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I have been told that a brown hyena road kill in Pafuri section was reported in a KNP annual report of a number of years back .

Some more information:

"there are a few brown hyaenas that move in the foothills of the escarpment. Makalali has a decent population. Basically where spotted hyaenas have been eradicated I think it opens a gap for the browns. Machadodorp and the general Steenkampsberg have a healthy population while the Orighstad / Lydenburg area is a stronghold."

Johan

To try and settle the argument, my humble opinion:

Brown hyena have been surviving all accross the old Transvaal Lowveld area forever, end of story.

They are rare marginal visitors from what appears to be the predator-free foothills of the Drakensberg, as far as Kruger is concerned!

Similarly, I believe there is a struggling population in the far Northern area, also dependent upon predator populations.

Anything South of Orpen is rubbish, not because of the "den", but because I think the possible "corridor" provided by the explosion of game farms in the area has made it easier for them to approach.

As an interesting footnote:

Some Brown Hyena were collared in Rietvlei nature reserve in Pretoria, as to study their habits in the reserve. The collared animals soon disappeared.

One was spotted in Suikerbosrand near Heidelberg, another was found dead as a road kill somewhere in North West province and another just vanished!

This is typical behaviour, as the nomad males are the ones that do the mating, not the resident males.

To touch on the Orpen den that i mentioned previously...

I heard from a ranger at Ngala (timbavati) that a lone brown hyeana was spotted on a night drive in 2001. the sighting was recorded 10kms east of Ngala, and about 10kms north, which would make it 25-30kms west of the old border between KNP and Timbavati.
Concentrated lion and spotted hyeana populations aside, this record of the BH comes from a CC Africa ranger who has nothing to gain from spreading stories of a fictitious sighting.

I saw a brown-hyena in Kruger. It's about 13 years ago and was in the South - believe it or not! I even took a photo of him with my crappy camera at the time!

So - do not dismiss them yet although 13 years is long ago.

And here I thought we were discussing the Brown Hyena???

You've got more chance of seeing a brownie near to the Kgalagadi lions then the Kruger ones. I still need some convincing that they are in Kruger still.

I mailed Kruger about that, waiting for the answer to come in....

I stand to be corrected on this, but I believe the heaviest wild lion ever properly weighed in SA was the so-called Boyela male from Kruger. 254 kg on an empty stomach.

And to get back on topic, the heaviest recorded brown hyaena is apparently the Germiston male, which was caught there in the 90s and moved to Shamwari. 47 kg. A real skulker, despite his weight. It took considerable effort to locate him in Shamwari. He was lying flat dog and ears back under a bush, I almost stepped on the thing before I saw these two big eyes staring right up at me.

Johan

If you go 10 km north of Ngala, you end up just southeast of Kings Camp. Go 10 km due east from there, and you will find yourself on either Mananga or Abercrombie (probably the latter). As far as I am aware, commercial game viewing activities are not conducted on either of these farms, and the location is just over 14 km northeast of Ngala. I very much doubt that any CCAfrica ranger would have been driving around there, and certainly not at night. More likely to be hearsay.


It is actually just under two kilometers west of the KNP/Timbavati cutline (all this can easily be measured on Google Earth), and about 22½ km north by northeast of Orpen.

None of this rules out that a brown hyaena was actually seen there seven years ago, but neither does it support the contention that there is a den northwest of Orpen, or that brown hyaena are likely to be seen in that area.

Johan

I mailed with the experts, and brown hyeana have been seen in the KNP but these sightings are extremely rare. In September 2002 Rob Thompson saw one in the Pafuri section and in the early eighties Johan Oelofse saw one in the Woodlands section and Arrie Schreiber in the Vlakteplaas section. The Cyber tracker reports from 2004 till now have been checked and there have been no more recent sightings recorded.

So if you see one I think SANParks will definitely want to know when and where you spotted one.

johanrebel...

Scan that photo, wildheart! Not that I don't believe you, but it would probably be a first!

You know - I am going to look for it and I truly hope with my whole heart that I still have it. I still remember the picture clearly and know 100% that it was a brown-hyena. I was still very young at the time when I took it and honestly didn't know that it was a rare sighting. I still remember that I also took photos of giraffe and baboons and at a later stage of my life decided that it was real stupid photos with a cheap camera - which mean that the photos can be anywhere...

Is a brown - hyena and an aardwolf the same thing?