Cheetahs, Predators, Wildlife

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Trip Start Jun 04, 2009 Previous
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  Otjiwarongo, Namibia
Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Cheetahs and Predators.

It’s been so incredibly busy, partly because of the work I’m here to do and partly self-imposed. I mean I’m in Namibia, in my own little “Dennis dream world”, how can I NOT use every single moment getting about as close as is humanly possible to cheetahs, watching the wildlife, interacting with the people, watching amazing sunsets over the African bush, and of course enjoying a few G&Ts. But I have ripped myself away to try and write a blog entry. Oh, and getting interact access is a huge pain out here too.

Here are some of the highlights, but read below for the details: the cheetah run, game drives, leopard sighting, stalking wild cheetah, setting my trail cameras, seeing images form the trail cameras, and plotting for next summers adventure.

Here is a short list of the wildlife sightings so far:

- wild free-ranging cheetah
- leopard
- aardwolf (a rather rare sighting)
- genet
- African wildcat
- Polecat (small, looks like a skunk)
- Baboon
- Warthog – loads of them with babies
- Jackel
- Bat-eared fox
- Mongoose
- Giraffe
- zebra
- oryx (stunningly beautiful antelope which we ate
one night)
- kudu (huge curly horned antelope which we also
ate one night)
- hartebeest (small elk size antelope)
- steenbok (very small antelope)
- dika (small antelope)
- porcupine (in fact I just chased one down the
road with the video camera)

The morning we arrived here, we got to experience a cheetah run. The CCF has a number of cheetahs in large enclosures that were orphaned and can’t be released back into the wild. However, they are used for different research projects such as investigating in vitro fertilization techniques and cryo-preservation of embryos. The resident cheetahs need to be exercised on a regular basis and we got to see it first hand, in fact we were inside the enclosure with three cheetahs. The video says it all. Totally and amazingly brilliant! Then a few days later I got to go out and feed the cheetahs kept in some of the very large enclosures. This involves riding in the back of the “backie” (= pick-up truck) with a big box of chunks of donkey, each 2kg. Then you drive into the cheetah enclosure, call over the cheeaths and in no time you are surrounded by about 5 cheeaths all excited you are there with food. Then you drive while they follow you. This is so they can exercise. As you drive, you toss out a big chunk of the donkey dripping with blood. The cheetah grabs it and runs off into the bush to feast. I have not edited any of the video I shot of this, but have posted a picture. The other night I was out checking my trail cameras and saw two wild, free-ranging cheetahs that came right up to one of the cheetah enclosures. They are males, and inside the enclosure is, you guessed it, a female. Typical boys eh? So I hopped out of the car and started to walk towards them. Although I’m not a cheetah expert, I do know enough out them to know that most of the time, they will run away from you, not attack. So I started to walk towards them, video camera rolling and got some quite nice clips of these two cheetahs just as the light was disappearing.

We’ve also been on a few game drives. The CCF is not a game preserve, rather it’s an area about 440 square kilometers (that’s about 88 thousand acres for the “Mericans reading this) that is managed to encourage wild game such as wart hogs, kudu, springbok, giraffe, oryx and other African game animals. This in tern helps conserve predators like the cheetah as it provides food, and decreases livestock losses on farms as the predators prefer game to livestock animals.

I had had my trail cameras out for 2 nights and checked them the other day. I had images of a
leopard, a cheetah, black rhino, aardvark, porcupine, and loads of warthogs and other game. In fact on one camera at a water hole, I had 1200 images over 54 hrs. So brilliant!! I’ve included some of the images.

So tonight I was talking to a visiting biologist called Any Dickman. I actually met Amy about 10 years ago when I first visited Namibia. She is a Brit and recently finished her Ph.D. in the UK working on human-wildlife conflict in Tanzania. She was here just for a week for the conference. She has been given funding to work for another 5 years at an enormous game park in Tanzania. One topic she needs to work on is a wildlife survey in the park. So this evening we were brainstorming. I wondered about the possibility of doing aerial surveys, as the park is huge, with a 2 person powered parachute. Obviously piloted by yours-truly!! Honestly, its probably total pie-in-the-sky thinking. Not doing an aerial survey, but actually getting a powered parachute and me piloting the thing. But if you don’t think it, the chances of it happening are zero anyway. Perhaps more realistically, is to take a group of students to do some ground surveys. She is mostly interested in the predators like lions, cheetah, leopard, hyena, and wild dog, which makes it even more appealing. I highlight this only because it illustrates why I love to do this so much. Had I not come here, I would have never thought about going to Tanzania and working on the large carnivores or doing wildlife surveys.

We all go to Etosha Park in a few days, I’ll check my trail cameras again, and once the conference is over I’ll get to spend some time traveling up north and doing some more field work. Needless to say I’m incredibly excited!

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Camera trap wart hog   Comments!	Camera trap cheetah	Camera trap black rhino	Camera trap wart hog
Camera trap oryx	Aardwolf	Cheetah	Cheetah
Cheetah	Cheetah   Comments!	Sunset over the veld

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