Safari Live - Day 166 | National Geographic

This program features live coverage of an African safari and may include animal kills and carcasses. Viewer discretion is advised.

Good afternoon, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and a very warm welcome to you again here on Safari Live. We are on a Sunday this afternoon and the temperature is a beautiful 23 degrees Celsius, 84 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a marvelous winter morning, or afternoon should I say. It’s been a beautiful day and my name is Steve Falconrich. I’m joined on camera by Craig and we are out in Juma, Sabie Sands. Very excited, honestly! I had the morning off, I’m feeling very, very fresh after a beautiful Safari Live episode last night. I was just showing you this little area here—nice open plains area—and this is the area that the cheetah family of the last week came into and spent some time. Another elf, Kirsten, had them this morning while from a distance. I’m not sure if you actually saw them, but we know kind of where they were hiding out and we might be able to find them again. So there’s our idea for this afternoon: to see if we can start with that. So feel free to send your comments and questions to #SafariLive or tune in, follow the YouTube stream or whatever other platform you do prefer.

How has everyone’s weekend been? A marvelous weekend! The weather is so nice. I’ve been expecting some really cold weather as June comes, but so far last night was a little bit chilly. But once you get back from drive, it’s easy. Maybe it’s because I’m living in a house now. I’ve been living in a tent for the last three years. Winters in a tent are very cold because that just gets colder and colder through the night. Craig, you have lived in a tent in winter. No walls, no heat!

So we’re going to go up towards our northern sort of boundary; Bubbles Hook boundary—the area where the cheetahs were seen this morning around an area called Sydney’s dam. We are on the western side of Juma right now, and it is kind of a nice open area called Sani Patch. Cheetahs were plain just here. This is the kind of habitat you expect them to find preferable because they can see that’s also attracting game. There’s a fair bit of vegetation to feed on. Also, some animals they want a bit of a sort of open area to feed on, such as Waterbuck and zebra. They like to come into these areas, but the cheetahs are looking for impala.

But I’m not alone this afternoon on Safari. I’m joined also by a very nice gentleman by the name of David.

"Hello and good afternoon to all of you and welcome to a sunrise-sunset drive. My name is David, and with me is Fog."

Excellent! I like the way he goes. This is fantastic! I have no plans for now; I’m open to anything that he’ll see. This morning I saw the sticks' pride of lions, which have been suffering from mange, but they look much better! I’ve never seen them before, but I was told from where we were a couple of months ago. They’ll pull through! Sometimes you usually think mange when it comes; it stands if it wipes out a pride like that.

"It’s kind of a nice way of, you know, balancing Mother Nature and balancing the population of some animals."

Well, either I’ll go looking for them or maybe my other friend Rob will go do that. But at the moment, I’m just open to see anything that comes our way.

The later parts yesterday and today, nothing—nothing doing, not seen! I’ll be happy to see some. And remember, most importantly, as you might be watching some nice animals go by, we request you to ask us as many questions as you can. Please share with us your thoughts and also send us some comments, as usual, #SafariLive. You must agree.

Go away. But think, we’re just waiting for our Nia for me to start the show. No, she is trying to swallow something. The other day I saw them trying to spit or vomit some seeds. As now we have come to winter, they’re only eating the husks and then the hard part of the seed. They’ll get it out.

"So that’s the Grey Go-away bird. They’ll always help us sometimes, when they make alarm calls. You never know when they talk; we listen! We follow. Sometimes we see something, and sometimes we don’t."

Beautiful little birds start in a hot afternoon here, so we’ll move on, and we are going also to make sure we have a look on flag in every water pan that we see because chances are someone could be going for a drink.

"Alright, there could be a bird screeing for a drink. Could be a Lion, could be anybody."

Okay. Great temperatures! A bit hot to stay over each one but again, it’s time to look for animals under the shade. What’s warm like this?

"Maybe much later on I’m going to cruise through the Revati at a time like now. Elly’s would be looking for big huge heads of trees that will give them more shade. The elephants don’t like lots of heat, especially if they’ll have the young ones."

So that’s also a plan or an area thinking of visiting much later today as it cools off. But at the moment, at every water pan we need to have a look. Remember we got another young man by the name of Ralph.

"Well, welcome aboard everybody! And you are now with us here in Torchwood Traverse. I’ve just come across the border from Juma, and you are in the greater Kruger National Park of South Africa, watching Safari Live. My name is Ralph Kirsten, looking straight into the sun on the camera is Davi Hauser."

Davi, now please don’t forget to join us on the hashtag #SafariLive on Twitter and on the YouTube live chat. Send us your questions and your comments and join us on the largest game drive in the world!

"I'm just trying to turn away a little bit because my eyes are directly in the sun today, but we are going to be heading on to Torchwood and I’m trying this afternoon to try and catch up with the Torchwood pride of lions as well as who knows, maybe we’ll even catch up with Tandy and Colombo."

It’s a lovely warm afternoon, so expectations are that the predators may be a little bit flat for now, but that gives us a chance to get around Torchwood and see what’s going on. Maybe we’ll pick up some tracks and some other little signs, and who knows, maybe we’ll even see some of those raptors up in the sky!

Speaking of raptors, it seems Steve has really found one!

"Yes, we have found a very special raptor. She is very common in the savanna biome. I haven’t seen one in some time now! It actually suggests this might be the first one I’ve seen this year. Wonder how many of you raptor experts there are out there? You’ll notice she’s got a very dark eye, the legs, and cere!"

If you're not familiar with the word cere, that's the skin around the beak joining onto the face, the beak, and the skin joining the face is called the cere. So, the mouth really, and you see the legs are the same color, and she's doing a very characteristic thing.

"She’s got one foot actually dangling there at the moment as she rests. It's quite characteristic of the species and also the posture: very straight back."

Do you see how a parotid stance, something snake eagles do? There we go, and I was holding the leg rides up. Very characteristic for the species of bird.

"I wonder how many of you out there know what this is! Have seen it before as I said is quite a common bird in the savanna biome, but I haven’t seen one for some time. Hmm."

"Grateful Dead! It is not a Gymno gene. No! Gymno gene! Yes does have the potential to get a red face, but very, very different! Tajima gene is a Harrier Hawk, it’s a very big bird! Yes, it doesn’t have feathers on the legs like this bird, but Gymno gene! Bear in mind has got an entire sort of skin pouch of a face, whereas this is just the beak. Nick, you are an absolute champion! You got that spot on!"

Now there's one bird that gets confused with the sun but is far smaller and doesn’t have as big a body size and doesn’t stand with that upright sort of shape. Nick, I guessed it correct! I thought it immediately when I saw it, but you can confuse it with the Gabar Goshawk which is a little bit smaller and the coloration of the legs and the cere are the same, but they do not stand with that upright.

"We can hear it call now!"

"Who's calling? That's a contact call! It’s not the actual call that it does; it was just a little cheep cheep! I’m going to actually play the call for you and then we can actually hear it, a little contact call."

Let's see if he responds to this call.

"It is in fact the Dark Chanting Goshawk, ladies and gentlemen! So if you got that correct, well done! Bear in mind remember that very straight back! And listen, I went to play it on my phone to see if it responds. Are you going to play it once? If we peep, he is interested in it. Interest? There’s no real difference in the sexes. There might be a slight difference in size, but really, really the female is slightly bigger. Slightly—slightly bigger than the male! Nice to see though! So that’s not the biggest of raptors in the world. They will feed on birds, largest guinea fowl, and their hunting strategy is exactly what it’s doing! It likes to perch. So much of a pursue hunter, there’s the facial shot! It doesn’t really pursue too many birds; it’s not the biggest; it’s not the smallest of raptors, but it’s not the biggest either!"

"So it really waits, sees something as big as a guinea fowl, will take lizards and snakes. It’s more likely just flops down on top of them. Oh! You’re interesting that little contact! Oh! Clue clue clue that’s happened there, a little clicking tensely might be a youngster!"

"Mina, very good question! And there is something we see all the time. When you’re at the bird with a big relatively large wingspan, you’d think the large raptors, especially vultures, are very, very important too for that. They’re very big; they’re not! They’re the most agile of birds of prey. So they’re quite clumsy! So they want to go up into the tree that's not gonna snag their wings!"

"So they land on top of the tree with a nest, or when they’re perched, it’s on a dead tree like this so they can just jump down and sort of fly into the air without any branches or leaves getting in the way. None of us would really know that because we never spent any time jumping from a tree like that. If you want to jump into a pool or a dam and you want to jump out of a tree, which tree do we choose? The tree with no leaves or the tree with a thousand branches and leaves in the way? It's definitely about space and about accessing their obviously their wings in and out of the tree. Not just the landing but also their leaving. But then also first sitting there for poaching, for maybe for drying themselves from the Sun, they need to be exposed to the Sun or if you’re a perched specialist waiting to hunt, you need to be able to have a maximum field of view otherwise you’ve kind of not picked the right spot. So the way it’s facing it’s got a full sort of view in front of it and everything moving around enjoying the sunshine and probably looking for some food."

"Okay, well we’re going to move on, see if we can find tracks of our cheetah shortly but maybe a few more questions on these if you’d like, send them through!"

"No more questions? What a lovely bird! We’re going to move on then to the northern side and see if we can find any wonderful cheetah tracks because, as you know, they’re long-standing views if you’re a new viewer. Well, cheetahs are renowned for moving in the daytime. They are known as a diurnal daytime sort of animal. It’s kind of in response to the competition there."

"Oh! We missed the money shot, Craig! Oh! That hunts in the daytime to avoid the competition against lions and hyenas during the night."

"Monica, when it comes to playing bird calls, you need to be very careful. In the breeding season, you can affect the breeding. A territorial family will be surprised by the call that might be louder than—and also you should never play it louder than their call. If you do play it, you’ve got to play it once, let it bird respond, and then you stop playing it altogether but if you play it again and again and again, you’re going to disrupt the breeding and you might even displace completely displace a breeding pair or a territorial pair because the caller here is louder or it’s more incessant than them and you can completely affect their life. So it’s very important to be ethical when it comes to playing calls. Play it once, see if there’s a response, leave it! If you’re walking looking for a special or sort of cryptic colored or hidden bird, never more than once every hundred meters or so. But they’re changing areas, and then a bird will jump out they respond very quickly to calls but it must also make sure you’re not too loud. Match the sort of pitch that that birds gonna play that otherwise it’s like, you know, trying to sing against someone who’s Pavarotti. You know, you know it’s not gonna track on Peter other! It’s gonna leave now!"

"Are we gonna go check a watering hole? And it seems like someone else has found someone drinking."

"Yes! And look at that draft there! How lucky to see a giraffe drinking! We have not seen this for quite some time. We saw one behind it and we just discussed from maybe they may go for a drink and just get in closer! Just look at that! They’re always friendly legs out to be able to reach water because of their long necks but at the same time the worry of being preyed on by predators is always very big. This is very special for me to see a giraffe having its shadow in the back, its reflection in the water. And actually, Ralph sprayed out! Let’s do it very well, job fog!"

"And as much of concern of so much blood remaining in the head, they need to bring their heads up! The biggest concern is getting preyed on when they’re drinking by either lions, 'cause they have known from experienced predators like lions will hang around the watering holes and come and hunt them when they’re drinking."

"A big boy Sbrocco! I have seen that mark there! It has actually took two marks if you look carefully! And being a male, you’re asking what’s wrong with his neck? Being a male, males usually fight a lot. Males usually fight a lot and I think this one has had a few fights."

"And if you try to calculate or estimate the headbutt vanessa cow drops horn, most likely it keeps hitting when it’s head or on the other! No, suing its head because they use the horns to fight all the Oscorp to fight! Chances are that is where it gets 'cause we call sneaking! And the Oscars will always hit at that particular point! If you just estimate the rough height for Mother Lucy, got two marks there—one on top and the other on there."

"My guess is those come from the fights they usually go through. It’s very typical for males to fight females. Really fight scratch! Great comments and great observation there! Sorry! Would you ask toward Rudolph’s trouble? The water? They just slap it and then straight to the mouth, they are not able to suck like how that cuts, you know will drink. They just slap the water!"

"I think certainly is a car that moved in the background there, must have spooked it a little bit and of course I’m not sure the giraffe saw it or knew what it was it will not want to take any chances but that’s why it’s leaving the waterhole!"

"And that is really something you see, his challenge of going up there because of its height. Alright! From one drinking animal to another drinking animal! Well everyone is up, let the gremlins stay away! Sorry about that! The previous picture that we had of this lovely bull elephant who is in must! And when we first spotted him, I am not sure which part of the story you got but he came towards us with a very intense swagger!"

"And when you do note that bull elephants in must it’s best to stay out of their way, because they do very often cause nonsense and they’re very irritable. And so when you spot that and the very clear indicator is that they’re actually leaking from the penis area dribbling a lot there! If you can see there’s little dribbles there and that’s actually coming from the penis and very weight! You know in between the back legs!"

"A very, very clear indicator that a bull is in must! Another way they do you also at the start leak from the temporal gland, but we don’t often say to people that that’s what you should use as an indicator because they will also leak from the temporal gland when they’re not in must!"

"It’s purely a stress indicator, it’s a bit of an emotional or triggered by emotion! So obviously when I do have all this testosterone coursing through their blood, it will also result in the Asians being quite highly strung! Now he also does, as I was saying, react with a swagger towards anything that presents itself towards him and a vehicle and a speak vehicle like this he might think of it as another big elephant and he just wants to come over and prove himself as a man, as a big boy!"

"As you know, this testosterone-fueled period is very important for elephants because it drives male bulls like this to go ahead and join what’s the herd and obviously seeking out females! And if it wasn’t for that, well, we’d probably run out of elephants because the males do like to wander off on their own and only rarely rejoin the herd when this testosterone starts pumping through their blood!"

"It can however be very stressful for the herd actually you say he’s got very nice big tusks! I agree with you, they are very, very thick tusks. It seems like they might be a bit brittle one and I wasn’t sure if they were nice and smooth! But he is a very good-looking individual. He’s a rather large elephant! I have seen bigger but I haven’t seen too many much bigger than him around here! So very, very nice good looking elephant!"

"But as I was saying, that can be quite stressful for the breeding herd because he wants to force himself on them! You know, Monique, it can be a little bit uncomfortable for the males. Um, you know, it’s—I wouldn’t think that you’ve ever experienced any kind of not that I have either. It’s taking steroids or just getting into a really frustrated time that everything irritates you!"

"And while it also comes down to a sexual thing for these elephants too, they really are looking for the girls, and with the frustration of not having them it does sort of heighten it! You know, sort of emotional state they’re in! So they’re just aggressive or irritated with everything that comes near them!"

"And as I say, the first thing he did was really come towards us in a very intent motion of, ‘Out of our way boys! Otherwise, I’m gonna flatten you!’ So that’s, you know, very easily identified by experience of being around big bull elephants like this!"

"I’ve had them like this on foot and over 20 years I’ve had, you know, I can’t count how many times I’ve been around elephants like this! So I understand that it’s just keep your space and he will then continue as he is now! Normally losing interest with you after, you know, a few minutes! If you remember that at this time, you keep yourself a nice escape route!"

"So if he did have to spin around now and come towards us then we’d head off! Then speaking of head off it seems the gremlins are attacking again! They say I’m not sure what he has! I think we’re having a reptile now after having some two male giraffes almost coming to a fight and they were almost necking and they hit each other very hardly!"

"So squid a big bang we had and I’m guessing we might be having a monitor lizard doing a little shimmy! I've never seen a crocodile in this waterhole and it might be kind of looks like a monitor lizard to me."

"Very good look, 100 percent yes Sumatra lizard! I’m always in the bank over the side of the water but this one is having some beautiful fun! Think you look he’s having a great time in the water! Look at his just feeling good and enjoying the swim there! And it is still left right. Hopefully, nothing is bringing it down because Crocs here would imagine maybe there could be a crocodile trying to bring it down and eat it!"

"But it’s just enjoying and having a great time here in the water! And this one big difference between these lizards and the rock monitors because this one will be found in and out of water many times! They’ve always mistaken them for cocktails or baby crocodiles from a distance and it surely is a monitor lizard! You can see the head! Now Ruby, you say this is so cool! I’m also enjoying it here with Fog and we are seeing for me something I’ve not seen before—a monitor lizard in water!"

"And just having its best! And you’ll notice once in a while it’s a British turn out because they need the tanks out to smell the air! Every girl you’re asking how big can they grow? Some of these can go up to 1.5 meters!"

"Abigail, 1.5 meters is how big they can grow and they weigh a lot more than the rock monitors! So this one could go up to 1.5 sometimes 1.8 meters in length! And emissions in seem to come out of the water after having a nice suit! How cool is this? Yes Abigail, you can see it now! So anything 1.5 to 1.8 is typical length for a monitor lizard."

"To different come out just how you come out of the pool and you want to warm up a little bit! But it does have to be sure what’s happening on the outside world! And the tank is always out every one or two seconds. And if you look, the tank carefully at the very end, it’s split into two!"

"And they use the tank to smell the air, and that way from the air they can tell if there’s any prey close by or any enemy close by! And even if prey they are also able to know what prey it is and even the distance just by smelling the air and the tongue being split into two or legatee tulips as you see, like sometimes in the snakes!"

"It helps it to drop more information! Chromic, you’re asking if the monitor lizard is dangerous for humans? No, it is not! In general, monitor lizards have not been known to attack humans. For example, if they come out of the can a comic, the monthly that will either go back in the water or they will move away!"

"And I’ll tell you what, they are very, very fast! You saw it slowly and lagging trying to come out of the water! When you see them full speed! Oh, they are very fast, very, very fast creatures, because that’s one of the best defense in a mechanism: taking off to flee speed because they have not been known to fight back very well.”

"Always they blend in very well, especially the front part of the head they blend in very well! So my firm day of life, how are you? And very good for having launched the day of life—people are very excited we were yesterday and that’s a second one of the monitor lizards! And I’m sure this could appear and they could be melting—that’s my guess! But I tell you in this particular waterhole, we have not seen or personally I have never seen a crocodile here! Maybe today, but it’s not easy just a crocodile just to come out of the blues—this particular waterhole here could the twin waterhole does not have any crocs, but again you never know so I’ve never seen any crocs here and maybe that’s one of the reasons this monitor lizards are going in there with a lot of confidence because we have known crocodiles have gone for monitors and have, you know, killed them!"

"You see the movement are very different from a croc when they move so this one tends to remain a bit clearer from the ground, and see Crocs tend to move like we do, bellies or right on the surface of the ground! And you can tell the drag marks over the monitor lizard and of a crocodile are very different! The third one also minimal, that’s a perfect question! As far as showing as a third monitor lizard, I’ve never seen this many more! I have already seen monitor lizards eating outside water and the theme could be possible!"

"But in general, because of the way they admit they would reach minimum, they would met out of the water, could be more out gas well more comfortable for them than inside the water! Now something interesting could be happening here because we have seen a third one which is quite unusual and they all look to be in the same size and this I could be wrong might tell me we could be having some breeding time here together too, so perhaps two males after one female but you know I don’t remember seeing even two males later together! Now, not two! We got three! So it keeps the turnout because that way is able to know where the other one is just look, it’s just following it up and as I said before, the tongue is very important to the monitor lizard! That’s how they’re able to smell or getting a scent of the air they can estimate the distance of the other monitor lizard and they can know if they can’t see it!"

"They’ll have a rough idea exactly where it is! I’d be more than happy if they could come out and you see the meeting! You know, definitely I got a feeling there’s a bit of love in the air here! Seeing three of them together, there could be maybe meeting going on! Maybe not now, could be later or it could have happened but to see three monitor lizards together is very unusual, and a few of them to me look the same size!"

"Good morning! There’s a bit of theory for me, either they are fighting or mating! And if they’re fighting, how could they be fighting? So I’m trying to imagine if they’re fighting, they could be fighting over mating, but at the moment I haven’t seen actual mating going on, and that’s why I’m sticking here for quite some time to find out what exactly will transpire. Any, you’re asking if the monitor lizards are more comfortable in water or out of water? I will say it will depend on the situation they find themselves in; if they’re the predator that will go for them, you know it’s not some, it’s not in a veil to easily get them in the water! They may choose to stay in the water but if they know out of the water they’ll flee and take off they’ll be more comfortable out of the water!"

"Any—It will always depend on the situation or where they find themselves to be but if they’re near water, chances are they would easily go underwater and hide! Some of the monitor lizards like this ones here, the water monitor lizards, that we have known, they can go underwater for as long as one hour! You’d imagine how they do that! I do not know! But unlike hippos which will go underwater 3, 4, 5 minutes, the monitor lizards go underwater for a very long time! So my guess is, in situations like where we are now, if there’s a concern of maybe an animal or like a crocodile, that would not go and get them underwater, they will definitely be more comfortable underwater!"

"Something is definitely going on here! Because we have seen a third one, which is quite unusual! And they all look to be the same size! And this I could be wrong, might tell me we could be having some breeding time here! And either two males after one female, but I don’t remember seeing even two males later together! Now not two, we got three! So it keeps the turnout because that way is able to know where the other one is just look, it’s just following it up! And as I said before, the tongue is very important to the monitor lizard! That’s how they’re able to smell or get a scent of the air! They can estimate the distance of the other monitor lizard and they can know if they can’t see it! They’ll have a rough idea exactly where it is!"

"I’d be more than happy if they could come out and you see the meeting! You know, definitely! I got a feeling there’s a bit of love in the air here seeing three of them together; there could be some mating going on! Maybe not now, it could be later or it could have happened! But to see three monitor lizards together is very unusual! And a few of them to me look the same size!"

"Good morning! There’s a bit of theory for me, either they are fighting or mating! And if they’re fighting, how could they be fighting? So I’m trying to imagine if they’re fighting they could be fighting over mating! But at the moment I haven’t seen actual mating going on, and that’s why I’m sticking here for quite some time to find out what exactly will transpire!"

"I'm just looking for anything here because these creatures are quite unusual and I’m excited for the evening. So let’s find out where Ralph is heading to right now!"

"Well, everyone! On Torchwood Traverse, there’s a couple of roads. One is called Lian Check, and this road that I’m on now is called Lian Tree Road! So I’m just trying all the Lion roads in the hope that we find the Torchwood pride of lions, because I thought that might be our best bet! Last time, the first time I was on Torchwood, we went on lion track and found the Torchwood pride! So I’ve just done that! Now online tree Road, sort of in the southern section of the Torchwood Traverse, and just trying to see it’s been very quiet after we saw that elephant at LED wood dam or LED wood waterhole, which is right next to Torchwood Lodge! We haven’t seen too much else in the way of big mammals! Seen some birds, lots of trees of course because we could never say that we haven’t seen anything! It was one of the most frustrating things that I always used to hear from my students when I was an instructor for one of these wildlife training colleges! And I used to often say to them when they got back from their game drive, “Well, what did you guys see?” In the “gars!” Guy: “Mmm, we are nothing.” I’m like, “Hey! How did you not see anything?” Because the basis of guarding comes down to trees and birds! Because on every single drive, you will see trees, you will see birds!"

"I can never say that I have not seen anything because I didn’t drive with my eyes closed otherwise we would have been gotten by that elephant to start with if we even made at this! So lots of things to be seen, we just am obviously trying to find something special that we can sit and watch and that it’s nice and interesting! I like to sort of concentrate on birds and trees when we’re walking now! The beauty about the Greater Kruger National Park here in South Africa is that it’s an area the size of Israel; it’s about 2.2 million hectares! And the animals do move across this entire space!"

"Sometimes it’s sort of like many migrations; it can almost seem like there’s no animals here! And then you come around a bend in a road and this—just full of animals! And that can be sort of just from little area to little area! And also from time to time! You know, on Juma sometimes it’s full of elephants and at other times you really struggle to find even one! And then other times there’s, you know, up to ten leopards in the area! And city lions, and then other times it seems like they’re all gone! But they move and groove as they feel fit because they are wild and free! And that’s the beauty of it! We come out, never knowing what to expect, and while all we can do is put ourselves in the right places at the right time! And normally, it’s just the luck of the draw!"

"But the longer you’re out there looking for things and trying also to work out where the animals have been moving and try to work out a little bit of pattern, then you can try and catch up with them! But like this morning with the cheetah, at least we know that they’re right on the boundary of Juma and I’m very much hoping that they possibly cross back into Juma this afternoon! And Steve’s in that area just checking! Hopefully, he gets lucky over that side."

"Well, we’re also hoping that we get lucky with the wildlife! Anke, thanks for saying you like my philosophy! Oh! Yeah! We go to boho! Yes, some antelope, and we should never discriminate between antelope! Because we get overly excited about some rare species, but if it wasn’t for impala there wouldn’t be a lot of the predators around that we find on a regular basis! Because they form a major part of the food source of these predators around here, especially leopards! So we need to be thankful for the presence of impala! And I would say some of some of the time they do also feed on warthogs, but a lot of the time, impala!"

"Now Scott, there are some animals that do move in and out of the Kruger National Park! And those animals, mostly the warthogs, jackals, leopards, caracal, and any number of other smaller little creatures, genet and civet! You know they can very easily get under the fences! And it’s very often down to jackals and warthogs that make the holes or the burrow-like holes underneath the electric fences and then that makes it easier for other animals to sort of cross that boundary as well! But I’ve even seen leopards jumping over a three-meter electrified fence! So it’s not impossible for them to go over as well! Just in general they take the easier route which would normally be underneath through water barrow as well."

"Yes, they are boarders! The Greater Kruger National Park of South Africa does border on Zimbabwe and Mozambique! So at Crooks Corner, right at the corner of South Africa, we can look at three countries! We can be standing in South Africa and we can throw a stone across to either Zimbabwe or Mozambique and that’s Crooks Corner! That’s the meeting of the Limpopo and the Levuvhu River right at that corner is the boundary of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique! But that’s part of the greater Kruger National Park! Because remember, it’s a trans-frontier park! It does go across into Zimbabwe and Mozambique as well! So the rivers literally form the boundary between the countries and on the outer edges of the national park, it is then fenced! So, you know, there are places sometimes where the fence is down and that needs to be monitored! Then the guards would repair it and fix it up."

"Now, Adèle, this part, you know the agreement with the sand parks or the South African national parks would be with these some private property owners like in the Sabi Sands. They would need to be fencing the perimeter sufficiently that it would be keeping elephants and lions in specific inside and also to keep people out! So that’s the major goal of the, you know, the boundary of national parks! I would say in the major part, it’s actually to keep people out so that is how the private landowners would then obviously in order for them to benefit from the greater Kruger National Park and all the animals that would then move in and out of their property, they would need to sufficiently have fenced off their perimeter and they would obviously have stringent controls! And every single person that comes in on into the Sabi Sands pays an entrance fee and that all goes to the greater conservation maintenance of these particular areas but for the roads, the fences, the staff—not in terms of the lodges, not staffed for the lodges—but staff for maintaining the fences, for anti-poaching, and a very important part being that of road maintenance, because if left alone roads will be probably your primary source of erosion and degradation of your land!"

"So they need to keep that all up to scratch and, you know, they would have a management team, a conservation management team that would be having the targets and goals for the year and all the different things that they would need to be completing as a part of the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly schedules and making sure that it’s all up to scratch in line with the sandboxes! Scott, the poaching problem in the Kruger has obviously escalated in the last ten years! The majority being around rhino and the obvious very lucrative side that rhino horn brings on the black market! So that has attracted a lot of poaching into the Kruger National Park and the sabi sands is now different, obviously, with the sabi sands being more of a sort of private entity within this public government entity! They do have a little bit more hours, I would say, in the way of input, monetary-wise, in a smaller area. So their teams, their poaching teams would maybe be a little bit more efficient! But it’s—it’s mostly down to them having a smaller area to work with! Remember those national, the parks’ anti-poaching teams they’ve got massive, massive tracts of land to deal with! And so it’s, it’s an unenviable task for those guys having to protect that huge tract of land and then you’ve also got the problem of it being a trans-frontier park! You’ve got guys coming across the border, South Africans going across to that side! It’s almost impossible to control! But the guys do do their best."

"But overall I would say that they probably are fighting a losing battle because the numbers have dropped in terms of poaching incidents! But I don’t know, I’m not much of a sinist, I do probably think that the major reason why the poaching incidences have decreased is because these rates, there’s less rhino around to poach! Anyway, that’s a story for another day! Let’s carry on trying to find these lions while I do off to Steve!"

"Well, we are on our northern boundary right now, just having one last look to see if the cheetah came back into Juma. They followed them this morning; they sort of went north-eastish from where they were. So because they move in the day, there’s always that opportunity that they could have come back across so I’m just checking the road. This is quite a busy road as well because there’s access to a few of the lodges and landowners on the side, so tricky to see the tracks! But it’s important to check roads like this to see if anything comes in and out; it’s what we do quite often, especially in the mornings! But if you’re looking for cheetahs during the day, it’s a very big move during the day, so good time to do that boundary patrol as it’s commonly known."

"So we’re going to keep going here and if they have been coming by the next kilometer or so we’re going to go back in towards where Tandy and Colombo were lost last night! I believe someone tried to follow up this morning but didn’t find any tracks, maybe they were 100% sure where she was. Craig and I are going to go there and see if we can find any leftovers of that, maybe they’re still there! But we’ll figure out where the closest water is from that section and then follow on from there and see how lucky we can be to see the little Colombo with some light! I know lots of you are screaming again! Yes! Please! Love to see Colombo!"

"Well, as it’s notorious for this northern section, there’s a big drainage, we better go through! The signal gets a bit, but it’s sneaky, so let’s quickly go to David while I get through this dark pitch!"

"Ah, yeah! We don’t want to lose signal either! Sorry about that! So you can keep following us and we’ll catch up again shortly! But we're still looking around for other types of wildlife! Waiting for more critters to come out into the light, and we’ll keep you updated!"

"See you soon! Bye!"