MANAGERS REPORT

Dear Friends

January has been the ideal start to the New Year, with pleasant moderate temperatures and more rain. The bush is lusher than ever, complimented with an abundance of new and healthy looking animals.

Madikwe Hills is also approaching its fourth birthday going into our fifth year of operation from March. It has been a wonderful journey to date and we are looking forward to another exciting year.

Animal activity around the lodge has quieted down a bit with lots of water all over the reserve, ensuring that animal sightings are well spread in all areas of the reserve. This enhances the game viewing of the reserve keeping in mind that we can traverse a massive 75 000 hectares making every drive a completely new experience heading off in different directions.

Staff

Congratulations to Gary Rose who has been appointed as Head Ranger at Madikwe Hills.

Molatedi community project

The children of Molatedi are back at school from their holiday, ready to take on the New Year. Sean and Ellen went to the crèche to surprise the children with some Christmas presents and a few sweets to welcome them back to school and have the magic of Christmas linger for a bit longer. The joy on their faces and appreciation shown when they receive something is the best possible feeling.

I also had a meeting with the chief and some community leaders of Molatedi whom has given us permission to build a new school for the children to replace the current crèche. This facility is not government funded and rely solely on the parents to fund the schooling. The current building is constructed out of wood and corrugated iron which is rotten and termite invested. The building is close to collapsing and way past its expiry. The corrugated building is also very hot, which as a result have the children take most of their lessons outside under a tree. They also have very poor ablution facilities and cooking is done outside as they have no kitchen facilities.

For more information on the Molatedi project please click here. Any donations towards this worthy cause would greatly be appreciated and help these families to build a future for their children.

Over to the rangers with their report for the month.

Hennie de Clerk

BUSH BUZZ

From every one at Madikwe Hills we wish you a prosperous New Year, and hope that your year is filled with exciting safaris!

For us in the bush it has been a very wet start to the New Year, with over 145mm of rain for the month of January. Despite all the rain we have had, it has been a very good month of game viewing.

Just to update you on what has happened to the wild dogs after the 2 packs had a clash last month.

It is not official yet, but there are a number of dogs un-accounted for. From our Dwarsberg pack, there is one young dog missing, which makes the number in total for that pack 16 members. The Collection pack is now down to 6 members from 8. There have been no carcases found of these missing animals so at the moment it is just speculation. Madikwe Game Reserve is over 75000 hectors, and it could be possible that they have been separated. These animals are non-territorial animals and can cover a distance of around 60 km in a day. We’ll keep our fingers crossed!

Cheetah sightings, at the moment are few and far between, seeing that only 2 Cheetah are seen on the reserve with a very high concentration of lions, threatening their existence. Samson was very fortunate to have a quality sighting of a cheetah stalking and hunting, but not a successful hunt as most hunts aren’t.

At Madikwe Game Reserve, one of the best sightings is the magnificent lions, some of the biggest and aggressive lions in Africa. With the coalition of male lions (DITABA SEPEDI) around our lodge and having Madikwe Plains a few kilometres away, we are very fortunate with the sightings of these animals and our early morning drives are usually rewarded with the huge males bellowing and a glorious sunrise in the background, it makes all worth while getting up so early in the morning.

The second male off spring of Ditaba and Sepedi, known as the Naledi males, which if you translate from Tswana means the stars. These two young males (3.5 yrs old) are the definite future stars of Madikwe, and they have joined forces with their dads and it is quite an awesome sight to see 4 male lions bellowing and scent marking together.

Some news on the Batia brothers (14yr old males and fathers of Ditaba and Sepedi). They are still alive, but are way down in the southern part of the reserve. Currently roaming with the Dipelo pride, only time will tell how much longer these magnificent lions will still be with us. The natural life span for male lions is around 14 years. It will be a sad day for Madikwe when these brothers eventually fade away.

The general game viewing in the reserve is also great! The herds of Zebra and Wildebeest are still on the plains with their playful young running around and strengthening their legs under the watchful eyes of the mothers. It is very dangerous for such small animals on the plains with the 4 male lions also in the surrounding area.

The buffalo sightings are still not frequent, but are usually very good sightings, with a lot of young disease free buffalo calves running around with the herds.

As for one of the highlights of the month, it happened with Gary on an evening game drive.While viewing a pride of lions around a waterhole, we noticed that they got a bit excited......at a closer look we saw a solitary wild dog, looking for the rest of the pack. We found the Dwarsberg pack feeding on a female Impala they had just killed. There was a lot of audio and interaction between the pack, while feeding. Wild dogs are highly social and affectionate animals continuously licking each other and strengthening the pack bonds.

It did not take the pack long to finish off the female impala, before they were on the hunt again. To feed 16 mouths you need a lot of impala!

They ran passed our vehicle, and to my and the guest’s amazement.....there was a very young impala lamb lying down, in the long grass, dead still with huge eyes...obviously the lamb of the female just been killed. The wild dogs ran right past the lamb a few times without detecting it.

Nature has an amazing way to give a young life a chance for survival. Young impala lambs are born with inactive scent glands for the first couple of days. The female Impala usually leaves the safety of the harem to give birth to a lamb and remains away from the harem for a couple of days so that the youngster can gain strength, while at this stage the young lamb does not have a scent, and therefore has a chance to survive before it returns with it’s parent to join the crèche in the harem.

Without its mum and away from the harem the survival chances for this lamb is unfortunately around zero and it would probably become a meal for jackal or hyena at night.

Nature, we can learn so much from it!

Until next month...Robala Sentle.

The Madikwe Hills Ranger’s Team