Sinamatella update from the Bhejane Trust (May 2014)

By Stephen Long (from the Bhejane Trust May 2014 Newsletter)

My suggestion, back in March, that the rainy season had come to an early close was (of course) as accurate as most weather forecasts and we had 22mm of rain in April. That gives us a total of 599mm for the season.

In spite of that rainfall, the change of season has been very noticeable. Apart from the obvious drying out of the grass, we have also seen the arrival of part of the buffalo herd that will spend much of the winter along the Sinamatella and Mbala rivers, the Palaearctic migratory birds have departed and Crowned Hornbills, Pied Crows and Golden Orioles, all of which are much more common or perhaps more obvious in the dry season have arrived. The game viewing has improved a little but there is still a great deal of long grass and sights such as this lion that sat nicely out in the open at Mandavu are few and far between.

For the second year running there has been a season-end plague of stink bugs. It hasn’t been quite as bad as last year (yet) but even so there are thousands of them searching for places to hibernate, both in and out of the house and their smell is everywhere.

BIRDING

Back in February last year we started taking part in the Southern Africa Bird Atlas Project and, with the encouragement of the Parks Ecologist at Sinamatella, we involved a number of the rangers as well. In April this year the 100th Atlas card for the Sinamatella area was completed and we now have a reliable team of atlassers amongst the rangers. In fact, data comes in faster than I am able to deal with it and I have a backlog of cards waiting to be submitted to the project – something I would not have imagined when we started.

ROADS

Visitors to Sinamatella often complain about the state of the roads – with some justification as lack of equipment and funding has severely cut road maintenance in recent years. This year the Parks Authority has found the funding needed to get the Sinamatella road grader back in working order and to hire contract workers for a few months to do some road repairs. So far the road from Mbala gate to Sinamatella has been graded and some of the bush has been cut back and a team of rangers has cut back overhanging bush along the Sinamatella River Drive and bypassed the bridge that was recently destroyed by rain. The new river crossing is not for the fainthearted and certainly isn’t good for anything but a 4x4.

There is an obvious need for a great deal more road work around the area and I’m afraid that the days of roads suitable for ordinary road-cars will not be back in a hurry but any improvement is a bonus.

RHINO

With the arrival of our ‘new’ Land Rover in March, we were able to introduce, for a while at least, a mobile monitoring team to search for our elusive rhino. We travelled to quite a number of outlying places during the month but the closest we got to any rhino was finding two or three-day old spoor. There is still far too much grass in most places for spoor to be easily visible and there is so much water around that the animals, of all species, are still able to move more or less anywhere. However, at the start of April there were few reports of rhino movements from rangers on patrol but towards month end many more reports were received so we are confident we can start bumping up the total of ‘visuals’ very soon.

During April there were more poaching scares from the Zambezi and Robins areas and it has become clear that the ‘front line’ in the poaching war has moved away from Sinamatella and is now focussed on the safer (from the poachers’ point of view) places along the Botswana and Zambian borders where elephants are a cost-effective alternative to rhino. At first sight that sounds like fairly good news but in fact it is creating a manpower problem as anti-poaching at Sinamatella can by no means be safely reduced but at the same time more trained manpower is needed elsewhere.

VEHICLES Back to the doom and gloom this month! In the March newsletter I suggested that our “new” Land Rover would inevitably give us troubles and unfortunately that was one prediction that I got absolutely right. Early in April we had problems with wheel bearings – which were easily solved, a shock absorber mounting broke off - also fairly easy to solve but the injector pump went wrong and that wasn’t at all easy to solve. We eventually had to send the vehicle to Victoria Falls for repair and at the end of the month it was still there, waiting for a new pump. At the same time, our Land Cruiser started complaining that it needed some care. I took it to Bulawayo for spares but I was so nervous of one tie-rod end in particular that I took a chance on no-one at any of the many road blocks being alert and tied it with rope as a back-up. Not really necessary as it turned out but it stopped me worrying on the journey to town. The worst problem of all though is tyres. Between the 3rd of February and the 23rd of April we repaired an average of one puncture every two days mainly because of worn tyres and both the Cruiser and the Defender are in desperate need. We can not continue as we are for much longer – these are some of the things we are currently driving on……

That they have lasted so long is a tribute to the manufacturer – but it does make life difficult sometimes!!

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