Sesfontein Game Count Stories Cont.

I promised to retell some stories from my most recent African Bush trip, so here is my attempt to recall the past events from the Sesphontein Game Count in Damaraland. Luckily, I’ve been carrying around a leather journal and found some time to write in my tent with a headlamp to help jog my memory. 8D

So there I was… on top of a WWF 4x4 truck luggage rack with a sleeping pad to help me brace for rugged road bumps, snapping away with my Canon camera, franticly switching between my two lens depending if I was going for wildlife or wide scenery shots, trekking across the Sesphontein Conservancy, helping conduct the worlds largest wildlife game count survey with the Namibia Ministry of Environment and Tourism staff and other various NGO’s, and we were following a truck carrying an ABC film crew, Dan Harris and his producer Almean who were shooting footage for their upcoming 6 minute story they’re going to do on the Namibia conservancy system. The Sesfontein Conservancy covers 146,039 acres in the Kunene region with about 2,500 people living in the area.

One shocker to me during my initial Africa experiences in the dramatic size of the country! A whopping 6.5 million hectares or 16,000,000 million acres or roughly a 1/3 of Nebraska is the estimated land area covered in the game count alone and its just a fraction of Namibia's area!During the game count, 30 different communal conservancies take part in this particular activity and from the data the Ministry of Environment and Tourism issue hunting quotas and allow conservancy managers and local community members to know what is happening with wildlife trends. If there is a sign of species decline, proper actions can be taken to try and increase numbers.

During the game count I saw: baboons, elephant, gemsbock, giraffe, jackal, kudu, ostrich, springbok, warthogs, and mountain zebras. There were probably other lions, rhinos, cheetahs, ect. but special survey techniques are needed to pick up their numbers. I have a running bird list, but that will require some work to develop a bird list. But I’m enjoying the birding and my UNL ornithology class is paying off big time. So many of the same bird families found in the states exist here in Africa too. While Chris and I were driving up north for the game count to pick up the ABC crew, he helped me ID many birds. My favorite birds so far are the hornbills and rollers.

If wildlife was spotted, the lead truck with the Ministry, NGO’s, and film crew would stop, count the animals, estimate their distance, and GPS the location all without binoculars or distance estimating equipment. The idea behind not using binocs, is many of the communities do not have access to them and would skew the results if some were using binocs and others were not. Then community meetings with local conservancy elected members and community members are held to determine what the community thinks is happening with trends and how many wildlife they feel are in the area. The beauty in Namibia is the government recognizing local knowledge of their resources and devolving rights to members.

The meeting we participated in was insightful into how communal conservancies manage their resources and how they feel about certain “problem animals.” I saw my first Herero dressed women and saw communal conservancy politics 101 in action.

When you’re out in the bush looking for wildlife and doing game counts –one has to wake up super early. Try having everything ready to go at 5 AM! During midday the animals lay down in the grass and avoid spending time and energy when its hot, so you have to start early. But the colors and charismatic wildlife one finds is absolutely breathtaking. I almost had to pinch myself to make sure I’m really seeing all the beauty.

We had an extreme encounter with 7 desert elephants, and I’m so happy the film crew and myself could take pictures and footage of these elephants in the desert/mountains and show not all elephants live in dense jungles. That morning, Chris said there might be a chance we could see elephants but wasn’t promising us anything. Just before we saw the elephants, there was a herd of Oryx I was taking pictures of, and when we came around this mountain my jaw dropped when we found elephants walking in a dried up river bed! Tall, brown, quiet, and slow. It’s amazing how well large animals can blend into a landscape. I only noticed 3 in the beginning before I noticed the other 4.

Wildlife viewing tip: when you’re looking for wildlife, especially here in Africa, its best to train your eye to look for odd colors that don’t fit in and movements of tails because the animals usually blend in so well. If one is so focused on looking for lions, there is a great chance you’ll miss something else. I’m so new to this area, I know I’d miss probably half of the wildlife I saw if Chris and other’s who have trained their eyes and know what to look for.

I was so excited it was all I could do to switch from my big lens to my smaller one. I did not expect to be taking photographs of elephants with my short lens –we were only 15 yards away from a few of them at one point. If you’ve been following the blog, this might be repeat information, but my boss Chris knows how to position and run a truck for photographers and he parked the truck along side the migrating elephants and I was snapping away. I probably took 250-300 photos of these elephants. Chris was hoping the mamma elephant would walk in front of the truck so we could get a nice look at her, but instead she decided to change course and wanted to walk where the truck was sitting. LOL And she was not moving for anything.

My small lens was distorting how close I was to the elephant and she decided to mock charge the truck [their way of sending a friendly reminder to MOVE or else]. Honestly, I was pretty damn scared for about 4 seconds when I saw through my lens two huge ears and a puff of dust flaring up from the ground after she took a few quick steps and immediately stopped. I said a few things not worth repeating on here and fell back on my back and was semi- ready to say good-bye to my life, but when I raised my head, all I could see was an semi agitated elephant waving her snout and keeping her ears out for me to see. Be sure to look at my photo links of this elephant if you haven’t already. I told the elephant I was sorry and we carried on with the rest of the game count.

The last morning the ABC film crew was with us, we recruited a local guide to take us into an area only scientists go to study black rhinos. This species of rhino is a huge conservation success story and is dramatically recovering in this area. We were all up at 4:30 and on the road by 5 AM hoping we’d find one to film while conducting some WWF staff interviews in the field for the ABC piece. We drove a good distance, then decided to abandon truck and walk for about 6 miles over a couple of ridges in hopes of seeing a rhino. I was all decked out with my camera set up and was worried about walking so far with so much weight, but I didn’t want to miss a chance to photograph one, especially a wild free roaming black rhino without a photo resume. The rocks and mountains here are thin, crumble easily, and make trekking interesting. Half the time you’re worried about where one is placing your feet, and then there is this voice in the back of my mind thinking I should be watching out for lions and other critters. LOL I was impressed with how well the ABC crew could keep up with everyone. When one sits down and hears where they’ve been in Africa and the difficulty of bushwhacking to film gorillas and such, it quickly becomes apparent how dedicated and rugged these guys can be in chasing their amazing stories.

I did talk to Dan about some of his recent journalism projects and I asked him what was the most dangerous reporting assignment he has been on, and he immediately said Afghanistan is no joke and he does not wish to go back. He had to wear bulletproof vests and commented how everyone seems to want to cut your head off because you’re an American. They both commented on how the scenery between Northwest Namibia and Afghanistan is similar.
Back to rhinos.

There was miss communication with the guide about the distance we’d have to walk to see the rhino, and if we didn’t have a flight for the film crew to catch, we probably would have walked much further to see this one. Regardless, the scenery was beautiful and we stopped at one of the more scenic places I saw during the whole trip to finish up interviews and hope the rhino might come out of a mountain crevasse to say hello. But this chase has fueled my curiosity about this animal and wanting to find at least one before I go back home to the states. I can’t be specific about where we were looking and I won’t ever reveal the location if I do see one –poachers… Its almost a scared knowledge if you find one.

The spring bock are the most densely populated of the mammals we found on the drive, and their grazing and movement patterns are almost a mystery to scientists and other wildlife managers. Rain is a huge driver of where one finds wildlife and some of the pastoral tribes we came across. I took a picture of a nice trophy spring bock laying down in the grass. When I showed it to WWF’s main hunting specialist he about fell over and asked where I saw this trophy male. We’re having talks about taking me out to his cousin’s farm to hunt an Oryx. I can’t wait.
Many people comment about my REI boots in the communal areas [much like our US reservations]. Its sad to see people walking around with few essentials or what I think is essential –especially decent footwear if you’re working in the field and around poisonous snakes and scorpions. Many of the children wear no diapers and have these traditional leather straps that cover everything up. Its extremely common to see goats and cattle grazing and walking around the houses, and these areas are all usually pretty bare because the animals have to be herded up at night to protect them from problem animals. Many of the cattle have impressive condition and build, while others I’ve seen were not looking so great.

I visited Onguta and the Ehiroviuka conservancy with Larkin and Uapii to conduct Larkin’s Fullbright surveys that will track the impacts of conservancies of communal and freehold members. We came across an interesting community meeting. A large NGO, IRDNC was conducting a holistic grazing meeting and it reminded me of my ranch back home and our holistic approach we’ve adopted.

A future blog will go into the idea of development, what has worked, what hasn't worked and possibly why, and contrast it with the current Namibian community based resource development. I was incredibly moved by the living conditions I experienced. Also, the Northern Great Plains Tour group ended yesterday and we had an incredible discussion I'll share at a later date.

I've been so busy with office work and developing Strategic Planning plans with WWF DC people and feel so blessed to be participating in the future goals of an org that has done so much with government and NGO's making Namibia the conservancy success story it is. No one knows about the scale and success of Namibia's conservnacy system and I hope the ABC video and other media projects will put it on the map.

Thank-you for reading! I'm off to Swakupmond this weekend to do some serious birding, ocean, sand dune, and funky port city life activities. Stay tuned for pictures.

A. E. Price