Elefant kaos´ fortsætter

After having to rescue a number of elephants of the road last month, we had to continue to do so again this month as a total of 13 elephants, split up in 3 different herds, roamed outside of the boundaries of the reserve looking for food.

A combined effort between Elephants Alive, the Black Mambas, Transfrontier Africa and reserve management we were able to locate the 3 groups of elephants from the air. It was very urgent that the elephants were lead back to safety for both humans and elephants alike as soon as possible as one of the elephants was already hit by a car during the night. Luckily both the driver and the elephant left the accident unharmed. It took a couple of days but we were able to heard all elephants back into different sections of the reserve.

The local farmers surrounding our reserve were kind enough to assist us as well and agreed to build a long fence to fence the elephants back into the protected area. This way they are not able anymore to cross the river and end up on the farmland and that way end up on the main road. We are very thankful for this as the farmers haven’t always had it easy with elephants ending up on their land and eating their livelihood!

But if we all stand together we are able to keep both our wildlife and the people safe! Whilst the teams were trying to get the elephants back into the safety of the reserve, our volunteers were working around the clock together with the Black Mambas to repair and restore all fences broken by the elephants.

We are very happy that this very large operation was successful and we want to thank everyone involved as it was not an easy task! We would like to thank Pennies for Elles for getting funding available to carry out this expensive operation! We would not be able to have carried this rescue mission out without your help!

Whilst all this was going on, our new Black Mambas were still busy with their training. And we can tell you we are extremely proud that after a hard training of 2 months the new Maseke Black Mambas have successfully finished their training and are ready to be deployed at the surrounding tribal lands!

The new Black Mambas were all very happy that they all made it through the training and couldn’t wait to protect their own tribal land from poachers and keep the wildlife safe! We of course couldn’t let the new mambas start their job without celebrating the end of their successful training! So we had a big celebration at the three bridges restaurant where they were awarded for their hard work. We would like to thank Protrack and everyone involved to help training our new Black Mamba team!

Also positive news from our Education branch of The Black Mamba APU. Our Bushbaby Environmental Education Program was able to design an Eco classroom completely designed to learn as much about the natural world! With the help of our volunteers, the children painted the classroom and gave it a real wild look with beautiful trees and animals painted on the walls! We hope the students are just as excited to use the new eco classroom as much as we are!

And of course after all that hard work our volunteers were also able to enjoy some amazing wildlife as it seemed to be the month of the cat! We were very lucky to have had sightings of lions, a leopard, a cheetah and a serval! A great way to end this month as we now enjoy another beautiful sunset as we light up our campfire for a night under the stars!