I just received this report on the Giant Sable project in Angola from Dr. Vaz Pinto and thought some of you might be interested. ~ Alan


Dear friends,

I must start apologizing for lack of comms for so long. This rainy season was particularly wet in Cangandala, over flooding the rivers and cutting road access to the park, and as a result I spent several months without visiting the park. In addition, the first trip was a bit disappointing and I thought it made more sense to include a couple more trips and make a semester report. To compensate for the loss, I decided to spend a little more time preparing the photographic package, which is now made available as a picasa web album. Hope this works better…

https://picasaweb.google.com/1...1sRgCJq8-8ydnIeYkAE#

The first trip was indeed frustrating. We were hoping to spend a few days watching the bull, his eight old ladies (we hoped the injured female to be still alive, and the ninth female had disappeared for over a year now), and his progeny. And maybe new calves?

Locating the herd shouldn’t be a problem, with three animals collared… However, Luisa – mother of second calf, had a VHF/GSM collar and these are suppose to last half of the standard VHF kind (2 years instead of 4) so sure enough, the batteries were dead by May. Second collar was working fine but it was on Quitéria, the injured female, but in this case she was the one dead! The collar led us straight to the skeleton (Photos 01, 02) and this of course was a sad moment, even if not completely unexpected. She had died at least one month earlier. There was no obvious cause of death, but I guess it is safe to assume it was related to the injury that made her limp for so long.

As if that wasn’t enough, over the following days we could not pick up the signal on the last VHF collar, the one on the dominant bull. This was totally unexpected as this collar should be at least half way through the batteries’ life. On top of this, and as it is usually the case at the onset of the dry season, the bushes and grass are overgrown, making it impossible to drive cross country and realistically find the animals. It made us wonder if the bull couldn’t have gone under the fence and escaped the sanctuary… there were plenty of fresh tracks inside and the bull wouldn’t leave his girls, would he? But still, how could we be sure? We located a good spot and planted a trap camera there, but we would have to wait a few weeks for an answer…

On the second fenced camp we located the hybrid herd, or at least the female “Judah” as her VHF collar was still functioning fine, but the collar on Ursula, a GSM/VHF was not active anymore. Visual contact with the hybrids wasn’t possible due to long grass, but there was no reason to push things anyway.

The trap camera record since mid December 2010 (Photos 51 – 86) showed lots of interesting stuff, and confirmed that the hybrid group was in good condition and stood together. But the real surprise came from outside the fences, where one isolated pure sable female showed up. It wasn’t clear when she first appeared in December, but subsequently it became obvious that she was the lost female, Joana. She had managed to escape from Sanctuary 1 a year ago without a trace?! At least she wasn’t dead. She must have crawled under the fence, breaking away from the rest of the group… Interesting to note that she had been the first female caught in 2009 because even then, she was the first to break from the herd when we started capturing, and she is also a confirmed mother of hybrid (DNA proved that she fostered “Judas” in 2004). So, she’s always been a rebel! A romantic soul might be tempted to believe that she went back in search of her true and only love… the roan bull!!! Surely not… but let’s hope we don’t find her soon raising a new bastard!

In June we started building a third fenced enclosure with 450 hectares (Photos 10,11,12) and this is where soon we expect to move all the hybrids to.
In later trips we managed to track down and see the pure herd, and thus confirm that the sable bull (Photos 22, 23) was as tame as ever and looking strong and healthy, and the radio collar was indeed dead. But the best news came from the trap camera placed inside the sanctuary: we had a third calf. The previous two were growing healthy, and it was now possible to determine the sex of the calves. They were male – female – male, on this order. Three calves (and only one female born) in one and a half years of breeding is no doubt a poor result, but 2011 is still going and once we enlarge the sanctuary we expect the breeding success to improve significantly.

And on the second enclosure we rechecked the hybrid herd a few times, and once even got a few lousy photos (Photo 21) as the group fled.

On a brief visit to Luando, we met with the shepherds and planned for the crucially important next couple months. So far, news are encouraging. A day spent at the river provided for great birding and to enjoy and explore the area a little bit (Photos 28 – 46) and we were even shown a group of five hippos (Photos 36 – 38).

Next month will be quite busy, pulling a new ambitious capture operation. We expect to move all the hybrids to the third enclosure, constitute a new breeding group in Cangandala with sable caught in Luando, make a survey on some of the more remote areas in the reserve, to mark up to twenty animals with collars, maybe capture other wildlife and make some anti-poaching interventions. And even more strongly than in 2009 the National Air Force will play a major role in the operation.

Well, enough for now, hopefully next report will be a juicy one.

Best regards,

Pedro