Indholdsfortegnelse for Autumn 2023 i Kruger Magazine

IN NO HURRY My very first visit to the Kruger came a week after I arrived in South Africa from Scotland in the early 1980s. I was a (very) novice soil surveyor at the then Department of Agriculture and my boss took myself and another recent arrival from Argentina on a reconnaissance tour of the old Transvaal to look at the landscapes and soils occurring there. As part of the tour, we had a couple of hours in the Kruger on a hot December afternoon, when, despite the heat, we saw four of the Big 5. There were one or two subsequent visits to the Kruger, including a couple of nights as part of our honeymoon, but the process of falling in love with Kruger started in the mid-eighties when…

RANGER DIARIES - MAHLOMETELA i During my time as a Section Ranger in the Kruger National Park we were each issued with a 4×4 ranger vehicle (bakkie) to perform all our required duties. At Malelane Section with its plethora of rest camps, staff villages, private camps, picnic sites and infrastructure, such as pump houses, it soon became clear that I could not oversee all these aspects with one vehicle. My Regional Ranger, Flip Nel, identified this shortcoming and made arrangements for me to be issued with a motorbike so that I could be mobile for various tasks while my bakkie was being used elsewhere by the field rangers and labour teams. I did not have a lot of experience riding a motorbike, however when the bike arrived, I used it…

The Olifants River is the largest of the rivers in the Kruger National Park (KNP). It encompasses a major portion of the Highveld regions of the Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces. It is more than 500km long, its catchment basin exceeds 54 000km2, and touches or includes the towns of Bethal, Witbank, Middelburg, Belfast, Lydenburg and Moria. Major tributaries beyond the Kruger Park boundary include the Wilge, Elands, Steelpoort, Klein Olifants, Blyde and Selati rivers. There are a multitude of small dams but at least 30 major impoundments, including the Witbank, Bronkhorstspruit, Middelburg, Loskop, Flag Boshielo, De Hoop and Blydepoort Dam and the Phalaborwa Barrage. Late Salomon Joubert (Dr SCJ Joubert) started his conservation career in 1964 as a postgraduate student in the Sabi Sand Wildtuin and was appointed to the…

Is one of the largest game reserves in Africa. It covers an area of nearly two million hectares (20 000km2) in the province of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in the north-east of South Africa. It extends 360km from north to south and 65km from east to west. It became South Africa’s first National Park in 1926. In 1993, fences between Associated Private Nature Reserves (APNR) and the Kruger National Park were removed to encourage wildlife migration and the Greater Kruger National Park was born.…

South African National Parks (SANParks), with the support of TotalEnergies and First National Bank (FNB), recognised deserving conservationists at the annual Kudu Awards ceremony held at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand on 24 November 2022. The awards were made possible thanks to forward-thinking and progressive partners who recognised internal and external stakeholders that have demonstrated exceptional commitment to sustainability, improving livelihoods, and achieving real change on the ground in our national parks. Watch this! Scan the QR code or visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHnGku1JaHQ to view video footage of the awards ceremony. The Kudu Awards and the Chief Executive Awards recognise SANParks employees as well as multiple stakeholders and disciplines that play a pivotal role in strengthening conservation in South Africa. “Awareness of conservation issues is of vital importance and if we want…

SPECIES ID TREES Background and general description he purple-pod cluster-leaf, Terminalia prunioides (or purple-pod Terminalia, also known as the thorny cluster-leaf, sterkbos in Afrikaans, nshashandzawu in Xitsonga and mutwari in Tshivenda), is a deciduous or semi-deciduous bush or small tree of up to 9m (occasionally 13m). It has a roundish, particularly twiggy crown, with a mass of crooked, low-branching and drooping, tangled stems. Lateral twigs are hard, firm and thorn-like. The main stem is often multi-stemmed, crooked and up to 300mm in diameter. « Nick Zambatis was the former Manager: Biodiversity Conservation in Conservation Management: Kruger National Park. He retired in 2016. His first job in the Kruger was as a research technician based at Skukuza, which he started in 1987. “The transfer from Pretoria to the Lowveld was ecstasy…

PRIVATE LODGE - KRUGER SAFARI COLLECTION Over the past years both international and domestic tourism showed enormous growth in and around Hoedspruit, the tourism hub of the Lowveld. Due to the remarkable increase in tourism combined with soughtafter safari products and a fresh outlook into 2023, the owners of Lamai Safari, Lars Andreasen and Pia Mai Buchinoltz Andreasen, merged their safari products in and around the Kruger National Park and designed Kruger Safari Collection to guarantee peace of mind to the decerning tourist. Maybe you have already read some stories, maybe you already have an idea of what our collection is about. But what if there is more? Kruger Safari Collection - where our lodges and camps are tucked away in the heart of the bush. “if there were one…

We are in 2023, and the first issue of 2023 happens to be issue 23 of KRUGER MAGAZINE! When we published our first issue in September 2017, we never talked about our last issue - and we still don’t. There is still so much to explore - even our often-visited Kruger National Park surprises us every now and then. We spent a night at the secluded Shipandani Hide, and we fell in love with the Park all over again! Not to mention all the new lodges with new ideas, offering our visitors - local and international - the promise of such a unique safari experience that they will return, again and again. And this is what excites us about what we do. It enables us to share all things wild…

BUSH TELEGRAPH This short article is not about the few white lions of the Kruger National Park (KNP). Much is known about them and can be researched on the internet. This is merely about our joy in observing Casper and his pride for the first time, and the emotions my wife, Tina, and I experienced when we witnessed a kill by Casper and his pride 10m from our vehicle during a visit to the KNP in January 2023! One cannot talk about the white lion without having some basic background information: • The ‘white lion’ is neither a species, nor sub-species in their own right, but rather a genetic mutation. • Casper and his pride live around the Satara Camp in the Central Kruger National Park. • He is a…

“The aardvark has been called a ‘living fossil’ due to its primitive chromosomal structre.” « Dr lan Whyte is an independent environmental consultant who retired from SAN Parks in 2007. He was previously engaged in full-time wildlife research in the Kruger National Park from 1970-2007. At the time of retirement, he was responsible for the coordination of all research projects pertaining to elephant, buffalo and other large herbivores and rare antelope. He is a member of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission’s African Elephant Specialist Group. He has co-authored two field guides to the birds of the Kruger National Park and in 2020, released his latest book about his life and work in the KNP. The aardvark (Orycteropus afer) is a medium-sized, solitary, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. It is the…

“Starlings art inevitably an integral part of a visit to the Kruger.” Starlings are medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae, a name derived from sturnus, the Latin word for starling. There are 120 species world-wide of which 42 are found in Africa. They occupy a wide range of vegetation types but avoid the dry, sandy deserts. ! They are not found in the Americas, except as introduced aliens, and South Africa has also been the unfortunate ‘recipient’ of two alien invasive starlings — the common or European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) introduced from Europe by Cecil Rhodes, and the common myna (Acridotheres tristis) from Asia. The common starling has become abundant in the Cape and its range is expanding, but has not reached the Kruger National Park. The myna on…

THEME BIRDS, BEES, BUGS & BUTTERFLIES The theme for each Autumn issue, BIRDS, BEES, BUGS & BUTTERFLIES, excites us all, as there always are some of the most amazing entries - one more beautiful than the other. Needless to say, what a tough competition to judge once again. Taking good photographs of birds - that rarely keep still - is an art in itself, but snapping birds while they catch a meal; now that takes skill! Not to mention the great entries of bees and butterflies - also works of art. Thank you once again to our sponsors - and congratulations to all entrants. To our TOP 11. well done, you deserved it! Get you images ready for our next Winter competition that will kick off late in March -the…