Warthog Post March 2018

THE WARTHOG POST African Impact Conservation Projects - Greater Kruger Area, South Africa

March 2018

March 2018

March | 03 CONTENTS From the Editors Desk Februarys Top Shot Foundation Updates Volunteer Encounters Ranger’s Report Cover Shot Competition

Community Focus

Reflections & Focus

Update & Focus ‘Dancing Hippo’ – Marvin Mechelse, Photography Assistant, Germany

Lindsey Forg Photography Volunteer USA This rather quiet time of the year regarding numbers of volunteers is still a busy time for maintenance and administration.

Whilst our maintenance team is fixing infrastructure issues, getting the lodge ready for busy season, our management is negotiating important deals with stakeholders, such as landowners and government officials.

The Farmers for the Future project is just about developing into the second stage, offering one hectare of new land to cultivate. The report from African Impact Foundation in this issue will tell you more about this exciting progress.

Our photography project continues to get more streamlined focusing on making conservation and wildlife photography more impactful. Recently, we received awesome news: Africa Geographic have confirmed a new collaboration with us whereby they will feature pictures from our photography volunteers for their publications!

Looking forward we are excited about the outcomes of all these developments and will report back on them in the April edition of the Warthog Post, so stay tuned!

Marvin Mechelse Photography Assistant Germany Request subscription to the free monthly Warthog Post and keep up to date with the latest news! warthogpost@africanimpact.com

From A Volunteers perspective

Background

My parents, brother, and best friend brought me to the airport, my trip to Africa had begun!

After working for 6 months, 12 hours a day, to pay for this trip, it was now finally happening! After hundreds of air kisses to my family, saying goodbye, I was now alone. The trip went very smoothly; but was very exhausting.

I arrived in Nelspruit, and was received very enthusiastically! That immediately gave me a welcome feeling.

Name: Laurora Shoemann Home: Netherlands Project: Big 5 Research Duration: 4 weeks

Once I arrived at the lodge I was quite overwhelmed and did not feel quite as comfortable, everyone already knew each other and I was the newcomer‌Luckily everyone was very nice and made a great effort to make me feel at home, I quickly felt part of the group!

I have had to get used to the early wake up times. I knew it would be early, but I did not think it would be 5:15! And then you might think you go to bed early at night?!

Yes, that is often the plan, but if you are completely involved in a game with your fellow volunteers, who have become good friends, it will often be later than planned. And believe me that often happens!

I have never seen animals in the wild before, so I keep a look out and keep taking pictures from one to another. It's just great, you never know what's going to happen in front of you. The giraffe has become my new favorite animal. I find it so funny how they just stare at you!

Although the Crowned Eagle is not the largest eagle of South Africa it is considered the most powerful when measured in terms of the weight of its prey items. These are mammals weighing up to 30 kg.

Crowned Eagle inhabit a fixed territory throughout their adult life. The conservation status of the Crowned Eagle is near threatened. So we are happy to have a breeding pair in one of our game drive locations.

FROM A Volunteers perspective CONTINUED‌ The thing I find the best during the overnight trips into the bush, despite the fact that I dislike camping, is that it's so cool to be in your tent at night and hear all the different animals calling. I did not care about lying between the animals, because I found it so interesting to hear the different sounds and then try to figure out which animal it is!

Background

I miss my family and home a little bit of course, this is the first time that I am away from them for such a long period of time. I am so used to their presence, and to seeing them every day that it is strange not to have them around me. Fortunately, there is WhatsApp and FaceTime to keep in touch!

And even though I will not see my family for a while, I have gained a whole new one here in Africa!

The Elegant Grasshopper is probably one of the most spectacular descendent of its family.

It cannot easily be confused with other insects, because of its aposematic coloration.

After hatching, the nymphs molt five times before becoming adult.

Nymphs and adults do not carry a yellow ring around the tip of the hind.

Q&A with: Arnold What is your background?

I'm 21 years old. I live with my parents and 3 siblings.

What are you doing at the moment?

I am currently in grade 12 and my favorite subjects are mathematics and literature.

Why do you want to join Farmers of the Future?

I want to be involved in Farmers of the Future because we have difficulties getting food throughout the year.

What are your long-term goals?

In life, I wish to look after my family and help the people in need which is why I first wanted to become a lawyer. But becoming a police man is also an option.

Hi! My name is Charline, I’m from Switzerland and currently taking a gap year. I was at Dumela in December 2017 until January 2018 as a research volunteer. Once I was back at home, I was planning to go to England for 6 months to work on my English. But I realized it didn’t make sense for me. I asked African Impact if it was possible for me to come back for 6 months, and now I’m here again, in the game! I’m so excited to be able to practice my English and to be with the people here in South Africa surrounded by wildlife on the different reserves.

My job during these 6 months is to assist the Research and Community Managers. I am here to help them during the week, to be with the volunteers during their activities, and together we are trying to make the greatest impact possible for the community and research programs.

It’s really interesting to work on both projects because they are complementary. The animals that make up the Big 5 are really important for the ecosystem and the economy of South Africa. The South African population needs them to work with tourists and for their biodiversity. Also we need to work to protect the animals who are vulnerable, without this their populations are going to decline over the years and it’s going to be a disaster for the ecosystem….

How You Can Help The Greater Kruger region of South Africa experiences severe unemployment, with 15-24 year olds making up 70% of all those unemployed in Mpumalanga. The cycle of poor education, poverty and health issues create an environment in which communities struggle to escape.

Conversely, if the children and the young adults do well in school (we help them improve their English at school) and find a good job (we teach them how to create and manage a garden by selling vegetables to create profit); they’re hopefully not going to poach any animals for money or live in misery.

Even if the youth in the area receive an education they are often without the skills to be able to get jobs and create a stable income. This further contributes to the unemployment in the area and an increase in poverty levels.

Our goal is to equip young adults to theoretically and practically apply their skills to a career and identify and establish entrepreneurial opportunities. We establish community gardens to help locals sustain themselves and their families whilst providing income generation.

To help out, visit The African Impact Foundation Website Thanks for reading!

So working on both projects is really interesting. With children, at school we can directly see our impact and it’s very rewarding. With animals, it takes more time to see the results, but the impact is as engaging as it is with children.

I’m really excited to be here again, to be able to learn English and be doing something that I have always dreamed of, it is really rewarding.

Charline Robert-Tissot Research and Community Assistant Switzerland

African Impact Foundation Educate

–

Enrich

-

Empower

READING CLUB, SUNGUTI FARM AND AN EXCITING NEW FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN We have had our first Reading Club of the year!

The students, volunteers and team all had a fantastic time playing a spelling game. The students had such fun learning English, and we all had such a wonderful time playing, teaching and learning all together. Our photography, research and community volunteers were there and everyone had such fun! It is lovely and hugely rewarding to see how eager the students are to regularly attend sessions. We saw this clearly on our second week, when driving down to the school for Reading Club, we observed the students already heading back home. Fortunately, as soon as they all saw the African Impact bus, they suddenly turned around and ran back to the school excitedly to attend Reading Club – proof that they really enjoy improving their English with us!! We look forward to the year ahead and achieving even more success in this powerful part of our community projects.

As we approach the end of phase 1 of our Farmers of the Future project and enter phase 2 our gardeners are now graduating to farmers in phase 2. This phase sees them re-locating to Sunguti Farm, a brand new location to the project that is nearby and 1 hectare in size. Sunguti is owned by a local vegetable farmer, Bennidicter, aka ‘Benica’. The farm stretches over 5 hectares of land and Benica provides various vegetables to large supermarkets in the area. In phase 2 Benica works with us and our wonderful volunteers to mentor and support our new farmers in their mission to increase crop production, thus income generation and opportunity to provide employment. In conjunction with this, phase 1 starts again at Sasekile Gardens with a new group of subsistence gardeners. Introducing our first new recruits, Lodric and Arnold. These two eager and excited gentlemen represent the first of our 6 new gardeners taking their place and manning their tools at Sasekile Gardens. For introductions to all six of these new additions to the project look-out for our update next month!

African Impact Foundation Educate

–

Enrich

-

Empower

Would you like to know more?

Learn

about

the

African Impact Foundation and the great work that we do throughout Eastern and Southern Africa.

Perhaps you would like to donate to our projects or get involved in some way?

There are many ways to support and get involved with this incredible project, we have recently launched our ‘Fund-a-Farmer’ campaign which allows you to support one of our dedicated farmers by providing them with the ‘kit’ they need to initiate their crops and keep them running sustainably. For a fundraising pack and more information on how you can get involved contact Morgan@africanimpactfoundation.org.

Please also feel free to share this amongst your friends and family – the more support this project gets the more we can work toward developing entrepreneurial opportunities and sustainable food security

Each one of us has the power to make an impact, all it takes is getting Involved!

Take a closer look at our work and projects at the following links.

throughout the areas that we work.

AfricanImpactFoundation .org/Sasekile

Until next time, please check out our website and see how you can be involved, whether you are here

AfricanImpactFoundation

with us or at home and looking to make your African Impact. You can also have a look at the projects Facebook page for more information, we welcome your comments and hope to hear from you soon!

Stuart Isham Fairbairns Business Manager Scotland

We look forward to hearing from you.

Backgrounds

Be aware of what you Want As soon as I knew I'll go back to Africa, I started to think about which restrictions I experienced with my camera equipment when I was there in September 2017. Good camera gear doesn't automatically make a good photographer nor a good photo. But as soon as you've found your style of photography, your favourite subjects and you know all your camera potential, you'll start to perfect your work and at some point you'll see that it can't get better unless you go on with more sophisticated equipment.

Emphasise the imperfection Flipping through your pictures and there’s always something in there not perfect enough?

Underexposed, overexposed, too noisy, motion blur, composition not ideal, subject not in focus – there are a lot of reasons to dismiss a picture. But ?think about emphasising the “mistake” and make the picture tell another story. Use a super noisy picture to bring in even more grain, make it black and white and let it look like an original from your granny's heirlooms.

As my budget was clear, I had a look at the market and found: there are tons of cameras and lenses etc…. So how to decide? I had a few lenses already and was used to the menu and settings of my old camera. So it was most convenient to stick to the same brand. Then I thought about my favourite subjects – birds. Often far away, often superfast and most likely in difficult lightning situations. That quickly lead to the decision to work with a crop sensor, as these cameras allow much higher frame rates and multiple the zoom factor of your lens. They are of course not as good as full frame sensor cameras in poor lightning conditions. But as long as you don't want to pay a fortune, you have to deal with some disadvantages. Another decision had to be made on a new lens. I've had a 300 mm lens but with an aperture of f5.6 which led to super long shutter speeds or annoying noise when rising to high ISO levels in low light. So I decided to get a tele-lens with a fixed aperture of f2.8. As these kind of lenses are only available in upper price ranges, I had to reduce my demand for a super long lens and got a 200 mm now. But as the resolution of the new camera is higher you can crop in much further.

To put it in a nutshell, consider: • your budget • the equipment you already have • the main purpose – your favourite subjects • the dependencies between camera body and lens And a final tip especially regarding your budget: you'll often find a marketplace in online photo-communities where photographers sell their equipment. Usually professional photographers watch over their camera gear, so you often get used stuff in superb condition 30-60% off the original price.

Marvin Mechelse Photography Assistant Germany

Backgrounds DIFFERENT WAYS OF CAPTURING MOTION There are different types of photography techniques to show motion in a picture: These create blur that indicates movement. This is created by slowing your shutter speed (usually around 1/10 to 1/20, this means the shutter is open for 1/10th to 1/20th of a second). By doing this you open the shutter speed for quite a long time in “camera world� which allows for a longer window to capture the image. Parts of the image or your camera will move within this time thus creates motion. By doing this the shutter is open for a longer time than it is normally needed when photographing by day light. This will result in a overexposed photo. By minimizing your aperture (higher f-number) and lowering your ISO you can compensate for the extra light that comes into the camera.

The male Kori Bustard may be the heaviest living animal capable of flight.

He can grow up to 150 cm weighing up to 20kg.

You can easily imagine that it needs a large wingspan to lift this weight.

The largest wingspan reported was 275 cm.

Motion blur, here the subject is in focus and the background or other objects are blurred in a direction which shows the movement. You do this by panning with the subject and keeping it in focus.

Static blur, this occurs when the subject is out of focus and blurry which indicates that the subject is moving. You create this by not panning the camera so keeping it static and allowing the subject to move trough the frame.

However, the average male kori bustard weighs approximately 12 kg, is a 130 cm tall and has a wingspan of 250 cm.

Females are up to 50% smaller.

Animal of the Month: Wild Dog / Painted Wolf

A good example of both can be seen in the picture on the right side:

The African wild dog, also known as African hunting dog, African painted dog, painted hunting dog or painted wolf is classified as endangered by the IUCN, as it has disappeared from much of its original range.

The current population has been estimated at roughly 39 subpopulations containing 6,600 adults, only 1,400 of which are fully grown.

The massive decline of these populations is ongoing, due to habitat fragmentation, human persecution, and disease outbreaks.

Here you see the big elephant is in focus because the camera panned and followed her movement at her speed. By doing this the elephant’s head is in focus. This is motion blur. The younger elephant was moving at a different speed, faster than the big elephant, so he was too fast for the pan of the camera which created static blur.

You can also freeze the motion by setting your shutter speed very fast (usually around 1/1000 to 1/2500 of a second) by doing this you open the shutter very briefly which allows for a really short window to capture the image which makes it able to freeze the motion this is often used to freeze water (as seen in the picture on the right) or dust. Because of the short shutter speed the amount of light that comes into the camera is very low so when doing this it is advised to keep your aperture as low as possible and your ISO as high as needed to compensate this “light loss� to not make the picture underexposed and thus maintain a good picture quality.

Lennar Schumacher Volunteer Photographer Netherlands

The

Back-Button-Focus Pre-setting for focusing is usually half-pressing the shutter release button.

Professionals use another method to work. Most DSLR cameras have a back-button focus or an option to customize and assign focusing to a button of your choice. This gives you a greater variety of working with focus. You can for example use the autofocus to get close to what you actually want and optimize it after you release the button by focussing manually.

This helps in wildlife photography especially when grass or twigs partly hide the actual subject.

Photography Volunteer I have always enjoyed taking photographs, from a little girl who used to make a frame with her hands to take those pretend photos of your family around the house, to now being a snap happy tourist on holiday who takes hundreds of pictures and lets them sit in a folder on the computer to be hardly seen again. When I visited Dumela last year as a research volunteer, I saw some of the amazing pictures the photography course had produced and found out how these would then be used to help the project and for conservation education. It then became obvious to me that I would be back.

Five months on here I was so happy to be back and excited to get going. The first week of the course was all about how to use your camera. Being a definite auto snapper, this was so helpful to me learning about the exposure triangle (aperture, shutter speed and ISO) and how to use these in wildlife photography. This enabled me to move away from my automatic mode and have more control over my photos.

After learning about the camera and what to look for to make your photos interesting, we set to find the animals and practise. The most important skill of wildlife photography which I have learnt while here is patience. Sometimes animals like to hide! But I can honestly say there is no better feeling than when you’re on drive or in a hide surrounded by nature waiting and hoping for that sighting that you will always remember.

I have been lucky enough to have some of those moments in the last 4 weeks, seeing elephants spraying themselves at the water hole, and spending an hour with a leopard during a night drive are moments which I will always remember and was lucky enough to get shots of. When you’re surrounded by beauty you learn you can’t capture everything you see, nature is so unpredictable and fast and sometimes you have these amazing sightings which you are unable to capture.

Robyn Drew Volunteer Photographer England

On the first day our photography coordinator Sam said to us a five star sighting doesn’t mean a five star shot and sometimes you should put the camera down, enjoy the moment and not allow yourself to be limited by the viewfinder. I think this has been the most beneficial lesson to me during the course. I’ve gone from photographing everything to thinking first and just appreciating what you are unable to catch in an image.

Backgrounds

The African Monarch is a widespread butterfly in Africa and Asia.

It primarily consumes milkweed. This kind of vegetation generates toxic compounds which the butterfly contains.

Because of their emetic properties, the African Monarch is unpalatable to most predators.

It is believed to be one of the first butterflies depicted in art. A 3500year-old Egyptian fresco in Luxor features the oldest known illustration of this species.

Backgrounds

The research project is extending its reach!

The Cheetah is the fastest land animal on earth, running up to 112 km/h.

This unique advantage doesn’t automatically lead to a superiority in the rough world of evolution.

The fertility rate of cheetah varies between 75% and 85%, mainly due to lions as the major predator of juveniles.

Consequently with a small population of only approximately 6,700 all over the world, its conservation status at the moment is “vulnerable”.

A part of our research is done in a Big 5 Estate where we have mainly been assisting with physical conservation work, such as the removal of an encroaching tree species called river thorn. This reserve and the neighbouring ones have joined up and are now associates, totalling over 4000ha of land that we can traverse.

These reserves’ natural resources were assessed and the results show a high level of bush encroachment, that has negative consequences on the grass production. The grass is therefore suffering from overgrazing. The role of African Impact will be to open up areas with low grass density but high bush encroachment, to promote grass production.

We will also assist with erosion control by using a brush-packing method – packing brush on bare patches to increase water infiltration, to reduce the soil surface temperature, to allow a seed bank to build up and finally to add organic material to the soil. Additionally, invasive plant species – any plant that propagates itself to such extent that the density that ensues is considered detrimental to biodiversity and the natural vegetation – will be mapped and removed throughout the year.

RESEARCH UPDATE The reintroduction of animals such as cheetah and lion will help reducing the impala and giraffe populations, which are putting pressure on the vegetation. Two cheetahs (one male, one female) were reintroduced at the beginning of the year and three lionesses are currently settling down in the boma – an enclosure inside the reserve.

On one hand, the data gathered on these two species will help determine their home/core ranges between early post release from the boma and their later one, but also between seasons or prey availability. On the other hand, the impact, of these two cats species as well as the leopard, on the prey population will be done through kill monitoring whenever possible.

Behavioural will be collected on the lions and then sent to the Lion The cheetah is data the fastest Management land animal on Forum earth, (LiMF). It will help them in their comparative study in over 30 reservesupacross Southern Africa that aims at understanding movements and running to 112 km/h. dynamics of lion prides between wild lions and lions living in small reserves (<1000ha).

This unique advantage doesn’t automatically lead to a superiority in the rough world of evolution.

The fertility rate of cheetah varies between 75% and 85%, mainly due to lions as the major predator of juveniles.

Consequently with a population of approximately 6,700 all over the world, its conservation status at the moment is “vulnerable”.

Every identified leopard will go to the Leopard ID project of South Africa, that wishes to complete accurate population estimates with the collection of pictures taken through citizen science.

In conclusion, the volunteers and the team of the Greater Kruger Project are extending and strengthening their impact and are proud to be part of the development of this reserve!

Marine Servonnat Research Manager France

Photography in Research I came to volunteer with African Impact in the Greater Kruger Area for eight weeks, spending four as a photography volunteer and four as research volunteer. When I first arrived as a photography volunteer, I didn't realize how important photos were for conservation research.

Even after my four weeks as a photographer, it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really hit me. I had enjoyed taking pictures, and we gave some of our pictures to the research volunteers, but the main focus was just to take pictures for our own enjoyment, while also learning about wildlife photography.

However, when I joined research, I realized how much of the research we do is dependent on the pictures we take and the ID kits we make with them. If an animal has an ID kit that is missing a picture of one side or has a poor photo, you end up with a lot of unidentified animals.

Framing In wildlife-photography, composition is often an aspect that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think about for ages before taking a shot as animals usually tend to move quickly and most likely away from you.

Anyways, nature gives you a great variety of options to give your subject a frame within a frame.

That can be twigs, grass, branches, trees, hills or even another animal.

If you keep that in mind it is often easier than you think to make a well composed picture out of a sighting.

To properly understand population densities and distributions of leopards we must conduct camera trap surveys, record spoor and signs of predator presence.

Ultimately, this focused research is vital to the good development of sustainable conservation solutions that will protect the future of this iconic apex predator.

Sign up for regular giving or a one – off donation below to help support the protection and better understanding of leopards in Southern Africa. https://www.globalgiving.org/p rojects/leopard-research/

ID kits prove vital to a conservation researcher, both in the field and back in the project room. When you have a leopard sighting, you ideally want to know which leopard you saw.

Unfortunately, most leopard sightings are short, seeing it briefly cross the road for instance, and don’t give the opportunity to examine its rosettes and ID it in the field. If you have a picture of it though, you can come back to it later and determine who it was.

Even with giraffe and elephant sightings, that aren’t necessarily short, giraffes might stand still feeding for a very long time, you don’t want to spend an hour or more trying to find out which one it is in the field. By taking a picture of it, preferably of both sides, you can carry on with the drive and keep looking for other wildlife.

ID photos are an absolute necessity, and it is important to have someone who knows how to take good wildlife photos, something I learned how to do in my stint as a photography volunteer, to make good ID kits.

THE PROBLEM OF RHINO POACHING

Sometimes you might have a sighting that has a lot of animals that need to be identified. When you can’t stay long to see them, or they run off before you ID them, pictures become invaluable. On one of my drives as a photography volunteer, we saw a pack of 17 wild dogs. While I didn’t have to record data then, we still want to ID the wild dogs, but trying to get individual shots of them would have been very difficult. In a case like that one, taking a shot of all the animals together is useful. You will undoubtedly get good shots of most of them, and have them all accounted for. We then take the pictures back and can make ID kits for all the animals, even the ones that only have partial photos. An ID kit with poor photos or that isn’t complete is better than no ID kit at all!

Nathaniel Cohen Research Volunteer USA

“Embrace the Variety” The

Nothing lures in animal lovers, tourists, travellers and adventurers to South Africa quite like the “Big 5”. The desire to see them can be overwhelming sometimes, especially if you have limited time, with many people feeling as if they haven’t seen everything unless they can check off these animals. Yet the bush has so much more to offer, so why not create a new checklist? Have you ever heard of the “little five”, the “botany five”, the “ugly five” and the “secretive seven” or the “big 6 birds”?

The Spotted Hyena, Blue Wildebeest, Lappet Faced Vulture, Warthog and Marabou Stork, are otherwise known as the “ugly five”.

This title can often demonstrate a misrepresentation of these remarkable animals. There is a majestic beauty to be found in the stance of the territorial male Blue Wildebeest, and observing the saturnine nature of the Marabou Stork appearing to stand vigil at a wake can be mesmerising. Remember the term “ugly” is subjective; beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.

Sometimes small can be mighty! The “little five” share the names of their “big 5” counterparts. The elephant shrew, leopard tortoise, antlion, buffalo weaver bird and the rhino beetle. These creatures may require inquisitive states of mind to see yet are no less fierce or interesting than their bigger equivalents.

The “secretive seven” represent what many may consider as the unobtainable or the “holy grail”. Yet sometimes patience and a little luck on your side can let you into the worlds of the mostly nocturnal Serval, African Wild Cat, Aardvark, Pangolin, Civet, Porcupine and Large Spotted Genet. Keeping your eyes open for that reflective glare of their eyes in the spotlight at night can show you that secretive is just another word for mysterious; not impossible.

The

Whoever said “stop and smell the roses” might have had a point. The “botany five” can sometimes seem like a specialised interest, and just because it’s not furry doesn’t mean it isn’t important or beautiful.

Lion’s eye, leopard orchid, rhino bean, elephant’s ear and buffalo thorn all have one thing in common they are not just plants; they all have fascinating cultural and medicinal value too.

The Pels Fishing Owl, Kori Bustard, Saddle-Billed Stork, Martial Eagle, Lappet-faced Vulture and Ground Hornbill were selected by conservationists for their uniqueness. Each of these birds are large, easy to identify and instantly recognisable. Never considered yourself a twitcher? These six birds may change your mind…

Katie Adams Guide England

So are you ready to make that new checklist yet?

THE WARTHOG POST

African Impact Conservation Projects - Greater Kruger Area, South Africa

March March 2018 2018

Just uploaded to our stock site Lindsey Forg Photography Volunteer USA

Check out our newest submissions for this month on: africanimpactphotography.com

March March | | 03 03