Still burning

This week has again been quite busy with fires, not leaving me much time for research. The days have sort of merged into one, so I cannot remember what happened on which day. The most memorable episode was when large columns of smoke heading towards camp called us back from where we were back-burning at another camp (MTC). We got back to the fire break at our camp (HQ) as quickly as possible. The main parts of the fire passed between us and MTC at quite a pace, but the wind was changing and we decided to back-burn along the road from the fire break towards Roan Pan. We went slowly, but the changing wind made the fire quite unpredictable. Suddenly, it shifted and blew the fire straight across the road, where it continued at terrifying speed. I had been lighting the back-burn, so ran in front of the flames and was fine. The vehicle with the water bowser was in front of me. The hose (which one of us had been holding) came trailing along the road, which was by now covered by flames. We shouted to another guy to grab the hose and spray the flames. The guy who had been holding the hose thought we were shouting because we were in trouble, so ran along the road, straight through the flames to get to us. We managed to get that fire under control, but had to head back to try and deal with one coming towards the fire break from another direction.

A plane flew for us, which was very helpful, as the pilot pointed out several additional blazes that we would not have known about. Eventually, we managed to get everything under control. The fire flared up again in a few places over the next few days, and by then everyone was completely sick of it. We took to beating out all the flames, then spraying down logs with the bowser, and then burying those logs to make sure no sparks would fly.

Then Shavaughn and I had a couple of days break in Maun, when I also arranged with some pilots for them to record all buff herds they see over the next week.

Most of the buff have stayed in similar sort of areas. Chanel has moved south, away from the few islands that she has spent the majority of the season on. Chanel, Lasanya and Nokya have been overlapping in their ranges, and have spent some time in the same herd, but have split again quite quickly. Bianca is still in a different area to the other three.

Hopefully things will calm down now and I will be able to get out and do some fieldwork, as these fires have definitely set me back, although that is just part of living in the bush!

Fires!

At the beginning of the week, Shavaughn and I went flying with Guy to get an idea of the sizes of the herds that my collared animals were in. They were in herds ranging from 250 - 700, and we saw a few herds that did not have any collars in them as well. There is a lot of water out there, but we were also able to determine which areas I should still be able to access despite the high flood. Hunting season is also over, so I can now get into all the concessions again.

Shavaughn and I headed up the Gomoti on Wednesday into Moremi to collect some data from points used by Nokya. We saw a herd of buffalo on the way, and were able to age and sex around a quarter of them before something upset them and they took off. We headed further north than we had been before to try and ascertain whether we could cross onto a rather large island that has been used quite a lot by a couple of the herds. Unfortunately, the channel there is rather deep and muddy, so we will leave it for a while and try again when the water has started to subside.

We were able to collect data from a couple of sites before we had to return to HQ in a bit of a hurry. There have been fires around camp for a few weeks, but this week they started to get a bit too close for comfort. We were monitoring the radio, and when Dog Camp said that the fire was reaching them, I decided to abandon fieldwork and go and give them a hand.

By the time we got back there had already been one back burn lit, but we were on hand to try again that evening. Unfortunately there was not much wind, so that plan was abandoned. On Thursday night, we tried to back burn along the road towards Rhino Pan. We were going quite well, but again the wind died so we did not complete the whole stretch.

On Friday, we went out around midday towards Dog Camp, where the fire was getting close. We dragged acacia trees along the road for several hours to try and create a fire break. The wind then changed to our favour, so we back burned again, moving along from the place where the fire had stopped earlier. When the wind died we headed for home again.

Yesterday, we again went out around lunch time and just made it to the fire in time to stop it jumping the road and heading straight for Dog Camp. Again we dragged acacias to widen the fire break. We had to use the bowser to stop big flames and sparks from flying across the road, and we were beating the fire out when it reached the shorter grass. We managed to get that section under control, despite a small scare when a patch on the wrong side of the road started to burn. We then went to another section and waited for the fire to reach the road before beating it out. Once that was under control, we headed back to a patch between two burns that had not burnt itself. We lit a back burn there and got rid of that threat. That was when Keren exclaimed that we would be home early. However, on our way back we found another section that was heading straight for the road, so we called everyone back in and beat that bit down as well. Then we went home.

Today, there are still some fires to the south of camp that are flaring up, so we are keeping an eye on them. There are others further away, but they seem to be heading away from all the camps so we are happy to just let them burn! Fire is an important part of the natural cycle of the bush, after all.

Hopefully the fires will die down soon and we can all get back to work, probably after a day of sleep. The the entire effort has been highly successful so far, and is by far the best team-building excercise I have ever experienced! (And I have discovered that setting fires for back burning purposes is a lot of fun!!)

Counting running buffalo

Earlier last week, Nokya made her way to our side of the Gomoti, so Shavaughn and I went out to get population dynamics data from her herd. We found her close to Black Pools in a herd of around 200-250. This herd was on the move, so we kept trying to outflank them to be in a position that they would walk past us. We were able to count the last quarter and some of the first ones. However, they spent a good deal of their time running, even when we were several hundred metres away. We followed them at a distance to try and get them to relax, but had to give up when they crossed water and just kept heading north into really wet areas.

We headed back down the Gomoti to the usual game drive areas and spotted another herd close to the crossing point, but on the other side. That herd was very relaxed and we were able to age and sex most of them (around 150-200). We started to head back but had to wait for a large breeding herd of elephant (at least 100) to cross the road and let us through.

Stuck on the Gomoti

It has been a little while since I added a blog. My parents came to visit and we had a lovely few days on mobile safari, with some really good wildlife sightings. It was lovely to have them out and show them where I work.

One of my collared cows, Bianca, that was seen on the Gomoti before I got back to HQ crossed back to the Santantadibe, but Shavaughn and I were able to collect some vegetation samples that they used on our side before they left. We sampled 9 sites in a morning, with a little off-road island hop to get to the last two, past some black herons using their wings to create shade and attract fish. The crossing we used was a bit sticky and I correctly predicted that we would get stuck on the way back. This was Shavaughn's first experience at getting stuck, but she started digging with gusto and we had gotten one wheel onto a rack when one of the local game drive vehicles drove past on their way to turn the water pump off. On their way back they came over and without a word other than Hello, they towed us out, which was much appreciated, although we would of course have done it ourselves with a bit more time!