SANParks.org Forums

The title is "South African Eden" - I have a copy that I have read 3 times (so far!) it's a great read. I will have a (fourth) go and see if I can find any facts/figures. Originally published in 1937,the edition I have was published by Collins in 1974 ISBN 0 00 216759 10.

Highly recommended if you can find a copy (mine came from a charity shop in UK and cost me 45 pence (R6.00) - money well spent!

A couple of Black rhino survived in the Gomondwane Bush south of Lower Sabie for a few years after the proclamation of the Park, very shy and only monitored through tracks.

They disappeared.

Using the fence.
Hey i found out somewhere that a wild dog pack has been killing animals on the boundery fence. I would just like to see if any one has seen such behaviour. Can be any predator.

Never seen it .. but have read in a book how a field guide that took a group out saw a pride of lions kill a kudu .. the kudu ran into the fence of the camp and so gave the lions a chance to catch it ...

Thats just wat im talking about keep them coming.

A few years ago we watched a pack of wild dogs hunting near the Matjulu waterhole (close to Berg-en-dal). The dogs chased a few impala down the slope towards the camp entrance. It seemed like a carefully planned attack, maybe one that they used with success in the past.

One dog almost chased an impala ram right into the camp - the thought at that moment was that maybe they use the grid at the entrance - an impala will most certainly brake some legs if it were to be stuck in the grid. Could this be a planned attack?

I still remember the entrance guards face when he saw the dog running towards the gate!! He actually tried to close the gate, and this scared the dog. Another dog chased an impala parallel to the fence, but we could not see the outcome of this chase.

Some of my friends had the same experience with wild dogs at *** Reserve where a pack of wild dogs deliberately chased an impala into the fence, before killing it.

I am therefore convinced that some predators use these fences as handy weapons.

I have also heard stories that lions use vehicles as cover when hunting. Maybe some of the forumites will have personal experience with this type of hunting?

[Edit - Name removed by W@H. Non SANParks Reserve]

Yes, I do to believe that the predators have adapted to their unnatural habitat (the cars and fencing) to their advantage well hunting.

I have to experienced a lioness using the cars to get right up to the prey. Don't know the outcome of that chase tho as it was getting way to dark to see.

Hi Forum Folks

To be honest, the original question is pretty difficult to answer with Kruger's rather chequered history. The Sabie Game Reserve was declared in 1898 but this was relatively small compared with what Kruger looks like now.

Former KNP director Dr Salmon Joubert will be launching his book at the KNP Birthday Celebration this week and I am sure this will answer many of these questions.

In the times of Stevenson-Hamilton and Wohluter, game census weren't done at all and the only records we have of species and their respective numbers were the rangers' notes in their diaries (a tradition that still happens to this day).

According to Dr Joubert's research, most of the major game species like rhino were wiped out in Kruger by the Rinderpest (a disease) in about 1880. In the book Neem Uit Die Verlede by Dr Tol Pienaar, there is a photograph of a ranger (sorry, can't remember who) pointing at a black rhino spoor and this must have been in the 1940s or 1950s (I need to go and read up on it again - my memory is fading fast).

Both rhino species were reintroduced from KZN in the 1960s and 1970s and the white rhino population growth since then in Kruger can be seen as a huge achievement for conservation. It started with a small group and has climbed to over 5 000 animals in a matter of 40 years!

Kind regards
KNP Spokesman

Yip me and my family saw a lion kill were they did use the cars to kill.

I have been told that the wild dog at up the road Shamwari use the fence almost entirely to catch all their Ostrich and Kudu prey. We will probably see that ourselves as my dad will soon be invited to go out on the jeeps as and when they have a group wanting specialised Wild Life Photo orientated Game drives which he will provide as part of his new venture. Apparently the fence is used about once a week as an aid in Wild dog Kills..

Animals can be quite intelligent - especially predators - and they often use the terrain to their advantage. Whether natural or man made! To survive you use any advantage you can get!

In certain reserves it is well known behaviour for animals such as cheetah to patrol the boundary fence in search of prey they can chase along the boundary road and corner against the fence.

Predators such as lion and especially wild dog often use human roads when they are hunting. They can move fast, there is no obstacles and there is less noise.

It is also known that lion often kill giraffe along tarred roads. This is probably because the giraffe may slip and fall when fleeing across a tarred road.

Some instances of using human infrastructure may be purely coincidence, but there is clear evidence that it often is intentional.

I have just returned from SA, where we spent 10 days in KNP, doing south to north, and another 7 days in KTP, where we roughly covered all the roads in the park, some more than once (e.g. the Aoub riverbed mostly).

We did not spot any leopard. We have seen leopard on many sighting boards on roads we have passed on the same day, but no luch for us (I realize that this must be similiar to the brown hyena sighting we had - you see the animal and it goes away for the rest of the day - unlike lions or cheetah who tend to sit and bask in the sun).

We did see alot of other predators - lions, hyena (including brown in KTP), cheetah, african wild cat (2 of them), civet (in Marakele), Genet (inside Skukuza camp), Porcupine (two of them on a Satara night drive), and many types of mongoose in KTP, dwarf mongoose in KNP, and suricat in KTP, so I'm pretty confident that we have at least a fair spotting abilities.

(No serval, honey badget and african wild dogs as well, coming to think of it, but you can't spot them all in one trip, can you?)

Is it typical not to see a single leopard in a 17 days trip in KNP/KTP, or were we just unlucky?

Elad.

I think you were extremely unlucky with leopard.

There are 2000+ of them in Kruger alone and that relates to 1 in every 10km's.

But typical leopard. You can step on one without knowing. If it doesn't want to be seen you won't see it, even if you try.

Leopard and Wild Dog are there to keep the tourists coming back and addict them . You have to put in a lot of patrolling .

My own theory is that predator sightings are in relation to the condition of the veld .
Leopard I have always seen more often when the veld is semi-drought in high summer . And then mostly crossing the road en-route to water .

I think you were very unlucky but don't read too much into the sightings boards.
Everyone likes to record their good sightings but a pin may be placed on a road where a leopard has been glimpsed for 10 seconds. Far be it from me to cast doubt on the authenticity of these boards but on a trip two weeks ago to KNP, we breakfasted at Lower Sabie and someone had put a leopard pin up at Shingwedzi under 'today'.
Perhaps they had a private helicopter.