By Siri Vlasic (Westminster College)

The past few days have been full of activities and excitement. A few days ago we spent our last night in Sankuyo. In the morning Kaggie, Innocent, Ben, and I woke up early to finish one last transect in NG34. It started out pretty slow because we spotted hardly any animals during the first half of the transect. After a while, Innocent, one of our escort guides, noticed some hyena tracks that he wanted to get a closer look at. We stopped the car and were about to back up when Ben turned and noticed a hyena right behind our car. As we turned around we noticed 8 more hyenas, including two juveniles, who were all feeding on an old impala carcass, most likely left by a pack of wild dogs.

As we were sitting there, one of the juveniles grabbed an impala horn and started running in circles around our car as the others chased it. When they got bored with the impala horn they jumped into a small pond to jump on top of each other and play some more. This was the first close encounter I have had with hyenas. After watching how playful and cute they were playing with each other I think hyenas may be one of my new favorite animals and they definitely get a bad reputation from stories. After the transect we got back to camp, finished packing up, and made our way back to Maun, where we spent the next couple of nights before heading to our next campsite in Mababe.

 

 

We arrived in Maun in the afternoon of the 16th. We had a little bit of free time to take showers and use some WiFi and then we headed to a local restaurant/bar to listen to Timmy Blackbeard (the regional wildlife coordinator for the Department of Wildlife and National Parks) speak at the Maun Meet Up, which is a bi-monthly discussion between conservationists working in the area. He spoke about some of the issues in Botswana and southern Africa at the moment. The issue that I found most interesting was that there are currently elephants migrating south out of Chobe National Park (where there has historically been very large elephant populations) into South Africa. They are migrating south because the vegetation preferred by the elephants is decreasing because of the increasing population sizes in Chobe. As a result, DWNP has to herd the elephants back towards northern Botswana by foot, car, and on occasion by helicopter.

The next day we worked on finalizing our research proposals for most of the day. Ben and Laurel are working on demography research, where they are taking data on elephants, buffalo, zebra, and kudu to see if the current aging techniques we use of transects are accurate. Gabe, Kiley and I are working on sightabililty research to be able to quantify the visibility bias associated with closed and open habitats within different vegetation types. In the middle of the day we took a little break to listen to Arthur Albertson talk about the problems associated veterinary fences in Botswana. It was interesting to learn about how these fences – put into place to stop the spread of disease between domestic and wild animals – are blocking migration paths for many animals. This can often result in death because it cuts off resources, animals get caught in the fences, and some animals can also become more susceptible to predators.

The day after, March 18th, we resupplied our food, had some minor car issues fixed, and packed up the cars. We left Maun in the afternoon, saw 11 lions along the road, and made it to our next campsite in Mababe just in time to set up camp and eat dinner before going to bed after a long, very packed day.