Lions have continued to torment our embattled
Umtchibi pack. After last month's horrific incident, the pack
moved their den some 500 metres away, taking their three surviving
pups deeper into the teak woodland. However this was not enough.
On three more occasions the lions came back and hunted them down,
forcing the pack to move again and again. As a result of this
we have lost contact with them, as they moved even further away
from the nearest road each time. We know that the adults are ok,.
Jealous has done a wonderful job in trying to track them down
and was rewarded recently with the sight of all nine adults hunting
down a kudu. However he knew that seeing all nine adults was not
necessarily a good thing as it meant that any surviving pups were
alone at the den, at the mercy of the lions. We speculated on
the chances of any pups still being alive. I urged Jealous to
stick to his task and keep track of the pack, if they went back
towards the denning area, we could console ourselves with the
belief that some pups remained alive. Over the next view days,
Jealous proved just how good he is at tracking the dogs, how well
he has learnt his lessons. He kept with them, following as they
returned from several hunting forays, always going back towards
the denning area. Unfortunately, he lost the signal eventually
as the pack move away from the nearby road, deep into the teak
woodland. However, we are able to console ourselves that some
pups must be alive, otherwise the pack would have moved away from
the area altogether by now. We will just have to wait a few more
weeks for the chance of seeing "Spots" surviving siblings,
when they eventually leave the den for good to start out on the
next chapter in an already too eventful life.
Jealous also proved his worth, as if that
were necessary, by finding the den of our Mashambo pack. A small
pack consisting of the alpha pair and two survivors from their
2005 litter. This year they have six pups, who all seem very fit
and well fed. Their den is outside Hwange National Park, where
lion pressure is less. However elephant pressure is immense!!
Never an easy time for the dogs, on one morning Jealous sat watching
the pups as a herd he described as "too many to count"
moved through the bush all around the den, breaking trees as they
went, reacting aggressively to the smell of the dogs, forcing
the adults to run away and the pups to run for cover. Jealous
couldn't tell if the pups had made it, such was the commotion
and dust kicked up. Once the calm resumed, he waited for the adults
to come back to the den and breathed a sigh of relief when all
six pups came boiling out of their hole in the ground. Needless
to say, the pack moved the den and so we were again frustrated
by the road network that has prevented us from locating the new
den site. Jealous is able to follow the pack when they hunt only
to lose the signal when they head back for the den as it is too
far from the nearest road. Again we have no choice but to wait
for the day when the pack leave the den and resume their nomadic
lifestyle.
This daily monitoring of our study packs
dovetails with our anti poaching unit deployment. They obviously
pay particular attention to the areas that these packs hunt in.
This month they again arrested poachers, after sitting in ambush
for two days following the discovery of a freshly set snare line.
