Re-opened again after a month’s closure for general camp maintenance, and its back into the swing of things. Unfortunately, some large grey herbivores decided that maintenance should continue for the foreseeable future.
About 18 months ago, Botswana made a decision to stop hunting in order to preserve their animals. Up until then, several very large areas of land were leased by hunting operators, who oversaw the pumping of water to artificial watering holes on the land. Now, no one is pumping, and the animals are moving out of areas that they have occupied for years, in search of water sources. And that search has led them to Nxai Pan. With only one other waterhole active in the park, the camp waterhole has been inundated with elephants. Normally, this pan is refilled by our water reticulation plant, from the grey water that the camp uses during the day. This was sufficient to allow all the animals to drink. Now, we are having to pump directly from our borehole, 24 hours a day, and there is still not enough water for them to drink. Instead, the elephants, have turned to the camp itself, and sneak through our ‘deterrent’ electric fence at night, to break the water pipes and tanks in camp and siphon there. Although we don’t begrudge them a drink, it would be a lot easier if they stopped doing this as not only is it expensive, and labour intensive, it makes it less easy for us to get the water to their ‘official’ drinking point! In the mean time, Nxai Pan is praying on the elephants behalf for a very early rainy season (highly unlikely) or that the Government manages to get the water holes in the now unoccupied concession areas up and running as quickly as possible.
There were sightings of other animals apart from elephants this month too. The female cheetah with her two cubs was fit and well, seen often, including when the mother managed to kill an impala right in front of the vehicle.! Other days they were seen flat on their backs, with very full tummies! They also spent two days ‘camping’ at the HATAB no 2 camp site – no humans camping there at the moment, so they enjoyed the peace and quiet.
Although we didn’t see the lion pride much this month (reason being they were hanging out in the village area outside the park, picking off cattle…) an adult male lion was seen close to the main waterhole several times, sometimes on his own, sometimes with another male. The pride – all 15 of them – finally returned towards the end of the month, to lounge at the main waterhole. Currently the pride consists of four lionesses, one male, and 10 sub-adults/cubs.
Unusual sightings this month included three male buffalos that were also seen near the main water hole twice, and five wild dogs that came into camp – two on the first day, and then another three the next day, looking for the first two!
