Hi again,
Hopefully this will reach most of you before the Christmas holidays, so may
I extend the season’s greetings to you all and let us hope for a peaceful
and prosperous New Year.
Herewith, some snippets from various sources.
I appeal to you to send me items to distribute to our members for the Cleft Stick, the Game Ranger magazine and to be posted on the web site. These are your magazine and website, so ensure it gets the news that you would like to see in it.
Please let me have any changes to your physical address, phone no. or e-mail address to keep the database up to date.
Thanks to all of you who have made the effort. Please will any of you who know of members who do not get this “electric” Cleft~Stick, & have access to e-mail, pass their address along to me.
Don Yunnie
7 Chalet Drive, Hilton, 3245, South Africa Local Tel & Fax (033) 343 1534 Int. Tel & Fax (+2733) 343 1534 cell 082 377 7562 E-mail dyunnie@xsinet.co.za.
If you do not wish to receive this e-mail newsletter please send a blank e-mail to me at the above address with the word “unsubscribe C~S ” as the message heading.
Africa Regional Representative Report
The main current news from the Game Rangers Association of Africa (GRAA)
relates to an Agreement that is being finalised between the GRAA and the
Southern African Wildlife College (SAWC). Thank you to Arrie Schreiber and
Craig Hay who were the main authors of the below report on this initiative.
For many years it has been a dream of the GRAA to develop a training
facility where Game Rangers can receive training in a variety of skills and
wherever possible to link it to National Qualification Framework in South
Africa. Various efforts were made in this regard with the greatest success
achieved so far when 104 Field Rangers were trained as part of the Nkuleleko
Project funded by the Dutch based Liberty Foundation during 2003 at a
facility just north of Phalaborwa in the Province of Limpopo in South
Africa. However, the owners of the above-mentioned facility eventually
withdrew their support realising that training of this kind was in conflict
with their tourism based facility.
Subsequently negotiations were initiated with the SAWC in November 2005 to
erect such a facility on site at the SAWC as part of a joint venture between
GRAA and SAWC. This culminated in a workshop on the 17 November 2006 when
representatives of SAWC met with a sub-committee of the GRAA at the SAWC and
reached consensus. The outcome of this meeting can be summarised as
follows:
Income generated from SAWC use of the tented facility will be calculated on
a 50/50 basis for accommodation used.
Booking to take place through the SAWC system.
Use of the Camp will be made available to GRAA members at agreed rate, but
subject to availability.
Craig Hay (Short Course Manager at SAWC and also GRAA Member) was co-opted
by group to represent SAWC on GRAA Committee.
SAWC will be the GRAA provider of choice but GRAA will retain the right to
choose its own providers who will make use of the accommodation and training
facilities at SAWC for training not provided by SAWC.
Quarterly reporting of occupancy and resulting income from SAWC to GRAA.
All learners that complete training using the facility should receive
certificate bearing the GRAA logo.
Off-site training can also be provided as per separate agreement for each
project.
GRAA will provide organizational membership benefits to SAWC.
Both GRAA and SAWC will seek funding for bursaries for the envisaged
training both in South Africa and abroad.
It is envisaged to present not more than five courses of 20 Learners per
course totaling 100 per year. Of this number at least 25% will consist of
unemployed persons enabling them to compete on the job market.
The information mentioned in the bullets above, and more, will be covered in
a formal Agreement that will be signed by both parties at a later stage in
2007.
The SAWC was established in close cooperation with all interested and
affected parties in Southern Africa, including national and provincial
government departments, other conservation agencies, and the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) prior to 1997. It is an independent
SADC training institution and does not receive a government subsidy and is a
registered Non-profit Organization (registration number 046-675-NPO) and
proudly supported by both the Peace Parks Foundation and WWF South Africa.
The SAWC is situated in a natural Lowveld environment having access to
conservation training areas both on site and in close proximity to the site
that is situated in a Contractual SA National Park. The College gate is
located 10km west of the Orpen Gate to the Kruger National Park; the College
itself is 2km north on a good gravel road.
The facility will consist of ten Safari Tents on concrete slabs with a
veranda and will be basically equipped with three beds, steel cupboards and
chairs per tent. Although it is envisaged to build en-suite bathrooms at a
later stage, an ablution facility will be available. The building cost of
the tented camp will be provided by the WWF South Africa the amount of R180
000.00. The camp will not be equipped for self-catering and all tenants
must use the catering facility available at the SAWC.
In conclusion, this project links the GRAA directly with Peace Parks
Foundation (PPF) and the WWF and it has all the potential to grow and
deliver well trained Field Rangers that can be deployed at the coal face of
Conservation. The SAWC also represents an excellent networking opportunity
and introductory point of contact between the GRAA in South Africa and
members/potential members from elsewhere in Africa, as many Rangers from
throughout the continent attend various courses on an ongoing basis.
BOTSWANA: Joy as Bushmen win landmark legal case
Scenes of jubilation greeted the Botswana High Court's ruling today in favour of the Kalahari Bushmen.
The court ruled today that the Botswana government's eviction of the Bushmen was 'unlawful and unconstitutional', and that they have the right to live on their ancestral land inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
The court also ruled that the Bushmen applicants have the right to hunt
and gather in the reserve, and should not have to apply for permits to enter
it.
One of the judges, Justice Phumaphi, said the government's refusal to
allow the Bushmen to hunt 'was tantamount to condemning the residents of the
CKGR to death by starvation.'
However, the judges also said that the government is not obliged to provide
services to Bushmen in the reserve.
Bushman spokesman Roy Sesana said outside the court, 'Today is the happiest
day for us Bushmen. We have been crying for so long, but today we are crying
with happiness. Finally we have been set free. The evictions
have been very, very painful for my people. I hope that now we can go home
to our land.'
Survival's director Stephen Corry said today, 'The court's ruling is a victory for the Bushmen and for indigenous peoples everywhere in Africa. It is also a victory for Botswana. If the government quickly enacts the court ruling, then the campaign will end and the country really will have something to be proud of.'
The court case has been the longest and most expensive in Botswana's
history.
An online press file about the court case, including summaries,
biographies, legal precedents, photos and video clips, is available at
http://www.survival-international.org/bushmenpresspack
To read this online:
http://www.survival-international.org/news.php?id=2128
Some good international news
Brazil has announced many big areas before and most of them, for not to say
all of them remain ranger desserts. I have been training with Marcelo ranger
who have no faculty to act and live isolated as reverine people.
But Brazil will have to do something one day. For now, the best conservation
of the forest has been provided by the aborigines. of course the new
protected areas include indian territorries and also non contacted tribes.
A healthy IRF should help Marcelo in the training. A huge opportunity.
Thanks again!
Juan
New protected areas designated in Brazil (37 million acres)
Brazil Makes Unprecedented Conservation Announcement Seven New Protected Areas Created in Pará State
Dec. 4, 2006: The governor of the Brazilian state of Pará today announced seven new protected areas in Amazonia covering an area roughly the size of Illinois. The announcement is an enormous step in Brazil's world-leading efforts to protect Earth's remaining tropical rain forests.
Stretching from the border of Guyana and Suriname in the north to areas south of the Amazon River, these new protected areas encompass an unprecedented 37 million acres.
http://www.conservation.org/xp/frontlines/2006/12040602.xml
http://www.panda.org/news_facts/newsroom/index.cfm?uNewsID=88720
Men, Rivers and Canoes
Dear All,
This is just to let you know that Ian Player's book Men, Rivers and Canoes
has been re-published by 'Echoing Green press' in South Africa. It contains
forwards by Ian Player, Colonel jack Vincent, Prof Willem van Riet, Peter
Pope-Ellis,and chief Mlaba.
The original edition published in 1963/64 was sold out in two months. The
Msunduzi-Mgeni Canoe Marathon which Ian Player founded and won 3 times now
attracts over 2000 contestants world wide.
Yours sincerely
Moyra Collyer, Wilderness Foundation, P O Box 53260, Yellowwood Park, 4011
Phone +27 (0)31 4622338, Fax +27 (0)31 4624656
The book will be available by mid January 2007 at R 40.00. For email orders go to info@netbooks.co.za or phone NETBOOKS on 021 551 4248, also at all good bookshops nationwide.
Invented for the military, used to defend wildlife, 08 December 2006
Zeeya Merali
By the time Steve Gulick arrived, it was too late. The poachers had struck,
and elephant carcasses carpeted the floor. "You could step from body to body
without your feet touching the ground," he says. "Whole elephant families
lay next to each other, gunned down for their tusks."
The massacre had taken place in the Mouadje Bai rainforest in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC), at a spot well known among local poachers for
the rich haul of ivory it can yield. Since 1994 Gulick has been helping the
US-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC) to patrol the area in an effort
to thwart these illegal hunters. It has been an unequal contest. Poachers
target elephants under the cover of dense rainforest to avoid being detected
from aircraft, and patrols like Gulick's have to trek through the forest on
foot. Killings can go undetected for months or even years, and during one
sweep, Gulick's patrol found more than 200 elephant carcasses in various
stages of decomposition.
Now he and others are fighting back, using adapted military technology to
listen in on elephants and monitor their behaviour. They are also borrowing
data from environment monitoring satellites to spot illegal logging that can
devastate the animals' habitats. Elsewhere, similar techniques are being
applied to warn when other endangered species and habitats are being
illegally plundered. "There's a real need to transform wildlife observation
techniques into real-time warning
systems," Gulick says.
To help achieve that Gulick has set up Wildland Security, a company based in
New York City that specialises in sensors to detect wildlife crime. One of
its products, a small seismic detector called TrailGuard, can be buried
along forest pathways to pick up the footfalls of people as they pass. "It's
based on military technology used to detect enemy troop movements," he says.
To distinguish hunters from harmless passers-by, the devices also contain
magnetometers that can detect iron in guns several metres away. Once
triggered, the TrailGuards transmit a radio signal to an antenna at the top
of the forest canopy, which relays it to a hub to be sent to forest rangers
over a satellite phone link.
"You can tell the number of people in the party and the direction they are
walking, so you can come prepared, before the killing starts," Gulick
claims.
The devices are about to be installed in a national park in the DRC as part
of a pilot study being funded by the WSC. Ten TrailGuards will be laid out
along the park boundary on major access trails used by poachers. "They are
going to allow us to remotely monitor some of our most threatened areas,"
says Steve Blake of the WSC's centre in Libreville, capital of nearby Gabon.
TrailGuards are also being deployed in the Osa Peninsula on the Pacific
coast of Costa Rica, where poaching
is threatening to wipe out the region's jaguars and peccaries, and in the
hard-to-reach Altai Republic in southern Russia, where poachers arrive by
helicopter each winter to illegally hunt snow leopards for their coats.
For the elephants, an additional line of defence could come from acoustic
sensors being developed by Mya Thompson and colleagues at Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York. These so-called "autonomous recording units" were
originally designed to monitor elephants communicating with each other in
Kakum National Park, Ghana. As well as the familiar screams and trumpeting,
elephants emit rumbles at between 5
and 30 hertz, which is partly below the range audible to humans. These
low-frequency sounds travel farther than audible frequencies and can be
heard by other elephants at least 4 kilometres away. They are particularly
useful for tracking the animals, says Thompson, whose team has used the
elephant calls to create real-time maps showing which sites elephants visit
and when. "We can identify their hotspots, feeding areas and watering
holes," she says.
The devices pick up the elephant calls using specialised low-frequency
microphones hidden in trees, and record the signal onto a laptop computer.
Installing the microphones 100 to 200 metres apart ensures that each call is
picked up at a minimum of three points. The millisecond differences in the
time it takes to reach each sensor can then be used to locate the origin of
the sound. The devices can store three months' worth of continuous data and
use very little power, so once installed they can simply be left in place,
relaying data back to the lab. "We don't have to go in and disturb the
elephants' habitat, so they feel safe, giving us the best conditions to
eavesdrop on them," Thompson says.
Unfortunately, it isn't only the elephants that feel safe. The poachers do too, and they have continued to hunt the animals. So the team asked a group of engineers led by Christopher Clark, also at Cornell, to tune their eavesdropping software to pick out the sound of gunfire from the data stream. The engineers are developing software that will automatically notify rangers as soon as shots are heard. Thompson's group plans to test the gunshot detectors in the DRC alongside Gulick's TrailGuards. "It's a really important last resort option, although sadly once a gunshot has been heard, at least one elephant has been hurt," Gulick says.
Monitoring the elephants' movements can also alert rangers to another threat to the animals: illegal logging. Tropical hardwood is a major export from central Africa, and some companies in the DRC are moving beyond the areas in which logging is allowed and opening up previously untouched forest. This is bad news for the elephants, Thompson says. "Their habitats are destroyed and fragmented and they are forced to run through open areas to reach food, exposing them to poachers."
Help in spotting the spread of illegal logging could also come from a technique designed to monitor signs of climate change. NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) measures small changes in the thickness of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets using LIDAR, a laser technique that maps features in a similar way to radar but using light rather than microwaves. The LIDAR scanner creates similar 3D images of the interior of any forests it passes over, revealing damage to smaller trees that may be hidden from the naked eye. A team led by geographer Peter Hyde at the company Science Systems and Applications in Greenbelt, Maryland, which works with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, also in Greenbelt, has already found clear evidence of illegal logging by analysing data from ICESat gathered over six months.
Having demonstrated the effectiveness of the technique, Hyde hopes to secure funding to fly LIDAR scanners aboard aircraft over the forests of central Africa. Thompson thinks this would be a big step forward. "Right now in central Africa, we have parks that are supposedly protected from illegal logging, but that's only on paper, because in practice it's just too difficult to monitor," she says. "Perhaps this will help us stop logging in these so-called protected parks now."
75 years of Saasveld
For those GRAA members that have studied at Saasveld. Can you please put this in the Cleft Stick.
Thanks
Tom
Dear Saasies
Here is the first official notification of the above event to which all of
us is looking forward. We will keep you up to date with the latest
developments as 2007 progress.
Date: 26-30 September 2007, Venue: Saasveld
Programme:
Remember to organise your leave in advance – we trust that we will get enough raing next year! Also, book accommodation in time. A lot of the hostels and guest houses are already full. We still need to confirm – but there is the posibility of limited accommodation on the campus itself. Please advertise as wide as possible and send all those e-mails of your buddies to us!
VENUE OFFERS CONTACT NR. PRICE ±
Eden Backpackers Meriman Street 115, George Bed & BreakfastFor ± 20 persons
Dawie 044-8747807/0823167720 R 85-00/bedR160-00/single roomR240-00/double room
Itula gasteplaas For ± 120 personsBed & Breakfast Lindeque du Pisani
0827178007/044-8760313 R250-00/ double roomR85-00/B+B
York High Hostel Accommodation available B+B Sharon
Roberts044-8744079/0832907197 ± R85 -00/B+B
Forestry students contact - Tiaan Pool, Tiaan.Pool@nmmu.ac.za;
Gillian.Londt@nmmu.ac.za , 044-8015024
Agricultural students contact - Maryna.Lehmann@nmmu.ac.za , 044-8015055
Conservation Students contact – Mike Cameron Mike.Cameron@nmmu.ac.za ,
044-8015018
Regards
Tiaan Pool (Lecturer Forestry), South Africa, Nelson Mandela University (NMMU) 044-8015024, 0723742347, Web : www.nmmu.ac.za, Tiaan.Pool@nmmu.ac.za
POSITION AVAILABLE
To EAZWV Student Members interested in conservation work
Dear All
Please find below another job offer.
Best regards
Peter
WAZA - The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums The Executive Director, Peter Dollinger Phone: ++41-31-300 20 30, Fax: ++ 41-31-300 20 31 Post address: P.O.Box 23, CH-3097 Liebefeld-Berne Visitors' address: Lindenrain 3, CH-3012 Berne
224 leading zoological institutions, 22 regional or national zoo and aquarium associations representing another 1000 institutions, and 12 zoo-related organisations are UNITED FOR CONSERVATION through WAZA
Wildlife/ Zoo Vet Volunteer needed for Delhi Zoo
A wildlife / zoo vet volunteer is required to help train the local vet and improve the conditions at the National Zoo in New Delhi, India, for several weeks to months. Help improve the welfare of the 1250 animals at this zoo and hundreds from regional zoos by capacity building the local staff.
Delhi Zoo is located in the capital of the India. The official name of the zoo is National Zoological Park and it is recognised by the government of India under the relevant law of the country. It was established in 1959 and has 1250 animals of 133 different species.
"We often face problems with respect to our animals health, particularly during their sickness. At those critical moments we do not know where to seek expert opinion and guidance so that we can provide best of the medical aid to our innocent animals. Although we have veterinarian with us but still we feel that the latest knowledge and experience in the field of animal health would be the best thing to treat properly and professionally our animals at the time of their sickness." Mr Singh, Director.
Accommodation and local expenses will be provided. Staff from other regional zoos will be involved in the training program and visits to these zoos will be arranged by the government.
The contact person is Mr D.N.Singh, Director and his Email id is dnsingh87@yahoo.com, Tel No. 91-11-24359825 Fax No 91-11-24352408
Please mention you saw the advertisement in ZooNews Digest should you apply for this post
SPONSORSHIP For THE GAME RANGER
Hi all
Please help if you can with finding sponsors for the Game Ranger magazine.
Hopefully Easigas (I hope they got a good few copies of the last edition
with their previous ad in) may take another one?
I have been in touch with Spar Buildit in the hope that they may re-advertise with us again and am also trying with Old Mutual KZN.
Thanks and regards,
Wayne, Cell. 0794987086
SPONSORSHIP OF THE GAME RANGER
Sponsorships are required in order to subsidize the production costs of The
Game Ranger. Please contact the editorial team if interested in supporting
the GRAA in this manner. Advertising space is made available to sponsors at
the following rates:
Page sponsorship, with an acknowledgement at the foot of the page R250.00
Half page advertisement, three colours R500.00
Full page advertisement, three colours R1000.00
Full page full colour advertisement, inside cover R2000.00
Tailpiece-
When our lawn mower broke down, my wife kept hinting to me that I should get
it fixed. Somehow I always had something else to take care of first - the
car, fishing, golf - always something more important to me.
Finally, she thought of a clever way to make her point. When I arrived home
one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a
tiny pair of sewing scissors.
I watched silently for a short time and then went into the house. I came out
again and handed her a toothbrush.
"When you finish cutting the grass," I said, "you might as well sweep the
driveway."
The doctors say I will probably walk again, but I will always have a limp. Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right and the other is a husband.
Matter of Fact
This is an electronic newsletter of the Game Rangers' Association of Africa. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Association, nor of the Editor. This is intended to be an exchange of news snips, ideas and communication between members. Newsletter content may be copied and re-distributed without authorisation. Correspondence should be addressed to the Editor at dyunnie@xsinet.co.za