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Interview with our Wildlife Manager

The mornings are definitely getting chilly but talking with Lorraine Doyle, the Wildlife Manager at Thanda Safari Private Game Reserve, you can’t help but be captivated by her warm personality. Lorraine is a Zimbo –– having been born in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), holds an Honour’s degree in Nursing and served as an Intensive Care sister in the UK before leaving the city-life for the African country-side. Lorraine is exceptionally passionate about nature and the outdoors and is able to pass on her knowledge and experience through her own guide training company, Africa Nature Training, as well as through Thanda Safari’s Research and Volunteer programme, Ulwazi, in which she is a co-director. Lorraine also guides for the award-winning, WWF-partnered, American-based travel company Natural Habitat Adventures and is the only woman guide to work for them in Africa.

These skills are put to good use at Thanda Safari, as managing a reserve of 14 000 hectares is no easy task. Paperwork is unfortunately unavoidable, and takes up a surprisingly large amount of time, with other daily activities including monitoring of certain species, including elephant, cheetah and rhino, co-ordinating the rhino monitors and wildlife team, as well as interacting with the vet. All Thanda Safari’s cheetahs are collared in order to be able to keep tabs on them.

With the global population of cheetahs being only about 7 000, monitoring of cheetah is incredibly important, and Thanda Safari is fortunate that one of its cheetahs recently gave birth and a second cheetah is also heavily pregnant. The cheetahs are tracked using telemetry equipment, an activity in which Thanda Safari guests may also participate in. Essentially, an antenna is used which will link to the radio collar around the cheetah, emitting beeping noises when pointed in the direction of the collared cheetah. However, it is harder than it sounds, with the telemetry device only giving an indication of the general area, and much of Thanda Safari being populated with dense sickle bush which makes finding the cheetah a challenge!

Rhino monitoring is an absolutely essential task, with dedicated rhino monitors tasked with keeping tabs on all rhino on the reserve. Despite white rhinos weighing up to 2 500kg, and black rhinos up to 1 350kg, they can be decidedly difficult to spot, and in particular, the black rhino, which favours thick scrub and are usually solitary. Thanda Safari is not only a founder member of Project Rhino but is actively involved in the WWF Black Rhino Expansion Project, with the goal being to ensure an increase in the number of black rhino. This has been an undoubted success, with black rhino having bred really well on Thanda Safari and has resulted in some progeny having been relocated to Malawi as part of a project’s long term objectives.

The different rhinos are predominantly identified by unique notches in their ears, which they often cut while rampaging through the bush. To make the rhino monitors jobs easier, the guides also assist in recording rhino sightings, while drones and camera traps are used especially in areas which are known to be frequented by rhino including waterholes and areas with high concentrations of rhino middens (dung heaps).

Another challenge is monitoring the carrying capacity of a reserve. This is impacted by a number of factors, including rainfall, the availability of water, the number of predators and the condition of the veld. Consider that a full-grown elephant consumes between 150 and 300 kg of vegetation every day, and about the same in litres of water – that is a lot of trees and grass! So if we assume a herd of 10 elephants, that means just that herd would require between 1 500 and 3 000 kg of food per day!

Lions of course also need to eat, and consume between 5 and 10 kg of meat a day, killing about 15 large animals a year on average. The rule of thumb is 1 lion per 1 000 hectares, although the environment is in constant flux.

It is, therefore, a fine balancing act that is required, which is impacted by reserves being fenced off which hinders the ability of the game to search for the proverbial greener pastures when times get difficult. Even large reserves like the Kruger National Park require constant supervision and man-management in order to manage these eco-systems.

For Lorraine, the ability to make some small contribution to nature, while living in the bush, is undoubtedly the best part of the job. And who could argue with that – in the words of Aristotle,

“In all things of Nature, there is something of the marvellous.”

The mornings are definitely getting chilly but talking with Lorraine Doyle, the Wildlife Manager at Thanda Safari Private Game Reserve, you can’t help but be captivated by her warm personality. Lorraine is a Zimbo –– having been born in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), holds an Honour’s degree in Nursing and served as an Intensive Care sister in the UK before leaving the city-life for the African country-side. Lorraine is exceptionally passionate about nature and the outdoors and is able to pass on her knowledge and experience through her own guide training company, Africa Nature Training, as well as through Thanda Safari’s Research and Volunteer programme, Ulwazi, in which she is a co-director. Lorraine also guides for the award-winning, WWF-partnered, American-based travel company Natural Habitat Adventures and is the only woman guide to work for them in Africa.

These skills are put to good use at Thanda Safari, as managing a reserve of 14 000 hectares is no easy task. Paperwork is unfortunately unavoidable, and takes up a surprisingly large amount of time, with other daily activities including monitoring of certain species, including elephant, cheetah and rhino, co-ordinating the rhino monitors and wildlife team, as well as interacting with the vet. All Thanda Safari’s cheetahs are collared in order to be able to keep tabs on them. With the global population of cheetahs being only about 7 000, monitoring of cheetah is incredibly important, and Thanda Safari is fortunate that one of its cheetahs recently gave birth and a second cheetah is also heavily pregnant. The cheetahs are tracked using telemetry equipment, an activity in which Thanda Safari guests may also participate in. Essentially, an antenna is used which will link to the radio collar around the cheetah, emitting beeping noises when pointed in the direction of the collared cheetah. However, it is harder than it sounds, with the telemetry device only giving an indication of the general area, and much of Thanda Safari being populated with dense sickle bush which makes finding the cheetah a challenge!

Rhino monitoring is an absolutely essential task, with dedicated rhino monitors tasked with keeping tabs on all rhino on the reserve. Despite white rhinos weighing up to 2 500kg, and black rhinos up to 1 350kg, they can be decidedly difficult to spot, and in particular, the black rhino, which favours thick scrub and are usually solitary. Thanda Safari is not only a founder member of Project Rhino but is actively involved in the WWF Black Rhino Expansion Project, with the goal being to ensure an increase in the number of black rhino. This has been an undoubted success, with black rhino having bred really well on Thanda Safari and has resulted in some progeny having been relocated to Malawi as part of a project’s long term objectives. The different rhinos are predominantly identified by unique notches in their ears, which they often cut while rampaging through the bush. To make the rhino monitors jobs easier, the guides also assist in recording rhino sightings, while drones and camera traps are used especially in areas which are known to be frequented by rhino including waterholes and areas with high concentrations of rhino middens (dung heaps).

Another challenge is monitoring the carrying capacity of a reserve. This is impacted by a number of factors, including rainfall, the availability of water, the number of predators and the condition of the veld. Consider that a full-grown elephant consumes between 150 and 300 kg of vegetation every day, and about the same in litres of water – that is a lot of trees and grass! So if we assume a herd of 10 elephants, that means just that herd would require between 1 500 and 3 000 kg of food per day! Lions of course also need to eat, and consume between 5 and 10 kg of meat a day, killing about 15 large animals a year on average. The rule of thumb is 1 lion per 1 000 hectares, although the environment is in constant flux. It is, therefore, a fine balancing act that is required, which is impacted by reserves being fenced off which hinders the ability of the game to search for the proverbial greener pastures when times get difficult. Even large reserves like the Kruger National Park require constant supervision and man-management in order to manage these ecosystems.

For Lorraine, the ability to make some small contribution to nature, while living in the bush, is undoubtedly the best part of the job. And who could argue with that – in the words of Aristotle, “In all things of Nature, there is something of the marvellous.”