I am officially in South Africa and waiting to be picked up by WEI (Wildlife Ecological Investments) tomorrow to start my adventure. The flight was extremely long, over 14 hours and I got little sleep while in flight. We arrived in Jo-Berg around 8 am, thus we flew into the rising sun. Even from the window of the plane, it was absolutely gorgeous. The soft rolling clouds looked like a mountain range is you didn't know any better. I hope to see such breathtaking sights while out at Kruger!
Date Written: 8/30
Here is a bit of background to this Operation Wallacea project, along with what I will be taking part in:
WEI is the private scientific organization that Operation Wallacea is partnered with in South Africa. The purpose of either of these organizations being in South Africa is that the managers of Balule Reserve had started culling (controlled kills) elephants, because they believed that there was an overpopulation of elephants in the reserve. This would be a concern to managers because elephants drastically change the landscape and ecosystem through the uprooting and debarking of trees, so any large scale changes by them could impact the wildlife and vegetation residing in the reserve. The public found out about the culling and questioned the managers, who ended up not having any solid data to backup the culling. This is where WEI comes into play. Our mission throughout our time in Struwig (a reserve within the larger Balule reserve) was to help collect data that would go towards determining whether elephants are making a severe enough impact that overpopulation would be inferred.
Every day we had one lecture on any number of the following things: conservation issues, ecology of South Africa, elephants, herbivores and carnivores, inverts (insects), birds, and tree identification.
We would also have one bush excursion during the day this could include: habitat assessments, bird point counts, game transects, game drives and bush walks.
At night we would either have: a night drive (only had 5 of these) or an in camp activity (movie, lecture, presentation, etc).
No comments:
Post a Comment