.

So bring on the new private initiatives: if the game is to survive outside the parks, we will need this kind of approach.

Migration time again

And so to Serengeti once more, where the green flush brought on by heavy rain a few days earlier was already beginning to wilt under the onslaught of strong winds and the January sun. Wildebeest were still around in good numbers but already heading west in great, looping, school-crocodile lines.  

Wildebeest on the move

Vultures and Golden Jackal on a kill

We're having a La Nina year again, so it is pretty dry.  Isn't that ironic, with stories of catastrophic flooding in Australia, Brazil and elsewhere?

The first babies were already staggering around on wobbly legs - and we were lucky enough to witness a gazelle birth.  

Grant's Gazelle with lamb

Beginning of January is very early for wildebeest to be dropping their calves.  Were these Ngorongoro animals (they tend to calf earlier than their Serengeti cousins)?  Or just unlucky early arrivals?  Either way, their future looks bleak. The Serengeti wildebeest breeding strategy involves flooding the market: nearly half a million calves born in the course of a few weeks.  With the best will in the world, the predators can't hope to keep up with those numbers.  But the few early arrivals will be real targets. A case of the early worms being caught by the  bird...

The real stars, I think, were the cats: Ndutu was pumping, with cheetah highly visible.  We spent a lovely couple of hours watching a mother with her 3 cubs, all obviously hungry.  She ignored a long straggle of wildebeest and zebra filing past – they were all too big for her to handle on her own, she dare not risk damage from a flailing hoof or horn.

She watched a distant herd of gazelle for a while.  Then she started towards them, in classic stalk mode to begin with, but soon abandoning any pretence of stealth to run at just under full throttle to catch something that we had all missed: a suckling lamb.  

Cheetah with kill


We waited as the cubs went to join her, but oddly, they didn’t feed.   Why would a family of hungry cheetah NOT eat?  It's agonising, because cheetah are such vulnerable animals, often losing their hard-earned prey to competitors, especially spotted hyena.  Every hunt (often unsuccessful) involves enormous expenditure of energy and  failure to eat can slow her down on the next hunt, if she's just not getting enough calories.  And with young to feed, she needs to hunt that much more often.


We couldn't help wondering whether they were just too stressed.   She was quite easy to find and several vehicles approached far too close, despite the cubs showing considerable agitation. In one instance, cars even blocked her way as she set out to hunt.


To my relief I heard from a friend that she killed again the next day, an impala – and this time they all fed happily.  Phew!

Not far away was a pride of fat-bellied lions, lounging in the shade. 2 cubs were squabbling over access to a nipple; the mother too full and lazy to swat them into good behaviour.

Nursing lion cubs

One of our most intriguing sightings was of a Fiscal Shrike feasting on a frog it had just caught.  It started off by impaling the unfortunate amphibian on a large thorn, and then tore off bite-sized pieces, which it swallowed with obvious gusto.  This is what earns them the nickname of ‘butcher birds’, but I’ve never seen them in action before. There’s always something new going on out there…


En route to Kakesio, a flash of crimson and green: a Narina Trogon!  He sat and posed for us beautifully, before flitting away like a gorgeous butterfly.  Now, some of you already know what I'm on about but for the non-twtichers among you, trogons are birds found throughout the tropics and they are always spectacular.  Perhaps the most famous is the Quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala.  They have a wide gape, reputedly enabling them to swallow small wild avocados - whole.

A couple of days later, over in the western Serengeti, we watched in awe as a herd of 300 elephant came out of the bush and ambled over to splash and play in a waterhole not far from where we sat.  Baby elephant, in particular, are a joy to watch at water. They have so much fun, playing with complete abandon while their mothers stand sedately nearby, squirting occasional trunkfuls of cooling mud over their bodies.

Elephants enjoying a bath


We also caught a rare glimpse of a black rhino, part of an ongoing project to re-introduce these prehistoric behemoths and bolster Serengeti numbers.  Rhinos were poached in their thousands in the 70's and 80's.  Rhino horn is prized for its supposed medicinal value in the Far East (presumably marketed under the catchy phrase 'Nothing makes you horny like horn') and also in the making of dagger handles, the must-have coming-of-age accessory for young Yemeni men.

The endangered Black Rhino

In a tree, later in the day, we found this lion cub, looking as if he had just enjoyed his Christmas dinner.  Not elegant, perhaps, but whatever works.

Overindulgent lion cub

We finished off the safari in style - an evening following a pair of mating leopards.  The male was relaxed but his young consort was very wary of safari vehicles.  She would hide in a bush, then sneak over to join the male for a brief copulation, before fleeing to safety 100 yards away. The whole performance was repeated every 10 minutes or so until the failing light forced us back to the lodge and our waiting G&T’s. 

When the going gets tough…

- - - - - 

Bat-eared Fox, Ndutu

Colobus Monkey, Grumeti Reserve

Greater Flamingo, Lake Ndutu

New Year Post! (Finally...)

Happy New Year to one and all! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, with family and friends.  Our holidays involved a trip to Singapore, where Jules' eldest brother kindly hosted a houseful of siblings and assorted hangers on  (That would be me).  It was a festive time, so festive in fact that all my clothes appear to have shrunk...

Singapore. Ah, where to begin?

First impressions: it felt odd to be in a tropical city that works.  As you drive through the streets, everything – the heat & damp, humidity, the luxuriant vegetation, the sudden big-drop rainstorms – tell you that, yes, you’re still in the tropics.  At the same time, the meticulous signage, the gleaming new tar of the roads, the driving decorum and the very kempt verges tell of a more middle-aged, western capital. Oh, and the stern warnings on the subway against the carrying of durian, a popular local fruit with a foul smell but (apparently) delicious to eat. We committed this particular offence, by mistake, one day and couldn’t figure out why the whole city appeared to be shrouded in sulphurous fumes… until we got home and opened Jules’ back pack.  We had been carrying around our own private cloud of noxious durian-stench for most of the day.  So I’m lucky not to be writing this from a gleaming cell in Singapore Central Police Station.

Singapore is full of contradictions. Beautiful trees lining the avenues but not much life flitting about in them (thanks, presumably, to the mosquito-control spraying programme). Busy ethnic quarters, complete with colourful temples, mosques and bustling street markets but all curiously ungrungy.  The red light district was like a genteel suburb… Then gleaming tower blocks looming over them all.  

Shop houses: A Singapore feature

 

In other words, it’s nothing like Dar or Nairobi or even funny little Arusha.

A few highlights: if you have small kids with you, definitely take them on a Night Safari.  The kids are merely a smokescreen, of course – it’s actually a great night out for your inner child!  Most animals live free in large open spaces; you get the impression that they all range freely throughout the park but obviously most of them are discreetly fenced off. Most of the cages are large and spacious, with plenty of room to move about.  You can hop off the guided tour and wander off to take in some of the 'off piste' highlights.  The whole is given a nice touch of mystery by the use of soft lighting, giving the silvery effect of a moonlit night.

Mirth as a flying fox, arching its back to avoid soiling its pristine belly fur. Ollie (nephew) narrowly avoided being dumped on. Not long after, a Flying Squirrel launched itself off a branch and swept magnificently over Jules’ head… well, it actually would have smacked the side of her face if she hadn’t ducked.  It clearly didn’t like the way she was eyeing up the succulent bunch of leaves it was feeding on.

It then sat and chattered at me in a possessive rage.  It's a curious creature: exactly like an oversized standard-issue squirrel, complete with bushy tail curved over its back - but with the addition of ankle-to-wrist membranes that it can deploy to glide from tree to tree.

The whole outing was a neat reminder of the important role that a good zoo can play in educating and inspiring lots of ordinary folk, many of whom will never get to experience wildlife in its natural setting nor appreciate the imperitive of conservation.

My new official fave emporium, anywhere: Mustapha’s, in Little India.  Billed as a spice shop but much, much more - the size of a decent department store, but inside, all the hustle and bustle of  Istanbul's Grand Bazaar; electronics, jewellery, a cavernous drugstore, spices (there were entire aisles devoted entirely to different kinds of coriander!) and a greengrocery laden with exotica, fresh produce from every corner.  (Warning: DON’T go to Singapore if you’re worried about food miles; virtually everything comes from elsewhere).

Dragon Fruit

The Botanical Garden:  we only scratched the surface here, as we ran out of time with the Orchid Garden, a bewitching array of weird forms and luxuriant colour.  I can testify to the fact that you can see too many orchids – the brain goes on strike, rebels against having to process the riot of new information. You get a sort of orchid hangover after an hour or so… but this didn't prevent Jules from falling for their decadent charm: we are now the proud parents of four tiny orchids (orchidettes?), potted up and reverently sprayed with a fine mist of water twice a day.

 

Orchard Road, Singapore’s answer to Oxford Street, was a bit of an eye-popper for us African hicks.  The Singaporeans have taken the concept of the Mall to a whole new level.  Not only is the street lined with these opulent secular temples but once you venture into the twilight zone, you can easily access the next one without surfacing again for air.   They are all inter-connected: a shopping-maze-warren, making it as easy as possible to part with your cash with minimal heartache.  It was all very dizzy-making.  Again, about as unlike the typical Arusha shopping experience as you could wish! 

Thai Silks

And the food.   There was a bewildering array of foods on offer, particularly specialities from SE Asia, India and Sri Lanka.  And it was all delicious, whether from a street vendor or a posh restaurant or the food courts that dot every mall.

It was lovely to get back home again, just in time for the New Year.  We almost made it to midnight… the spirit was willing, but the flesh was still in the wrong time zone.

----

Breakfast in Katavi; Nights in Paradise; Days with the Relatives.

Before the sun was too high in the sky, we stopped for breakfast on the banks of the Katuma, in Katavi National Park, with hippo and crocs scattered decoratively along the shoreline. As we munched our bacon & egg sandwiches, a monitor lizard came along on the far side and started to dig in the sand. It took him a while, as he had to keep stopping to scan for danger - hungry eagles on high, angry female crocodiles below and even more perils courtesy of his immagination - but finally, he came up with a whitish crocodile egg in his mouth. He proceeded to manipulate it carefully, puncturing the shell. (Reptile eggs are not hard like a bird's, more a papery consistency). He then gently squeezed out the contents into his mouth so as not to waste a drop of the valuable protein fix, then finished up by swallowing the shell as well for a well-rounded meal. After that had gurgled down, he came back for more........and more.....and more - 6 times in fact!

We estimated that each egg was about the size of 2 to 3 hen's eggs, so he ate the equivalent of about 18 eggs, shells and all... Not a bad meal for a 4-foot reptile weighing about 20 pounds! And we had just one fried egg and a couple of rashers of bacon in our sandwhiches.

That evening we watched a fight between 2 male hippos, a real clash of the titans. The result was never really in doubt, as one animal was clearly bigger and heavier, with longer tusks, but it was nevertheless an awe-inspiring sight. A short way on, we came across a bull that had lost such a fight, with a deep, slashing wound across his rear thigh; the skin and muscle yawning open. Hippo sweat contains an antibiotic - a useful adaptation or wounds like this would often prove fatal.

Early next morning, we set off for Paradise, for a night’s fly camping. Absolutely incredible, the best I have ever had, I think. We had a pod of hippos right by us - honking, splashing, yawning, dozing - and there was game dotted all over the plain, including a herd of buffalo a thousand strong. On our evening walk, we stood stock still as a herd of waterbuck passed by us, oblivious to our presence as long as there was no movement or sound. They finally picked up our scent us as they pass downwind, whipping round to stare at us before taking flight.

My night’s sleep was punctuated, at regular intervals, by the roars of fighting hippo bulls and distant lion. Honestly, who do I sue?

Mahale was amazing, as ever. The chimps were making almost daily visits to camp to gorge on False Waterberry fruits on a tree by the kitchen. Talk about lazy chimping... In the forest, we got to see babies playing, endlessly climbing vines and branches, trying to dislodge each other. I’m King of the… what? Swing? A female with an infant approached one of the big males, grinning and calling in fear and submission. He reached out a lordly hand to reassure her and they settled down to a long grooming session. All around us in the forest, chimps were calling back and forth (I’m here, where are you? OI! STOP BULLYING MY BABY!! Nice figs these – here, try one..).

We had fabulous kayaking on the smooth, crystal-clear lake this morning, in the golden light of dawn, with hippos honking way off. Can it get any better than this? Well, just maybe - but not often.

Mountain Magic...

It’s a bit of a cliché to say that gazing into the eyes of a wild gorilla, at close range, is a wildlife experience like no other.  But a good cliché works for a reason..... I'm afraid you’re going to have to bear with me on this one and forgive me also, if I can’t help chucking in a few superlatives along the way.  These animals are impressive and awe-inspiring.

Part of their mystique, of course, is that they’re just so rare: there are only seven hundred or so Mountain Gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei ) left in the wild and they cling to a precarious existence on just two small patches of prime real estate a few kilometres apart - the Virunga Mountains and the Bwindi massif, along the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It doesn’t help that this enormously fertile, well-watered corner of Africa supports a huge human population, all desperate for access to more farmland; nor that the volcano range that supports the rich forest is still active - the last erruption was only a handful of years ago, when the main street of Goma was submerged in meters of lava, covering cars, trucks, shop fronts and destroying livlihoods; nor that it lies at the epicentre of a region that has frequently been shaken by episodes of violence of an almost unimaginable savagery over the last few decades.  Think Idi Amin, the Rwanda genocide, the decades long ongoing conflict in the DRC… all in all, it’s a wonder that any gorillas have managed to survive at all.

But survive they miraculously have, and to spend a precious hour with these gentle giants, munching peacefully on wild celery and other forest delicacies, leaves you with a feeling that all is somehow well with the world.  Not forgetting the periodic reminders of the pitfalls of a high fibre diet, which affects the big apes as much as it does us.

Let’s go back to those eyes for a minute.  A gorilla’s eyes are a deep, warm brown, hinting at ancient knowledge and infinite patience.  They have no problem with staring straight back at you, as if curious about you and your place in their world.  That is the moment you experience the frisson of subliminal connection that makes your time with the gorillas so precious and unique.

They have an extraordinary presence.  It is something to do with their size, their impressive muscles together with an aura of serene gentleness.

Time spent with gorillas is utterly unlike chimp viewing.  Due to their social structure, omnivorous diet and a bunch of other factors, chimps are entertaining but unpredictable animals, capable of violent displays, intense play, tool-making techniques, cooperative hunting,  political intrigue worthy of a medieval court and an awful lot of noise. An hour with them can leave your ears ringing, your heat pumping and a crick in the neck. While gorillas feel … benign.  Don’t mess with their babies and be respectful of a silverback, obviously,  but as long as you don’t cross these boundaries, a gorilla encounter is a peaceable affair. If that makes it sound like a let-down in comaprison, let me assure you it is not.

I could go on gushing for ages in the same vein, but I should probably stop here.  Let me finish with a few scene-setters to give you a taste of what that day felt like.

The hike to the forest from the lodge – holy macaroni, is this a good idea??  A steep 2000 foot descent to the forest edge far below, with the knowledge that what goes down must, inevitably, and with much puffing and sweating, come up again.  (It turns out to be surprisingly easy – our guide does a great job of setting an easy pace).

An immature animal, playing in a tree: he considers us with such a serious, owlish expression, that it is difficult not to laugh.  I feel he would be offended though.  He plays just as seriously, turning a stately somersault and then looking around, to see who noticed, as if he is taking part in a scientific study of play.

A silverback, half-hidden among the leaves, his eyes in shadow – what is he thinking?  We can just make out his vast bulk through the foliage but the physical sense of his presence is overwhelming.

The family all bedded down for a late-morning snooze in a forest clearing.

The guide calls time, and we turn and start the homeward trudge.  Just then, a silverback comes out onto the trail (‘Everybody off the trail, let him pass!') and he pauses for a long moment, before knuckling his way off into the forest, allowing us a last unscripted look at the monarch of this magical forest.

*****

 A sad footnote to this post concerns the Batwa (singular: Mutwa) Pygmies.  The Batwa are the original inhabitants of the Central African forests and, for possibly half a million years before the coming of the Bantu peoples and then the white man, lived in relative harmony with their surrounds.  Over the last 70-80 years, however, they have become more and more marginalised in Uganda, as forests have been steadily cut down to make way for agriculture and human expansion.  In 1991, the Mgahinga and Bwindi National Parks were gazetted, as part of a trans-national effort to protect the remaining Mountain Gorillas.  One of the stipulations of international donors was that everyone living within the parks should be evicted, at a stroke reducing the Batwa to squatters on their ancestral land, their traditional hunter / gatherer way of life criminalised.  A classic example of how well-intentioned conservation can destroy as much as it can save, if the wider eco-picture is not always in the forefront of policy making.  The government has set aside a parcel of land for the community near Bwindi. Unbelieveably, this is a mere 35 acres all told.  Here, they are trying to integrate into modern Ugandan life; the Mutwa guide tells how they are growing crops, building modern huts with tin roofs and sending their kids to school.  They earn revenue from ‘cultural visits’ like ours. The women and children put on a dance and demonstrate skills like lighting a fire with fire sticks.  It all sounds rather wonderful and yet feels merely worthy and slightly dispiriting.  I can’t help wondering how long this community will continue in any real sense – their forest way of life was central to their existence and now they are cut off from that.  Like aboriginal peoples everywhere, the Batwa struggle to integrate: levels of alcoholism and drug abuse are rampant and they scrape a living working for a pittance on the farms of others.

Maybe this whole process is inevitable: the displacement of the world’s original inhabitants, our earliest common ancestors, by technologically-superior peoples.  But it grates - in this time of environmental hand-wringing, the people with the lightest ecological footprint are the ones who are most thoroughly disenfranchised.

Silale Swamp, Tarangire and the Northern Serengeti

Silale has been providing great elephant viewing of late. It's gorgeous - a vivid, emerald swathe in the monochrome world of the dry, sepia season. In the heat of the midday sun, herds of elephant head to the water to drink and cool off. If you time it right, you can get amazingly close views.

We managed it perfectly a couple of weeks ago, waiting patiently as a herd moved down. They stopped, indecisive when they saw us but then moved on, reassured - a swirl of huge, grey bodies around the car, almost touching us, enfolding our small group in their herd. A cathedral moment for all of us.

Yesterday, we were in the same situation but with a totally different outcome. As soon as the herd spotted us, the elephants milled around in agitation, heads and tails up and ears held out. The matriarch ran at us for a few paces, shook her great head and trumpeted her displeasure. Obviously, this herd has had bad experiences with people and cars. What a terrific display though!

Lots of action on the Mara River in the northern Serengeti as well, with many crossings going both ways. (Why some pundits still think of the Migration as a geographically precise, circular motion, only crossing into Kenya between Aug and Sept and crossing back in October and November, I do not know).

We watched with sick fascination as a large croc cruised up to the swimming animals, nuzzled a couple speculatively before grabbing one. It held tight for 20 minutes or so, until the struggling stopped.....and then just opened its fearsome jaws and let it go. The carcass drifted slowly down with the current - what a waste! I imagine the croc was full after weeks of fresh wildebeest served up on a watery platter at each crossing but could not resist the sight of all that easy meat. Someone will have reaped the benefits of this windfall further downstream.

Tanzanian Tit bits

Jules watched a fascinating spectacle recently - in the kitchen garden. While collecting some lunch salad, she noticed lots of unusual slugs balanced right on the ends of leaves and branches of the garden. Each large bunch of parsley and rocket had about 12 to 15 large, flat, brown slugs with a white stripe down their backs. We had never seen these slugs before, being much more used to the grey, slimy, unappetizing ones that haunt any vegetable patch. Then she realised that the whole garden was seething with literally hundreds of thousands of siafu - soldier ants. The slugs were making a desperate attempt to escape these voracious predators, but in vain. The ants swarmed all over them and pulled them down to the ground and killed them, feeding on the corpses. Jules was fortunately more successful at evading the little blighters.

The Siafu carried on their bonanza for about 24 hours and sure enough, we had no slug problem after that – nor termite problem, nor aphid problem. A somewhat violent, but effective, natural pest control.


Siafu live in colonies of millions. They are so efficient at what they do that they often have to move the colony, having eaten or displaced all suitable prey in the vicinity.

On a different scale, the ellies have been very much around of late. The locals say its because the forest up higher is full of siafu on the move, and elephant hate being bitten in the trunk by them, so they move down to the drier areas. I suspect the reason is actually more prosaic - the maize crops are ripe in the fields. Too much temptation. One of our bigger acacias is now in permanent horizontal mode as a direct result.
However, it is true that elephant do not like getting the ants on the delicate end of their trunk. Research just published recently suggested that the ants set off in agressive self defense and  focus in on the mucus at the end of the trunk.....and then bite.