As you have all probably heard, it has been extremely dry in the Addo area this year. We have to date only received 90mm of rain, quite a lot less than our expected 350mm. In light of this, we made a management decision to relieve the heavy grazing pressure on Intsomi by removing a few key species. We caught and sold 20 zebra, 15 Blue wildebeest and a white rhino bull.

 

The most eventful of these capture programs was of course the capture and relocation of a white rhino bull. He was earmarked to be moved to another game reserve near Johannesburg. But first the fun part, catching him! The capture team, Intsomi rangers and three game viewers with some very excited guests met at the Intsomi headquarters at 07:30am after a quick briefing the helicopter took off and we started heading off in the direction of where the rhino were last seen. The rhino were spotted from the air in no time and then the games began. Firstly, the right animal had to be targeted and darted. The rhino we were after was one of three running together. As the rhino ran out into a clearing, the chopper stooped down and the vet darted the youngest of the three rhino. We were all so excited and ready to rush in, but we had to wait the 6 – 8 minutes it takes for the immobilizing drug to take effect. Suddenly our plan started changing quite rapidly as the darted rhino broke away from the other two and started heading into thick bush. When the ground crew finally caught up with him he had wedged himself between two spike thorn bushes. This made getting to him rather difficult. When we eventually got to the now very drowsy rhino we blind folded him and attached a rope to his horn and one to his back leg. The only problem now was that we had to turn him around in a space smaller than a phone booth! Everything was going smoothly until too much pressure was applied to the brake rope causing the rhino to topple over onto Angus (head of the game capture team). Thank goodness Angus is a pretty solid guy and managed to get out from underneath the rhino with only a few scratches and a twisted ankle.  Finally, after getting the rhino to do an about turn we walked him slowly towards his waiting crate. We loaded him into the crate gave him a long acting tranquilizer and wave our goodbyes. Another very successful capture operation.

 

Jed Bird

Intsomi Reserve Manager

News from Jed

08 January 2009

Wilderness

05 January 2009

Rhino Capturing

30 October 2008

GUIDE'S DIARY - Jed Bird

16 July 2008