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Conservation authorities on Tuesday continued their search for lions that escaped from the Kruger National Park.

Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks agency spokesperson Jimmy Masombuka said they were searching for the two remaining beasts. Two others that escaped had since been killed.

"We are busy monitoring the situation and taking part in a joint search effort with community members and Kruger personnel."

Masombuka said many sightings by the public had proved, after further investigation, to be false alarms.

The lions seem still to be in in the vicinity of the town of Emdlankomo in the Nelspruit area, near the place where they left the park through a break in the fence on Friday.

Two have been killed - one was hit by a train on Saturday and the second was shot on Monday night after it was found eating a cow.

Masombuka said the agency received a tip-off about the whereabouts of the lion, surrounded the area and killed it.

He said they had to kill the animal. "Because it's tasted a cow, it's going to be a problem and a danger to the livestock," he said.

Masombuka said it seemed the lions were much more active at night than during the heat of the day.

The search was difficult, partly because the area was heavily wooded.

"They can smell you at a distance and they hide themselves very quickly," he said.

However, Masombuka said the agency would not rest until they had found the remaining lions. "We are not going to stop the search until we make sure that everybody is safe. However, we'd like to urge the community to work hand-in-glove with us", he said.

He urged members of the community to report sightings to the agency.

Authorities are also monitoring the park fence to see if the lions had not returned to the park.

Villagers living next to the Kruger may be to blame for the recent escape.

Masombuka said that villagers often remove some of the Park's fencing to either use the material or to sell it. Masombuka has issued a serious warning against such actions.

** UPDATE, 04/10 **

Separately and further north, two more cattle have been killed by lions at Mahlathi village, in Limpopo. This brings the number of cattle killed to 49 since last month. The lions escaped from the Kruger National Park. Park spokesperson, Raymond Travers says animals that have escaped are no longer their responsibility.

Meanwhile, the environmental affairs department in the province says it has sent rangers to assist in the hunt for lions and farmers can kill the animals. However, the spokesperson for the department Lehlohonolo Masoga says farmers will not be compensated for their loss. Lions have also been terrorizing communities in Mpumalanga in past weeks.

** UPDATE, 06/10 **

Rangers and communal farmers have snared and killed two lions at Mahlathi village outside Giyani in Limpopo. This brings to three the number of lions killed so far. The lions escaped from the northern side of the Kruger National Park at the beginning of last month. It is believed four lions escaped.

The lions are believed to have killed 49 cattle since last month. Environmental Affairs authorities have given permission to affected communities to kill the animals. Lions have also been terrorising communities in Mpumalanga in the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Affairs department in the province says it has sent rangers to assist in the hunt for lions and farmers can kill the animals.

Labels: escaped animals, lions, nelspruit

NELSPRUIT- Lions killed an impala on a school sports field shortly before an interschools tournament was to be held.

Staff at Skukuza Primary School in the Kruger National Park had to remove the carcass so that the athletics meeting could go ahead on Saturday.

"They killed the buck on the track itself- right on the 80m mark," said school principal Jannie Geldenhuys on Monday.

He said the kill must have happened on Thursday night, because the remains were found on Friday morning.

"We removed bits of guts and other remains still lying there. It was quite safe. The lions were gone already," he said.

He said the lions were later spotted in the village and Kruger rangers chased them away.

He said the athletics track and rugby field, like the rest of the staff village, were not fenced off, unlike the tourist rest camp.

A way of life

The school hosted an annual athletics meeting involving about 250 children from six local schools.

"I showed some of the kids the place where we removed the remains and they enjoyed it," said Geldenhuys.

He said about 400 people, mainly Kruger employees and their families, lived in the village.

"Animals do move through now and then and are sometimes spotted on the rugby field and golf course, but in the day time they move out again.

"All our yards are fenced off. It's quite safe to walk around during the day, but no one is allowed to be on foot after dark- you have to drive. It's a way of life- you have to be careful."

Labels: escaped animals, lions, skukuza

BUSHBUCKRIDGE- A stray rhino was rescued on Tuesday from villagers who wanted to kill it for its meat.

Rangers from the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency rescued the rhino in Cunningmore village in Limpopo.

One resident, Velly Mnisi, 33, said he was on his way to work about 07h00 when the rhino came charging towards him and broke through the fence of a mealie field and destroyed crops.

Mnisi said he ran for his life and shouted at other villagers, telling them to flee. But residents, including school children, later banded together and chased the rhino.

Mnisi said: "They were shouting: Kill it! Kill it! It destroyed our crops. We want its meat!"

He said the villagers began throwing stones at the rhino and waving hoes, axes, pangas, sticks and jungles knives.

Animal not harmed

Mnisi said another local resident, Richard Khosa, 46, contacted police, who alerted game rangers.

Mpumalanga tourism and parks agency (MTPA) spokesperson Jimmy Masombuka confirmed on Thursday that rangers had removed a white rhino from the area after anaesthetising it.

"I don't have all the details with me, but the animal was not harmed. It was taken to one of our parks."

Masombuka said officials had not established where the rhino had escaped.

"There was speculation that it was from the Kruger National Park because of its proximity to the area, but we are not sure," he said.

Kruger Park spokesperson William Mabaso said: "I am told that we were not directly involved, but one of our investigators contacted the MTPA which removed the animal."

Labels: acornhoek, bushbuckridge, escaped animals, poaching, rhinos

JOHANNESBURG- Two Kruger National Park elephants "had to be killed" after a group of 15 wandered out of the park through a section of broken fence, a KNP spokesperson said on Tuesday.

The group of 15 adolescent bulls got out recently through a section of fence believed to have been damaged by people stealing parts of it, and wandered onto land adjoining the park, Raymond Travers told the South African press.

Under the law, the owner of the land on which wild animals are found becomes responsible for the animals- in this case the Limpopo government, he explained.

"They [the Limpopo government] reacted and asked us for help," he said. "Only then can we intercede."

At the time, officials were in a helicopter doing work related to buffalo in the park. The helicopter was diverted to the task of returning the elephants.

Travers said it was unusual for 15 bull adolescent elephants to be together, as they usually moved alone.

Park officials managed to drive all but two back into the park.

"The two just seemed to be stubborn," he said.

Because of their proximity to a nearby settlement the remaining two elephants were killed. When the elephants got out of the park, women living in the area were reportedly afraid of being trampled to death when they went to fetch firewood and water.

"We believe that only once one of us has been trampled will the government start doing something," said Madali Maswanganyi, complaining that authorities were doing little to protect them from the elephants.

Travers warned that the fence, meant for disease control, was "in a bad way at the moment" and that elephants may get out again.

He said a committee of park officials and provincial government representatives were holding meetings to discuss the matter.

Labels: elephants, escaped animals, rangers

BUSHBUCKRIDGE- Four lions were still on the loose in the Bushbuckridge area of Limpopo, the provincial department of environmental affairs said.

The department had already shot dead five of them after they apparently escaped from a private game reserve last week.

"I can confirm that we have put down five lions, they were threatening people's lives in that area," said spokesman Moses Tseli.

"We can't equate human lives with that of animals. We call on the communities in that area, when confronted by those lions, not to chase or provoke them," he added.

Kruger Park spokesman Raymond Travers said the lions could have come from one of any number of small private game reserves between the park and Bushbuckridge.

It would not be possible to say where they came from as no reserve branded or marked its lions.

Calson Magopane, a spokesman for the Dumphries community, said on Friday that the lions had already devoured cattle belonging to residents.

"The situation is very terrible. The community members are living with fear as these lions are still around."

Labels: bushbuckridge, escaped animals, lions

SKUKUZA- Three lions showed up as unexpected guests while a marathon race was underway in South Africa's famed Kruger National Park, forcing runners to stop until the animals left the road, local media reported on Tuesday.

Three participants of the annual Skukuza Sterling Light half-marathon had a big fright on Saturday when they ran into three lions taking a nap in the middle of the road.

A motorcyclist in front of the athletes noticed them just before the 14km mark and stopped the runners in their tracks.

The nearest field ranger on duty was called and the lions were chased away before the marathon could continue.

But the incident resulted in a large group finishing together, said the newspaper.

On Friday evening, elephants caused havoc in the Skukuza staff village inside the park, which formed part of the race.

The elephants left the village before the race started, but the athletes had to run around heaps of dung, the newspaper said.

Labels: escaped animals, lions, rangers, skukuza

HOEDSPRUIT (Kruger Times)- During the early hours of Wednesday February 16, between five and seven lions decided to take a stroll down the main road through Skukuza village. At about 04h00, Jannie Geldenhuys and Frikkie Rossouw were covering the cricket pitch to protect it for a match later in the day, and at about 04h30 the lions decided to walk onto the field.

Four of the lions were darted when people who had spotted them alerted the rangers and vets. They loaded the lion onto two vehicles and brought them around to the school at about 06h45 just before the start of school.

According to Sharon Gillespie, ”It was amazing. The children were enthralled and extremely curious until the male lifted his head and one just saw kiddie winkles scattering. It was a great day and we are truly thankful to the rangers and vets who brought the lion around for our children to experience- it really was education in action.”

by Lynette Strauss, Kruger Times

Labels: escaped animals, lions, skukuza

JOHANNESBURG- In recent years, much attention has been given to elephant poaching- and the catastrophic effects of this on herds throughout Africa. Successful conservation of elephants presents its own challenge, however, in the form of overpopulation.

In South Africa's north-eastern Kruger National Park, for example, the population of elephants is growing at seven percent annually- a trend that park officials find worrying. Herds that cannot survive in allotted conservation areas may wander into the fields and villages of adjacent communities, destroying crops and angering local populations.

Unpleasant as this is, many find a possible alternative- elephant culling- equally distasteful.

"Culling is a euphemistic word for killing elephants en masse. It can never be justified and it can never be a humane process. It may be efficient, but it can never be a kindly or instant death," Michelle Pickover of the Xwe African Wild Life Research and Investigation Centre told a meeting in Johannesburg recently.

But as Hector Magome, director of South African National Parks, observed, rangers faced with containing a group of errant elephants typically find themselves in situations where there are few good options.

"If a group of elephants breaks out of Kruger National Park, science will be thrown out of the window, and it will become a political problem," he told people at the gathering, held towards the end of last month.

The Johannesburg meeting, entitled 'The Ethics of Elephant Killing: Genocide or Sustainable Development', attracted over 50 environmentalists, conservationists and animal rights activists.

According to Hennie Lotter, chairman of the Ethics Society of South Africa, between 200 and 2,000 elephants were culled annually in the Kruger Park between 1967 and 1994. A moratorium was placed on culling soon after the post-apartheid government of Nelson Mandela was elected into office in 1994.

As a result, the elephant population in Kruger has almost doubled to over 13,000- and this number is set to rise to more than 40,000 if present trends continue. This would lead to widespread destruction of plant life in the park.

While animal rights activists fear authorities may be about to revive culling, Magome insists that no final decision on the matter has been taken.

"Right now we have no policy to cull or trans-locate elephants. We shall take the decision after holding a stakeholders' conference in October. Then, we shall present our report to the minister who will take a decision," he said.

Pending this decision, Pickover has called for the creation of policies that would accommodate both people and elephants.

"What we need to do is to develop...human-elephant conflict resolution measures, assist local communities in ways which bring real, lasting benefits to people without killing elephants - and place ivory stockpiles permanently beyond use, so there is no more incentive to trade," she noted.

"The majority of African nations, have seen their elephants depleted...by the rapacious demand for ivory. Between 1979 and 1989 alone an estimated 700,000 elephants were slaughtered," Pickover added.

Gerhard Verdoorn, director of Birdlife South Africa, said trans-location of animals and the use of contraceptives were strategies that could be employed to manage the country's growing number of elephant. The first option was not without its drawbacks, however.

"Translocation will take...years. Even if it happens, animals have a good memory. You take them elsewhere, the following day they will be back," Verdoorn noted.

Even so, Mozambique will receive 500 elephants from Botswana by the end of this year. Afonso Madope, director for conservation in Mozambique's Ministry of Tourism, was quoted by the state-owned Agencia de Informacao de Macambique in June as saying that the elephants would be relocated to Gorongosa National Park in the centre of the country.

Wildlife in Gorongosa suffered a decline in numbers in the 1980s as a result of Mozambique's 16-year civil war which ended in 1992. The park's elephant population was decimated, dropping from 7,000 in 1979 to 111 in 2001.

Contraception also appears to be a long-term, rather than an immediate solution to the problem of elephant overpopulation.

During a meeting convened by the Netherlands-based Utrecht University in March this year, delegates noted that contraceptive vaccines for female elephants had proved "effective" in limited trials - and that research into suppressing sperm production and "sexual activity" in bulls was also underway.

However, more research was needed into the "efficacy, practicality, reversibility and effect on social structure of contraceptive treatments" before contraception could be introduced in large measure.

A debate is being held amongst industry professionals on the best method to achieve a sustainable phacyderm population; see our Celendar section for details.

Labels: contraception, culling, elephants, escaped animals, game relocation