Kudus wreak havoc on fields
07 April, 2008

KANYE - The Department of Wildlife and National Parks in the Southern District is inundated with reports of kudus wreaking havoc on farmers fields.

The departments Senior Wildlife Warden, Ms Florence Ontiretse, confirmed to BOPA on Friday that her office had been receiving such reports since January this year.

Since January we have received ninety-eight such reports and more are still coming on a daily basis, she said. Ms Ontiretse said her office had attended to only 43 such cases mainly because of shortage of staff. She said the vastness of the district exacerbated the shortage of staff.

She added that her officers were working round the clock to attend to farmers grievances and manning of the office at the same time. Ms Ontiretse said complaints were mostly attended to during the night when offices get dispatched to the actual fields to scare away the kudus.

We attend to at least six fields in a week, she said adding that they could be attending to even more cases per week.

She however pleaded with farmers to be vigilant where possible to erect fences up to 2.8 metres high to deny kudus entry to their fields.

Ms Ontiretse added that wild animals detroyed crops because some farmers did not care for their fields. Some of them stay in Kanye leaving behind their fields unattended, she said.

She also said awareness campaigns by her office seemed not to bear fruits because few farmers turned up for meetings intended to teach them about ways of scaring wild animals away from their fields.

She said this left a lot of people without the necessary knowledge needed for proper handling of wild animals to curb destruction of crops. BOPA

The very best way to scare huge kudu would be to put a well placed bullet. . . . .

quote:

Originally posted by Use Enough Gun:
The very best way to scare huge kudu would be to put a well placed bullet. . . . .

Not much you can do about the kudu. They come at night and can jump over a 2.8 meter fence from a stand still. In Ghanzi, Botswana I had several huge geranium plants in my yard that in one night were chowed down to the roots. To add insult to injury, they pulled out several aloe plants and didn't even eat them. I never saw the actual animals but they ruined all my vegetables except the onions. I got to grill them along with a few kudu steaks later.

Peter Durkin
African Excursions

quote:

Originally posted by P Durkin:
Not much you can do about the kudu. They come at night and can jump over a 2.8 meter fence from a stand still. In Ghanzi, Botswana I had several huge geranium plants in my yard that in one night were chowed down to the roots. To add insult to injury, they pulled out several aloe plants and didn't even eat them. I never saw the actual animals but they ruined all my vegetables except the onions. I got to grill them along with a few kudu steaks later.

Peter Durkin
African Excursions

I'd say sweet revenge, except onions aren't sweet!

JPK

They can be if they're grilled right!

I find the report very encouraging because I used to live near Kanye (Jwaneng, about 80 clicks west) about 12 years ago and I used to hunt the area for birds very regularly.

I never saw one kudu afield there in 4 years and in my talking to locals they were very, very scarce, more common to the east of the Francistown-Gaborone-Mafikeng road than to the west of it.