Hi again
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.
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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.
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IRF News
Dear all.
I am regret to inform you that yet more rangers have paid the ultimate price.
On March 11 four Sri Lanka wildlife officials, including the Park Warden, plus four soldiers, were shot dead in Sri Lanka's Wilpattu National Park. It is suspected that this was a Tamil Tiger ambush.
Wilpattu National Park is famed for its idyllic surroundings and leopard sightings, and lies along Sri Lanka's north-western coast straddling north-western and north central provinces.
I have sent a letter of condolence to the family and colleagues of the deceased.
Regards
David (Zeller).
Zambia Elephant TimesAfrican carnage -- 1 year's seized ivory likely came ...
African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a rate unprecedented since an international convention banning ivory trade took effect in 1989, a University of Washington biologist says.
The problem is so serious that the giant creatures might be on the path to extinction unless western nations reinstate strong enforcement efforts that all but halted black-market ivory trade in the four years immediately after the ban was enacted, said Samuel Wasser, director of the UW Center for Conservation Biology. He is the lead author of a paper detailing the problem published the week of Feb. 26 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and he argues the continued loss of elephants will have serious consequences.
"Elephants are majestic animals and are not trivial to the ecosystem. They are a keystone species and taking them out significantly alters the habitat," he said. "It has ripple effects on lots of different species."
For the year ending in August 2006, authorities seized more than 23,400 kilograms, or nearly 24 tons, of contraband ivory, Wasser said. But the paper notes it is commonly assumed that customs agents typically detect only about 10 percent of contraband, so the actual amount of poached ivory probably is closer to 234,000 kilograms. That means more than 23,000 elephants, or about 5 percent of Africa's total population, likely were killed for that amount of ivory.
China's burgeoning economy is a major force driving the black-market ivory trade, escalating prices and attracting organized crime, Wasser said. In 1989 a kilogram of high-quality ivory sold for $100 on the black market. That rose to $200 in 2004 but by last year had ballooned to $750 per kilogram.
"If it really is organized crime that's driving this, then the only hope we have of stopping it is to stop the ivory at the source, to not let it into the international market. Because once it's in the international market, the trade is very hard to stop," Wasser said.
He and colleagues at the UW are working with other scientists and law enforcement agencies, primarily Interpol, to track the source of poached ivory. In June 2002 authorities in Singapore seized a 20-foot container packed with 6.5 tons of contraband ivory bound for the Far East from Malawi. It was the second-largest seizure of contraband ivory on record, the largest since the 1989 ban took effect, and represented ivory from 3,000 to 6,500 poached elephants. Authorities assumed the ivory had been collected from many different places, especially from forest elephants, but the assumption proved to be incorrect.
Over several years, Wasser and his colleagues have collected genetic information from a variety of populations by sampling tissue and dung from known populations, then compiled the information into a DNA-based map showing genetic differences between elephant populations. Using that information, the scientists grouped the tusks by common characteristics and then sampled randomly from those groups. They examined 67 tusks from the 532 seized in Singapore and showed that the ivory came from elephants on Africa's broad savannahs, not in forests. Further testing showed the ivory came from a small area of southern Africa, most likely centered on Zambia. Law enforcement agencies have identified many participants in the poaching, yet not one person has been prosecuted, Wasser said.
The tusks in the seized shipment weighed an average of 11 kilograms apiece, more than twice the weight normally seen in the market, indicating they came from a large number of older elephants. The shipment also contained 42,000 hankos, small blocks of solid ivory used to make signature stamps, or chops, that are widely used in the Far East, particularly in China and Japan.
Wasser noted that shortly before the seizure, Zambia had petitioned for permission to sell its ivory stockpiles internationally, stockpiles that were supposed to have existed before the international ban took effect in 1989. But the application said only 135 elephants were known to have been killed illegally in Zambia in the previous 10 years, far fewer than would have had to be slaughtered to produce the ivory in just the single seizure in 2002.
The paper's co-authors are Matthew Stephens, formerly of the UW and now at the University of Chicago; Celia Mailand and Rebecca Booth of the UW; Benezeth Mutayoba of the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania; Emily Kisamo of the Lusaka Agreement Task Force in Kenya; and Bill Clark of the Interpol Working Group on Wildlife Crime and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The work was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service African Elephant Conservation Fund, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Center for Conservation Biology.
The authors wonder how a poor nation such as Zambia, with only slight international assistance, can fend off organized criminals fueled by the booming Far East economy, and they argue that Western nations must resume efforts to halt ivory trafficking. They note that western nations contributed heavily to enforcement efforts when the international ban took effect in 1989, and in the next four years poaching was virtually eliminated. But the success apparently left a sense that the problem was solved and the nations withdrew their funding.
Wasser and colleagues want to see reinstatement of strong enforcement, and also want to see education programs established to teach people in Africa to better manage their wildlife and persuade people in Asia not to use ivory, much of which is obtained illegally.
"If people really realized what is happening they would be ashamed to be part of the crisis," he said. "We don't want to spend our time catching criminals, we want to stop the crime from happening. That's the most effective enforcement you can do."
Embargoed by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences For release at 5 p.m. EST, 2 p.m. PST, Monday, Feb. 26, 2007
For more information, contact Wasser at (206) 543-1669 or wassers@u.washington.edu.
Zambia elephant crisis
Zambia tourism industry upholds elephant sport hunting position...
At a meeting on the 15 March 2007, the Tourism Council of Zambia (TCZ) upheld its previous resolution that all sport elephant hunting be banned in Zambia; one of its members, the professional Hunters Association of Zambia, lending full support to the TCZ position. Despite this, and with a similar stand having been taken by the Natural Resources Consultative Forum of Zambia - a forum established by Government to advise it on the environment and natural resources, the Zambia Wildlife Authority and its parent body, the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources, oncemore made available 20 elephant for sport hunting in 2007; a quota it now intends increasing by offering the sport hunting of crop raiding elephant - something not allowed in the Statutory Instrument on Elephant Sport Hunting, which specifically excludes crop raiders from sport hunting. Recently the Zambian Government requested that the US Fish and Wildlife Service allow the import to the United States of sport hunted ivory and other elephant trophies.
Zambia is currently in the throes of a massive assault on its elephant population, the continuation of a 34 year unchecked kill which, between 1994-2004 alone, saw 130 tonnes of ivory being handled by a single syndicate on its route through Malawi to the Far East. Recently, DNA analysis carried out by the University of Washington reveals that six tonnes of this syndicates ivory was taken mainly from Zambia, with the Zambezi and Luangwa Valleys being the main source - the area where the sport hunting permits are given effect. Recently ivory poachers, comprising officers of the Zambia Wildlife Authority and villagers have been apprehended or are under investigation for elephant poaching within a safari hunting concession in the Luangwa. Recently elephant, with their tusks and trunks removed, have been seen floating in the Luangwa and Kafue rivers.
This support for a ban to be placed on elephant sport hunting, and the evidence of the current crisis, makes clear that the Kenya/Mali position at the forthcoming CITES COP meeting in June will be carried, with many in conservation realizing that the sale of the South African, Namibian and Botswana ivory stocks to a corrupted and unregulated Far East market will place Africa's elephant in total jeopardy.
Tanzania update
Hi All
I thought I would send an update from Tanzania. I was planning to have one in by January but time flies on past and I ended up in the states for 5 weeks fund raising. The trip was successful and I managed to get some good equipment sponsorships lined up.
The 2006 year ended on a high note with Mohammed Mruma the Driver/ranger that had been shot( 25th August) being discharged from hospital in time to spend Christmas with his family. He will be off work for at least another 6 months and is currently having physio 3 days a week. The month of November saw two very successful arrests, both on elephant poachers and both in Ugalla GR( Western Tanzania). Ugalla has always been a hotspot for elephant poachers and in 2006 seventeen elephant were poached that we are aware of. In early November following fresh poachers’ tracks from the Ugalla River (they had poached a hippo) up into the Miombo a poachers camp was sighted and a late night ambush planned. The ambush resulted in the arrest of 2 poachers, one a well known elephant poacher from the area. They had 2 rifles with them. On further investigation a pair of tusks, an elephant ear and tail were discovered in the camp. The same team in mid November again cut tracks of poachers this time in the far SW corner of the Ugalla GR which resulted in the arrest of another 2 poachers, both notorious elephant poachers with 5 tusks, 5 tails an AK with 4 magazines and 280 rounds. These guys meant serious business. On both occasions the poachers were linked to a large UN ran Refugee camp in the vicinity of the Reserve. This has been a problem that we have been concerned about for some time but over which we have no say or control. A very sensitive issue up here.
The end of 2006 saw the arrest and conviction of 2174 poachers and the confiscation of 125 firearms through joint FCF and Wildlife Division patrols.
November right through to the end of February saw the short rains arrive and over stay the expected period. And now the long rains have started and reports of floods, washed away road etc are again daily news over the HF radio. All the Reserves that we work in across the country have experienced flooding and limited access by vehicle. The only efficient form of patrol being by foot, bicycle or canoe. All forms of poaching are rife (hardwood, fishing, bushmeat and elephant) as the teams battle to cover the vast distances. Fortunately in the Moyowosi GR ( far Western Tanzania) we have a microlight permanently based. A new project that we have been working on with the idea of having a microlight in the 5 main areas we cover. The microlight has really proven its worth in this vast, extremely remote area and a number of arrests have resulted. It is also an excellent tool for management and we are able to record some valuable information for the Wildlife Division officials. It was through the use of the microlight that 7 poached elephant were located in the first week of February in the Uvinza area which borders onto the western boundary of the Moyowosi GR. In a follow-up to the sightings two arrests have been made and a G3 confiscated. The area were the poached elephant were located was surrounded by flood waters and without the microlight it would have been weeks before a patrol may have discovered them. As it was it took the two teams assigned to the operation 2 days to wade and paddle to the area.
Even though the rain has posed many logistical headaches it has been most welcome raising the levels of the swamps in particular the Moyowosi swamp. The Moyowosi swamp is a Ramsar site and is home to very healthy populations of Sitatunga, Buffalo and Shoebill Stork.
Timber poaching continues even with a total ban in place on Mninga (African Teak) . Every week sees the arrest of timber poachers and the freshly sawn planks confiscated. In the last 24 hours 2 major busts have been made one involving 436 planks and another involving 680 planks. On both occasions the planks had been carried out of the protected areas by bicycle and then stockpiled close to the road ready to be collected by truck. The illegal harvesting of hard woods is devastating with most of the valuable species only being found in the protected areas now. These populations are now under threat. We are looking at other ways of tackling the problem and are in the process of setting up 2 large tree nurseries as well as employing Community Field Officers to work more closely with the villages. We are putting a lot of focus on community upliftment schemes were the villagers can have an alternative to poaching as a form of earning a living. We however have 140 villages surrounding the areas in which we work so one step at a time. We are trying to partner with other organisations and it seems like we may have some success with this.
Until next time. All the best
Keith
Keith Roberts, Conservation and Anti-Poaching Manager
Friedkin Conservation Fund, P.O.Box 2782, Arusha, Tanzania
Cell:+255 (0) 787686829, www.friedkinfund.org
Ian Player celebrates 80th birthday
in London, Written by Carolyn Howie, former Natal Newspapers promotions editor, who was a guest
World-renowned South African conservationist, Dr Ian Player was given a glittering 80th birthday party at the Cavalry and Guards Club in London’s Piccadilly last weekend (March 9).
Ninety members of the Wilderness Foundation UK and friends from many parts of Europe, came to pay tribute to the man who, literally, saved the white rhino from extinction in South Africa and established the Wilderness Leadership School.
Dr Player travelled from his home in Karkloof and was joined by his son, Kenneth Player, who now lives in England. Sir Humphrey Wakefield, Bt, former chairman and now a patron of the Foundation, was master of ceremonies for the evening.
There was a minute’s silence in memory of David Rattray, Zulu historian and a former patron of the Foundation, who was tragically murdered in January.
There was a preview of “Shadow and Soul”, a marionette play based on the life of Dr Player, his Zulu mentor, Magqubu Ntombela, and the glories of the wilderness, which will be presented at The Puppet Theatre Barge on London’s River Thames next year.
Durban photographer, Trevor Barrett showed his sight and sound presentation: “A Walk in the Wilderness”, shot in Umfolozi Game Reserve in the 1970s. It is one of the last records of the two great men on a wilderness trail together.
The evening was organised by Jo Roberts, director of the Foundation, who read out a message from Paul Dutton, ex KZN Parks Board employee, who said Dr Player had “rescued him from an urban existence and made him one of his game rangers in 1958.”
Mr Ulf Doerner of the Wilderness Foundation, Germany, said Dr Player had taught him many important lessons on his visits to Umfolozi and St Lucia 20 years ago.
Dr Player had fought with the South African forces in Italy at Monte Cassino in World War 2. Mr Doerner recalled that he had been instrumental in introducing Dr Player to Professor E S Harber, a leading German conservationist, 63 years after the War, at a wildlife conference in Frankfurt.
The two men had faced each other at Monte Cassino but “happily Prof Harber had saved Dr Player’s life by shooting in the air,” he said with a smile.
Major Matthew Christmas, deputy headmaster of the English private school, Felsted, recalled the enormous benefit gleaned by pupils who went on Wilderness trails with Dr Player in KwaZulu Natal.
“They came face to face with a white rhino and, in this frenetic world, they learnt how to be still and how to be quiet,” said Major Christmas.
Lady Sally Aspinall, widow of John Aspinall, a close friend of Dr Player’s in London, spoke of the close relationship which John and Ian had shared and their combined love of Africa and KwaZulu Natal, in particular.
Susie Harcourt read excerpts from “Men, Rivers, and Canoes”, Dr Player’s book, which has just been republished by Echoing Green Press CC, Empangeni (price R240).
The book was written originally in 1964 and is a great adventure story giving a fascinating account of the rugged sport of canoeing and the young men who risked their necks in the boiling rapids of South Africa’s rivers.
The evening finished with an address by Dr Player.
Cher Amis bonjour
Dear Friends hello, I am delighted to inform you that I have just finished the supervision of a young French "stagiaie" ?? in the Gourman Elephant Reserve. The elephants carry themselves well, but with the dry season that begins and the strong temperature we are worried for their state. At the level of the other Protected Areas, the supervision continues with the "implication" ?? of the riverside communities and the écogardes/ rangers in the Bafing Wildlife Reserve which is not far from Guinea and Senegal. It is in this Reserve where there is the last chimpanzee populations of west Africa. They migrate between the three countries and become more and more difficult to observe because of the degradation of their habitats.
I greet all the friends and you very good courage for the cause of the animals usually and elephants in particular that are slaughtered everywhere and the marketed ivories by poachers.
Bourama NIAGATE COORDINATOR OF GOURMA
Dear Friends
(French below- my apology for the poor standard) I write this mail to you since the Game Rangers Association of Africa and the International Ranger Federation seem to hear little from so many of you, about your work, what is happening there and so on.
I have been asked to contact you and ask for any news you may wish to share with your ranger and conservation colleagues from around the world.
Please could each of you respond to this mail, even with just a few sentences.
Best regards
Ches Amis
Feeding Cars, Not PeoplePosted November 23, 2004
The adoption of biofuels would be a humanitarian and environmental disaster.
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 22nd November 2004
If human beings were without sin, we would still live in an imperfect world. Adam Smith's notion that by pursuing his own interest a man "frequently promotes that of . society more effectually than when he
really intends to promote it" and Karl Marx's picture of a society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" are both mocked by one obvious constraint. The world
is finite. This means that when one group of people pursues its own interests, it damages the interests of others.
It is hard to think of a better example than the current enthusiasm for "biofuels". Biofuels are made from plant oils or crop wastes or wood, and can be used to run cars and buses and lorries. Burning them simply returns to the atmosphere the carbon which the plants extracted while they were growing. So switching from fossil fuels to biodiesel and bio-alcohol is now being promoted as the solution to climate change.
Next month the British government will have to set a target for the amount of transport fuel that will come from crops. The European Union wants 2% of the oil we use to be biodiesel by the end of next year, rising to 6% by 2010 and 20% by 2020.
(1) To try to meet these targets, the government has reduced the tax on biofuels by 20 pence a litre, while the EU is paying farmers an extra 45 euros a hectare to grow them.
Everyone seems happy about this. The farmers and the chemicals industry can develop new markets, the government can meet its commitments to cut carbon emissions, and environmentalists can celebrate the fact that plant fuels reduce local pollution as well as global warming. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels can be deployed straight away. This in fact was how Rudolf Diesel expected his invention to be used. When he demonstrated his engine at the World Show in 1900, he ran it on peanut oil. "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today," he predicted. "But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum."
(2) Some enthusiasts are predicting that if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, he will soon be proved right. I hope not. Those who have been promoting these fuels are well-intentioned, but wrong. They are wrong because the world is finite. If biofuels take off, they will cause a global humanitarian disaster. Used as they are today, on a very small scale, they do no harm. A few thousand greens in the United Kingdom are running their cars on used chip fat. But recycled cooking oils could supply only 100,000 tonnes of diesel a year in this country,
(3) equivalent to one 380th of our road transport fuel. It might also be possible to turn crop wastes such as wheat stubble into alcohol for use in cars - the Observer ran an article about this on Sunday.
(4) I'd like to see the figures, but I find it hard to believe that we will be able to extract more energy than we use in transporting and processing straw. But the EU's plans, like those of all the enthusiasts for bio-locomotion, depend on growing crops specifically for fuel. As soon as you examine the implications, you discover that the cure is as bad as the disease. Road transport in the United Kingdom consumes 37.6 million tonnes of petroleum products a year.
(5) The most productive oil crop which can be grown in this country is rape. The average yield is between 3 and 3.5 tonnes per hectare.
(6) One tonne of rapeseed produces 415 kilos of biodiesel.
(7) So every hectare of arable land could provide 1.45 tonnes of transport fuel. To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the United Kingdom.
(8) Switching to green fuels requires four and half times our arable area. Even the EU's more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland. If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance
from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.
This prospect sounds, at first, ridiculous. Surely if there was unmet demand for food, the market would ensure that crops were used to feed people rather than vehicles? There is no basis for this assumption. The market responds to money, not need. People who own cars have more money
than people at risk of starvation. In a contest between their demand for fuel and poor people's demand for food, the car-owners win every time.
Something very much like this is happening already. Though 800 million people are permanently malnourished, the global increase in crop production is being used to feed animals: the number of livestock on earth has quintupled since 1950.
(9) The reason is that those who buy meat and dairy products have more purchasing power than those who buy only subsistence crops.
Green fuel is not just a humanitarian disaster; it is also an environmental disaster. Those who worry about the scale and intensity of today's agriculture should consider what farming will look like when it
is run by the oil industry. Moreover, if we try to develop a market for rapeseed biodiesel in Europe it will immediately develop into a market for palm oil and soya oil. Oilpalm can produce four times as much
biodiesel per hectare as rape, and it is grown in places where labour is cheap. Planting it is already one of the world's major causes of tropical forest destruction. Soya has a lower oil yield than rape, but
the oil is a by-product of the manufacture of animal feed. A new market for it will stimulate an industry which has already destroyed most of Brazil's cerrado (one of the world's most biodiverse environments) and much of its rainforest.
It is shocking to see how narrow the focus of some environmentalists can be. At a meeting in Paris last month, a group of scientists and greens studying abrupt climate change decided that Tony Blair's two big ideas - tackling global warming and helping Africa - could both be met by turning Africa into a biofuel production zone. This strategy, according to its convenor, "provides a sustainable development path for the many African countries that can produce biofuels cheaply".
(10) I know the definition of sustainable development has been changing, but I wasn't aware that it now encompasses mass starvation and the eradication of tropical forests. Last year the British parliamentary committee on environment, food and rural affairs, which is supposed to specialise in joined-up thinking, examined every possible consequence of biofuel production - from rural incomes to skylark numbers - except the impact on food supply.
(11) We need a solution to the global warming caused by cars, but this isn't it. If the production of biofuels is big enough to affect climate change, it will be big enough to cause global starvation. www.monbiot.com
3 POSITION(s) AVAILABLE
"Do you want to get away from your normal dreary daily routine? Wake up in the morning to the sounds of the birds welcoming the day and the hippos grunting their greetings to friends as they return to their daytime watery retreats, go to sleep at night with a crystal clear sky and the occasional sound of lions roaring in the distance or a leopard sawing his warning as he looks for unwary prey?
Warm sunny days, no cars, no pollution, very few people, nice meals and luxury accommodation, occasional opportunities to go walking, game viewing, cruising on a beautiful river, fishing, amongst the forest-clad islands or just sitting quietly on your own. All of this in a remote location in the middle of Zambia, on the banks of the Kafue River.
Sounds fantastic, wonderful – WHERE IS THE CATCH???
Tom needs a hand for two stints in running Kaingu Lodge. At the outset, with him (4 wks in April) and after that, on your own (3 wks in May).
There is a full staff compliment to do all the main jobs but they will need some help with, forward planning, organisation, general supervision, some possible technical mechanical help and general hands-on help with respect to:
For this inconvenience and the opportunity to spend some time at “The paradise Livingstone never found” we can contribute, free board and lodging and $1000-00 towards your out-of-pocket travel expenses and to offset your bar tab.
Any takers???
Please contact Tom at tomh@kaingu-lodge.com within four days from date of receipt of this email for more details for this offer for help that could be split into two periods for different takers – I.e. The whole of April (4 weeks) and three weeks in May (1st to the 19th).
Look forward to hearing from you ASAP.
Kind regards,
Tom
www.kaingu-lodge.com
--- TRAINERS URGENTLY REQUIRED
The Southern African Wildlife College is urgently seeking trainers, with training competency in the following Unit Standards. It is all NQF Level 2 training:
THETA registered Trainers preferable. Please send your CV to Craig Hay at the Southern African Wildlife College: Email: chay@sawc.org.za or fax: (015) 793 7314. For further enquiries you can phone Craig (015) 793 7300 or Jenny 072 4547 957.
--- Field manager position on 8,000 ha island off the United Arab Emirates. The project involves developing an island to a wildlife destination with free-ranging Arabian antelope species. A selecting of other charismatic species will be kept in large paddocks. This is very much a safari park situation rather than a pure conservation one. There is potential for the development of a marine protected area around the island as there has been an 8 mile no fishing zone for more than 10 years.
For details contact Jeremy Anderson anderson@ics-consulting.co.za or 013 751 1935.
Tailpiece-
The Smart Rooster:
(From The Write Stuff – The Magazine of Writers 2000; Issue 93: February & March 2004)
Zebediah was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers, called pullets, and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs. Zeb kept records, and any rooster that didn’t perform well went into the soup pot and was replaced.
That took an awful lot of Zeb’s time: so, Zeb got a set of tiny bells and attached the bells to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so that Zeb could tell, from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on his porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.
Zeb’s favourite rooster was old Brewster. A very fine specimen he was, too. However, on this particular morning, Zeb noticed that Brewster’s bell had not rung at all! Zeb went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells a-ringing! The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover. -- BUT to Zeb’s amazement, Brewster had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring. He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job, and walk on to the next one.
Zeb was so proud of Brewster that he entered him in the country fair. Brewster was an overnight sensation.
The judges not only awarded him the No Bell Piece Prize but also the Pulletsurprise!
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