Darting Savanna

Another of my collars (B77) has started malfunctioning. It seems to be very confused about the date and is sending me old fixes instead of new ones. Televilt (the collar company) said it is a problem with the processor and could I send it back so they can fix it? This is not as simple as it sounds, and involves a vet, a helicopter and the means to pay for those!

I was supposed to dart on Friday but Peter, the pilot, got in touch with me to say that he had to fly for the King of Spain that day, so we did it on the Thursday. Guy kindly flew for me on Wednesday to get a fix on where they were so we headed straight for that point and found a herd close by. We landed so that Rob (the vet) could load darts and we took the doors off the heli (which made the flight even better!). I checked for a VHF signal and got a strong one from in front of us. So we took off and spotted them almost immediately in a herd of around 120 individuals. We managed to spot the collared cow, Savanna, with her calf. They were close to water and quite a thick stand of crotons, so we spent some time trying to get them to run into an open area. Eventually they cooperated and Rob got a good shot off. We then circled the herd for around 20 mins but the cow showed no real signs that she was feeling the drug. This was lucky in some ways, as she got charged by an elephant whilst we were watching her. There were at least a hundred eles hanging around in various groups and some were getting a bit upset by the helicopter.

We went in again as it became apparent that the dart had somehow malfunctioned. Rob got off another good shot and she went down in 6 minutes while her calf ran off with the rest of the herd. I went in and got the collar off without problems. Peter pulled the first dart out and it discharged on his shoulder but we cleaned it up quickly. Rob thought that the tip of the needle just got clogged up with skin so that the drug could not get out. She was reversed and got up within a minute so all was well and we flew back to Maun.

Recovering a collar

One of my collars (B78) has not moved in a couple of weeks, so I went across to Stanley's on Wednesday to retrieve it. The camp managers organised everything so we were able to head out that afternoon. We tied a mokoro to the top of my vehicle and drove up the Mombo road until we were as close as possible to the fix that I had for the collar. We drove off-road for a little while but we encountered what looked like a quite extensive stretch of water. So we unloaded the mokoro and headed out, at which point we were approximately 1.9km from the collar. We were able to push the mokoro through water for a while, but soon realised that there was more land between us and the collar. So the Shaun (the manager) and Rex (the poler) carried the mokoro, refusing to let my assistant or I help them, even though neither of them had brought shoes and they trod on thorns repeatedly. We made it to the main channel that we had to cross and were able to pole along it for quite a while. It was really quite deep and I think that using a mokoro was the only realistic option. We left the mokoro in a safe spot on the other side and continued on foot (having first taken a GPS fix for the mokoro!) for a further 500 m.

When we got within 20m of the fix I had for the collar, I said that it could be anywhere around that spot. I then took two more steps and spotted the collar lying on the ground right in front of me. It was not on a carcass, as I had thought, but one of the points where the belting connects to the battery unit had been ripped. The collar must have caught on something, possibly a branch or the horn of another buffalo, but it is good to know that the collars will break in that case, and not the animal! Unfortunately I will need to send it back to Televilt for repair, but I downloaded all of the data from it without a problem.

We re-traced our steps and made it back to the car without any mis-haps, then drove back to Stanley's, arriving quite soon after sunset. The managers said that since it was quite late, we could stay in the pilot's tent and join them for a braai after the guests had finished, which was very kind.

We then drove up onto Chief's Island to collect some data from one of the herds. We went off-road and collected some vegetation data, but the habitat was really difficult to drive through. It was short stocky mopane with logs and fallen trees everywhere, presumably because of a high elephant population. It took us 2 hours to drive 2 km, so we decided to leave the rest of the fixes as I was only testing new methodology. We managed to get the car stuck on a hidden log and bent the steering somewhat, tho not enough to affect the vehicle. After that I got Laura to walk in front of the vehicle and scout a route, but it was very slow going, with some areas being completely impassable.

We drove back down into NG32 and had a look at an area to see whether we could drive there, but I think it will be a job for a mokoro. We tracked the herd there and did some counts of the herd and the age and sex classes therein. The cow in that herd is looking very healthy and has a young calf. We came back to HQ yesterday, having found a lovely road, complete with bridge, that was built to go around the water where we got stuck last week, which was a lovely surprise, but I wish I'd known about it before!!