- From the editors desk - Last Month’s winner Top Shot - Facebook Cover Shot Winner - Volunteer Encounter - Quotes
- Community Update - Community Focus
- Photography Refections by Tim Feherty - Photography Focus
- Research Update - Research Focus
A new year ahead with new plans. It's already February and time is shooting forward at a rapid pace. A quick introduction – I’m Diana Beekvelt, 41 years old and from the Netherlands. My great adventure started on January 2nd at African Impact’s Greater Kruger location as a Photography Assistant at Dumela Lodge. I received a warm welcome from a sweet and enthusiastic group of people who are all working as hard as possible to preserve and conserve the beautiful South-African nature. I am proud to be a member of this team over the next three months. With a fully stacked program the time has flown; the volunteers have their own contributions to help to increase the impact of this organization. At home I work as a graphic designer so I gave the monthly newsletter a new look. There are new kinds of sections as Animal Backgrounds, Animal Crackers, and Staff Introductions. So get yourself a nice cup of coffee or tea and enjoy reading it!
Covershot: 1st February 2016 | Leopard in Buffaloland | Diana Beekvelt
When I was in second grade, my teacher decided that each eight year old in her class should do a research project in order to encourage developing passions. I chose to do mine on chimpanzees. If memory serves correctly, I believe it was to impress a boy I liked. Whatever my initial intention was though, it was very quickly left in the dust. The moment I began the project something immediately clicked. I had always loved animals as a kid but now I had found my passion and had found it through the voice of an incredible woman- Jane Goodall. I drank Jane and her chimps up. Even when the project was over I continued my “research”, although it didn’t feel like work to me because I was just doing it for fun. I continued to rent VHS tapes from the library of old recordings of her work in the field, history channel specials on the great apes and any of the children's books she wrote. Living in New York City I was pretty much wild animal deprived but I didn't let this stop me. Every weekend I went to the
park, climbed a tree, and spent hours sitting up there, completely still, watching and recording everything that the NYC squirrels did. Similar to how baby chimpanzees learn through observation of their mothers, I was using what I learned through observation of Jane. Now, fast forward ten years. Even before I started the American college application process, I already I knew I wasn't going to attend the next year. The prospect of going right through four years of college in a row as most people do sounded absolutely dismal to me. I was eighteen and I could go to college whenever I wanted, this was at least what my dad told me who, himself, had ended up a freshman at twenty three after years exploring the world. Now, I didn't want to do it for quite that long but the point was noted and I found a program that allowed me to go to Africa and work with animals as I had always wanted. This was how I ended up in South Africa with African Impact living the dream I'd had since I was
eight. The influence this program has had on me in just these four weeks is incredible. I have gotten to actually do research in practice and learn about the conservation side of Zoology which I had never really concentrated on before. It has been such a privilege to be able to go out on game drives multiple times a week, to watch the Big Five out in their natural habitat, and to learn as much as I have from the guides and staff here. In the time I’ve spent here I have definitely earned infinitely more about conserving our world than I ever did in four years of high school. I knew I loved zoology in theory, however, because I had spent my entire life surrounded by concrete I had no practical knowledge of whether or not it would be something I would enjoy doing for the rest of my life. I have gotten the answer I was looking for and if all goes according to plan, I’ll be back again.
We are so proud to share this great news. In January, a new project has started at Dumela Lodge – Community! We have already accomplished so much, but here is a small sample of some of the achievements:
Steenboks form monogamous couples (they mate for a lifetime) that occupy territory of 4 to 100 hectares. Male and female usually live apart from each other and gather only during the mating season.
Homework Assistance Between Grades 4 and 5 we spent many hours assisting teachers with their English classes. • Introduced participatory learning. • Played games and songs to aid English learning. • Conducted reading and comprehension and lesson on tenses.
Conservation Education Held our first ever Conservation Education after school club, introducing conservation and why it is important.
Eco Villages We assisted Eco Children at their eco village projects. We helped repair the eco villages in preparation for the new planting season.
Reading Club We spent many hours at Seganyane conducting Reading Club. We then introduced a system for the use of the library. The Reading Club is to encourage English reading and speaking and make reading fun!
We spent 7 hours at Seganyane clearing the vegetable keyholes to prepare them for planting!
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We painted the keyholes so everything is nice and colourful again.
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Macrotermes termites are fungusgrowers, bringing plant material back to the colony, chewing it to a pulp and using it to cultivate the fungus on which they feed. The workers gather wood by chewing it and swallowing it, but due to the hard lignin in the wood they cannot digest it. They return to the mound and take their faecal pellets and join them into a ball (with many grooves). They take fungal spores of a fungus, which only grows in termite mounds, and plant it in the chewed up wood. Teachers Meeting For the first time we organised a meeting at Dumela Lodge to meet the teachers in a social way. 15 teachers of the Seganyane School came. There was a African Impact Presentation and a lovely braai afterwards.
Planning and Development We spent long hours planning our After School sessions. And researching and brainstorming for Eco Children. • We planted 500 seedlings and prepared the Lodge Garden for planting.
• Meeting with the Tribal Council. • Completed first draft of a Malaria Presentation • Created vegetable info cards for ladies who cooks for the school. And many more ideas…bring on next month!
The fungus digests the wood and the termites eat the fungus. In order for the fungus to grow it needs constant humidity and a temperature of around 30 degrees Celsius. Humidity is maintained by tunnelling down to the water table in order to release water vapour into the colony. The deepest tunnel found was 30 metres below ground.
Hello everyone my name is Trico Chiloane. I am a community liaison here at African Impact Greater Kruger. I’m South African and was born in a Village called Chavela-Gaza. I studied Tourism in Mopani South East TVET College and I have been with African impact since 2015 May last year. It’s such an honour to work for this organisation and I’m surrounded by people who all share the same goals. We are all here to make a change in the communities whether it is in research, photography or community. I am super excited to be part of this team.
The experience of living in joy is what we have found in this beautiful country. Roland and I come from very different backgrounds; he is from The Netherlands and I am from Mexico. For the last 20 years we lived and worked in the US. Roland worked in the financial markets and I was a teacher in New York. We had been talking for a while to change up our lives, and last year we decided to move from New York and take a different path. Now we are in Limpopo, South Africa, and are volunteering with African Impact in the greater Kruger area.
The location comprises three projects: research, photography and community. We are volunteering in the community project, which consists of main pillars: education and self sustainability.
What we are enjoying the most is being in the school doing what we can to help the children with homework assistance, reading and conservation education. But what is really happening, like they say here in South Africa, is that the learners (meaning the students) have taught us so much more than we can ever teach them.
We are the learners. We learned that you can live with joy regardless of the circumstances in your life. We learned that even South Africa as a country is developing, the society still struggles with its recent history. To their credit, the very brave and fearless people of South Africa are facing the present with open arms and hearts. Our experience has given us different a perspective on life. When we question ourselves “Where did we lose that joy that comes from the core of humanity?”, we know for sure we are in the right place to find it once again.
I have recently acquired a new camera after approximately 5 years of wanting sorry - needing one. It has many, many buttons, an instruction manual that if ever I printed it out could render a Rhino unconscious and if it were legal, I think I would consider marrying it. Now, I'm not going to go on and on about technical details - frame rate, low light capabilities, megapixel count (although all these are mouth wateringly fantastic in my opinion). I would prefer, rather, to talk about the most important piece of kit any photographer has - the eye.
comes even close within a few years of technological development. Yet, amazingly, people still do. They think having a camera means automatically getting fantastic photographs. I read a story recently where a photographer was at a dinner party, and the host mentioned that she had seen his photographs, loved them and commented that he "must have a fantastic camera." To which he replied, "I really enjoyed the beautiful meal you prepared for us. You must have a fantastic oven."
Our eyes, in combination with the fantastic machine behind it, the brain, are the product of ages of evolution, and it would be most vain of us to think we could come up with something that
To put things into perspective, your average mobile phone camera has a megapixel count of around 12mp. A professional level camera could have anywhere between 20 and 50mp. But
boffins at some wonderful university somewhere have estimated that the ocular system nature gave us at birth, at no extra cost, is around 576mp. That's around 30x more sophisticated than your average camera. It's quite easy to demonstrate this for yourself. Look around you, at something, anything. A bush or tree, for example. Now pick out a leaf. Now put the camera to your eye and try to find that same leaf. Take the camera away again, and see how quick you can find that leaf without the camera. A little bit of a difference, no? For another example, you may have heard of what we call light temperature.
Birds in a bright sky turn easily into a silhouette when you put the camera on auto. Set your menu to aperture priority and over expose 1 or 2 stops. Use at least 1/2000 sec to get a sharp image. Switch to continuous shooting mode. This will allow you to snap off a quick volley of shots as your subject glides past. You can look through your photographs properly once you’re home and select the perfect shot.
Full Frame 400mm - ISO 320 - F5.6 - 1/500 s
For sharp handheld photos, you shouldn’t let the shutter speed be any slower than the equivalent focal length of the lens. If you do, you run the risk of blurred photos through camera shake. For example: If you are zoomed in full on your 400 mm lens on a full frame camera, you need to have a shutter speed of minimum 1/400 s. If you still can’t get your shutter speed quick enough, you need to raise your ISO or open your aperture. Be aware a high ISO gives you more grain in your photo, giving a less clear image.
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Categorised by a very clever man called Sir Kelvin, it basically means that different temperatures of light on a subject will give it a cool (blue) or warm (yellow) tone. It is immediately obvious in photographs when there are different light sources at play - an animal half in shade, half in sunlight for example. Only a slight difference, but the light temperature difference between direct sunlight and shade (or reflected sunlight) can give the shaded area a 'blue' cast. Again, though, you never see it with your normal eyesight, as your 'ocular machine' makes all the necessary adjustments automatically. Fantastic. So, to recap: your eye, combined with your brain, this 'ocular machine' is roughly 30 times more impressive and sophisticated than your camera ever will be. Why invest in a new camera then? The only good reason I have found to upgrade (and believe me, I could justify nearly anything) is when the camera starts to limit you. You have explored every aspect and it can no longer keep up. Having these restrictions can, of course, make you more creative and learn different techniques to overcome technical obstacles, and this brings me to the
heart of the matter. The camera can only ever be as good as the eye behind it. A great oven does not make a great chef; I have word processing functions on my computer but I would never profess to be a writer; and having a great camera does not make you a great photographer. If you are interested in photography, and are looking to improve, stop thinking about which new camera to get, which new lens to get. Upgrade the best piece of kit you have by reading, educating yourself with a night course, go to a seminar or lecture by a photographer you respect. You could even come to Africa and immerse yourself in photography as part of our project here (nice little plug there, did you notice?). The most important part of your photography equipment is, and always will be what you were born with: Your very own 'ocular machine'.
“ Here at Dumela Lodge my experiences have been priceless. I feel that I have had great inner growth here. This is due to the amazing volunteers and leaders I’ve had the privilege to meet here. When I decided to come to South Africa there were a lot of quotes about how life changing it would be, but I had no idea how big of an impact it would have on me. Meeting so many people from different cultures and perspectives has given me a new outlook on life. I have also found that the photography experience here is phenomenal, and I wouldn’t be able to say I disliked any part of it. I have learned how to control my camera in manual mode so much better to the point that I feel it has taken my photography to a much higher quality. After just a few weeks I have a whole new profound respect and love for photography as an art form. I believe that I have learned more here than any other class or photography experience I have had in my life.
” The things I have learned are endless but the biggest part of my learning was how to capture an image exactly the way I wanted to once seeing it in its final product. I have also found that in my experience here when I started with a small love for animals that has grown by leaps and bounds. This is another element I wouldn’t take back for anything. Learning about the poaching has been life altering within me, and has made me become so much more aware of the importance of the animals and environment around me. I have had to overcome many fear such as my previous fear of snakes and spiders, which has completely diminished due to hands-on experience of them. I loved going to the Kinyonga Reptile Center as well as Klaserie Nature Preserve because it put me into the scene with these amazing animals that are so important to the world. Learning the devastating facts about rhino poaching was very hard to hear after seeing them in the wild. I couldn’t believe how peaceful the animals are
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and also their radiant beauty. It is not comparable just seeing them in pictures as in real life. The last statement I would like to make is that learning about the community here in South Africa has been immensely interesting and brilliant. It is so abundant in cultural tradition and meaning. Our presentations on the Shangaan culture was just so detailed and really gives a perspective on how life would be if I were raised in the culture. Seeing such deeply impoverished areas was a very hard part of the trip for me. I think sometimes that homeless or poor people in the States have it bad but it isn’t even comparable. In conclusion this trip has been one of my best experiences and I am so beyond blessed for the experiences I have had.
I grew up on a farm in rural northern Ontario, Canada. The African travel bug hit me hard early on in childhood. My parents never understood my obsession but encouraged me in my dreams. It wasn’t until 2008 I first set foot on African soil; what would become my new home. I never tire of the African wildlife, stunning landscapes and its determined people. In May 2014, I achieved my lifelong dream of living and working in the African bush. I successfully qualified as FGASA Level 1 Field Guide. Wanting to make a difference and pursuing my passions of guiding, educating others and continuing on my road to higher learning, I recently joined the African Impact team. I live my day to day life by this simple mantra: Never set limits on what you think you can do. Rather, aim for limitless possibilities and you will surprise even yourself. In a nutshell, never limit your challenges but rather challenge your limits.
Now that 2016 is in full swing we are off to a racing start! With all of the new developments this past month its hard to believe that so much could have already happened in the new year! From leopards to raptors, wild dogs to lions, we have had the full range of activity, from big to small, this month.
This month has had the full range of leopard activity! First off we started with the tracks of both male and female leopards on Buffaloland which was a good sign that the leopards were back! Then we moved on to camera traps! On Jan 20 we caught Ncila Wolhea near Marula Pan in some of
the most beautiful camera trap photos we have ever seen! We even got to see her drink from the pan! Now that we knew which area she was occupying the remaining question was whether she had given birth to cubs yet! Everyone was in a leopard frenzy from this point on, with our mission being to locate our elusive leopards. Then in early February our hours of tracking and hard work paid off. Ncila was seen lounging on a rock 15 m from us which turned out to be located right above her den site with her 2 cubs! So now the question is answered but even more have arisen! With Ncila
disappearing from the site a few days later our search continues on to locate and document the growth our 2 new additions along with the behavior and habituation of their mother. At the end of 2015 we managed to be completely caught up with the identification of individuals with the data we had collected so then it was time for the ellies to put on a show! And a show they did! We have seen massive amount of elephants in the Klaserie the last month which has been very exciting for our dedicated volunteers.
Some of our volunteers have spent many painstaking hours going through 1000’s of pictures in order to create new ID kits for the new elephants. We have added 10 new kits including a new herd! One never ending project is trying to find new partners with which we can share and collaborate with in our data collection.
We are excited this month to introduce a new partner for our raptor research. African Raptor DataBank (ARDB), managed by HabitatInfo, aims to ascertain the conservation status of raptors and their habitats across all of Africa. With data collected across Africa the ARDB will be able to determine the most at risk populations and also the ranges which are most severely under threat. We are excited to work with them as they complete the first stage of their project and continue to work towards the conservation of our vital raptor species.
As we head into the next month there are so many developments that we look forward to in our research. Our leopard project is expanding and our corridor research continues to get more interesting with the addition of new leopards. The lion dynamics continue to change with the drought in progress and one of the lionesses being pregnant. Wild dogs continue to surprise us with more and more sightings and changes in their social structure. And the elephants continue to diversify in the number of individuals as their search for water and resources continues. 2016 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for the researchers.
Some believe that you can determine the age of a tortoise by counting the rings on its shell. However, this is not possible. The rings or scutes are formed during growth periods and leopard tortoises may grow at different times and rates during the year. But it is a good indication, so get counting.
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Three-headed ostrich with four legs!
The ‘Painted Wolf’ has huge ranges and is a constant wanderer. In the Serengeti the estimated size of each pack’s 2 territory is 1,500 km . An area the size of Greater London, which is home to 7.5 million people, could therefore only support one or two packs.
Wild dogs are on the endangered species list with 6,600 thought to be left in the wild. Specifically in South Africa they are even rarer; with only around 1400 thought to be in existence. In the past months we have been fortunate enough to have had wild dog sightings at Klaserie on almost a weekly basis. These sightings have not only given us the opportunity to analyse the dogs themselves, but also their pack size and behaviour.
One of the most reliable ways of monitoring these dogs was the development of ID kits. These kits consist of a series of photos that highlight the dogs most easily identifiable features. Through numerous sightings and constant photo updates, the ID kits have proven to be very important in trying to make some sense of the dogs behaviour and social structures. Sightings in early January lead us to the conclusion that
there was a pack of seven wild dogs; Dubbed the ‘Buffle Pack. This pack consisted of an alpha male, an alpha female, and five other females. With a new group of researchers in midJanuary all hopeful to see the wild dogs, Klaserie did not disappoint in their first visit. Counting fourteen wild dogs sleeping under a tree, and three more drinking from the dam; seventeen in total.
Seemingly, this meant that there were now two packs of wild dogs in Klaserie. The most recent sighting was in early February, after no dogs had been seen by our researchers for around two weeks. Three dogs were spotted hunting, again just after they had eaten, and again resting by the waterhole. All of these separate sightings occurred within the space of about four hours. With all these separate sightings of groups in different numbers across a period spanning months, taking many photos and comparing them with the
existing photos held in the ID kits became a large part of our research. By using the ID kits we successfully determined that there were common dogs between nearly all sightings, and that many of the dogs seen in the original ‘Buffle Pack’ were also seen in the larger group of seventeen. It was also determined that the group of three that were most recently sighted was in fact the alpha male and alpha female of the ‘Buffle Pack’, and their pup. Now that we know all the wild dogs we have seen were actually a part of the same large pack, we can
only speculate on why the number of dogs at a particular sighting is varied. It may be because of drought or environmental conditions, it may be related to hunting or other behaviours, or it may be something to do with injury or disease. We have been very lucky to see these rare and beautiful creatures in their natural environment, as our research continues.
Hey! My name is Dani and I’m 25 years old and was born in the United States (proud Jersey girl!). My favorite animal? That’s tough… it’s a tossup between a Steenbok (a tiny antelope with big ears and bright eyes) and a lion. I attended Kent State University where I received a Bachelors of Science degree in Zoology. After graduation I traveled throughout the states interning at various wildlife rehabilitation centers and sanctuaries. I took on a lifelong dream by volunteering with African Impact on their ‘African Big 5 and Wildlife Conservation’ project. One of the best days of my life came when African Impact asked if I would return as the Research Assistant; I was ecstatic! This has been an experience unlike any other. I’m so thankful for all the remarkable people I’ve met and those that have inspired me throughout my time here. It’s been a true blessing.
Check out our newest submissions for this month on: africanimpactphotography.com
Anja Johanssen, Denmark