Wildt Tales, December 2006

The De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust team would like to wish all supporters and friends a restful and restorative holiday period. We would not achieve what we do without you.

Mission

Striving towards the long term survival
of predators and vultures
which are of conservation concern
outside protected areas
in South Africa

Highlights of the Year

• The Outreach Education Programme has reached over 15 000 children in 2006;
• The De Wildt Cheetah Centre has received a facelift with new signage and gardens;
• The pilot Anatolian guard dog project has been declared a success with farmers reporting minimal losses. This project is a partnership between De Wildt and Cheetah Outreach;
• The De Wildt Cheetah Lodge has contributed over R100 000 towards our conservation projects between March and October;
• The De Wildt Wild Cheetah Project has relocated over 140 cheetah since inception in 2000;
• Three successful teacher workshops were held by the Outreach Education Programme.

Night of Stars

De Wildt’s annual thank you gala dinner was a huge success again this year. Over 200 guests, dressed according to the theme “Spots and Feathers” gathered to celebrate the significant successes of the year.

Artists Fuz Caforio and Graham Kearney donated magnificent original artworks which were auctioned. Other sponsors of the evening included the Monate Game Ranch, IAMS, Dreiers, Dros, Timber City and Bundu.

RECOLLARING CHEETAHS!!

As part of our research on cheetahs outside conservation areas, put collars on wild cheetahs to see what kind of areas they are moving over. We are using cell phone collars that work with a GPS and a cell phone unit – this means that we do not have to fly to locate them!

However, the collars only last about 18 months and need to be replaced. Because we are not working in an area where cheetahs are habituated to vehicles and people, we need to recapture them by darting them using a chopper. We had to recollar a coalition of two males, George and Joss. The Wild Cheetah Project originally caught them on the farm Silent Valley that belongs to the Jeurissen’s. While the Hans as in Spain working, his daughters (Georgina and Jocelyn) called to say that we should catch and collar while their dad was away! We caught the two males and named them George and Joss after Georgina and Jocelyn.

The BBC joined us for the re-collaring AND, they funded the whole operation. They were making a program called Saving Planet Earth which is aimed at children and thus had a child presenter called Adesh. Everything ran incredibly well and we literally had 7 hours of perfect weather between floods, thunderbolts and general climatic mayhem!!!

The whole team arrived on the farm Leeuwenkuil belonging to the Gous’s on the Sunday afternoon. John Bassi from BassAir landed his chopper in the garden of the logde and the Cesna more conventionally, used the landing strip! It poured rain all night and we got up at 4am to low clouds, so we killed time drinking coffee and hoping for the clouds to burn off. They eventually did and Deon took off in the Cesna to locate the cheetahs, while the chopper and ground crew prepared for action.

Deon expertly located the cheetahs in a matter of minutes, and sent the information back to the ground crew. The chopper took off and the ground crew raced off to the nearest appropriate place to the cheetahs where we could work. This ended up being one of the front garden of the farm Ultimo. Steyn and Bernadette Marais were fantastic about welcoming the chaos into their yard!!! It is difficult to predict where the cheetahs will be at the time of darting, so it is not possible to arrange with land owners before the time.

The first cheetah was darted, and Peter dropped off with the cat in the bush and the chopper came back to the base to collect Kelly to help loading the cat into the chopper the thick bush.  We headed back to the lodge for a delicious brunch, then the weather went mad. John and his crew frantically re-fueled the chopper and John took off in a massive hurry to try and out-fly the fast approaching hail storm. He spent an hour flying around dodging the storm and then arrived back safely. It was the most hectic storm any of us had seen in years, the lightning was right on us and the rain just bucketed down.  We took the time to review the BBC’s footage of the day. It is first class. Cameras were fitted all over the place (we had skid cam 1 on the skid of the chopper facing forward, skid cam 2 faced back to the back door where the vet/cheetah carrier sat, pilot cam was on the instrument panel and got the pilot in action, rifle cam was mounted on the Peter’s dart gun, the whole ground to air radio system was wired, so every radio communication was also recorded). They got some amazing shots and footage!!!!

We then took 2 hours to get out of the flooded farm! We only just managed with the Mazda Wildlife Fund diff lock bakkie, the film crew (in a Microbus!) had to be pulled out of the mud twice with the farmer’s LandCruiser. An adventurous end to a successful day!!!  Thanks to Tim Neary his brilliant organizing and creative ideas made sure that the film crew got world class shots. The BBC crew were fun and easy to work with while Adesh, who was only 11, took everything in his stride. John Bassi and his team from BassAir were professional and efficient and John did some classy low-level flying. Peter Cauldwell darted quickly and accurately in very thick bush and took brilliant care of the two engorged cheetahs. The Marais family and Koos Weyers were fantastic about welcoming all the action onto their properties. And last, but not least, the Gous family on Leeuwenkuil took brilliant care of us and we all went home a little chubbier!

Cheetah Ambassadors graduate

Twenty one young cheetah ambassadors (not cheetahs) graduated on Saturday 9 December at De Wildt’s Reach for the Wild Education Centre. It was a proud moment for Marilyn Hull (Manager of the Education Project) and Amos Letsoalo as the young people spoke of what they had learnt and how De Wildt had touched their lives. Each graduate received a certificate and a SAPPI bird book.

Focus on Ethiopia

An increasing number of cheetah, lions and other wild animals are being taken illegally, put in captivity and inadequately cared for by individuals in Ethiopia. To address these issues a day long consultative meeting on Captive Wild Animals was held in Addis Ababa on 4 December at the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research.

In his keynote address to the meeting Ethiopian Wildlife Association (EWA) President Dr Aseffa Mebrate said “it has, in fact become customary to see turtles, baboons, green monkeys ad even lions, leopards, cheetahs and birds in the city of Addis Ababa itself”. Recent media reports disclosed to the outrage of the public, that a lion zoo in Addis Ababa allegedly poisoned some of its lions to death “for lack of budget to feed them”.

Vanessa Bouwer, Deputy Director of the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust was invited to make a presentation on the South African situation, lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid. Her presentation was well received and it is likely that De Wildt will become a resource to the newly formed stakeholders forum. Pictured here is Sheba, who will become Ethiopia’s first ambassador cheetah.

BETTY BLUE’S DIARY

Truly the bravest cheetah on the farm, Betty Blue continues to go from strength to strength.  Whilst tolerant of one or two handlers, Betty doesn’t like crowds at all. Nonetheless, she is certainly losing some of her initial aggression towards humans and she seems to understand that we are trying to ease her discomfort and to help her get better. In fact she will quite often come into the crush quite willingly without the incitement of food. She is not particularly keen on being held in position but if she is given a stick, she will nibble at it quite calmly whilst her leg is worked on.  We are currently working on different methods to have her wound breathe more – this will promote more rapid healing.

Hungry for Fish?

WWF’s FishMS text line helps you choose the right seafood.

You can bank with it, play music, send text messages, browse online and even make calls. Now your cellphone can also help you make choices that limit your impact on our oceans.

A new tool from SASSI (The Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative) helps you make informed choices about the fish you eat. Simply text the name of a fish to the number 079-499-8795 and you’ll immediately get a message telling you whether to tuck in, think twice or avoid completely. It’s called SASSI FishMS and it puts WWF’s knowledge of seafood resources at your thumb-tips.  The feature resulted from cooperation between The Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI), local IT company iVeri Payment Technology and developer Tony Seebregts. SASSI has condensed the research on the impact of fishing on fish stocks into guidelines available in a handy pocket card.  In laymen's terms this distils information on the status of local seafood species into one of three colour categories, much like a traffic light. Species marked with a green fish can generally be eaten with a clear conscience because their population numbers are healthy. Orange means they're legal to sell, but if you have a choice you should opt for one of the “green” species. Species marked in red are illegal to buy or sell in South Africa. Full details of how the classification system works are online at www.wwf.org.za/sassi

Now you can still make the right choice, even without the card. The more specific the query, the more detailed the information received.  Jaco Barendse, coordinator of SASSI, says: “Cellphones are the one common possession of everyone from surfers to stockbrokers, taxi drivers to taxidermists - even my dad has one.  “That’s why this is the ideal way to combine technology and information with the variety of seafood available and the growing awareness among seafood lovers, chefs, food buyers and so on that the oceans’ resources aren’t infinite.”  He adds that the system not only helps consumers make informed choices, but demonstrates to retailers and restaurateurs that those consumers are willing to use their spending power.  “When shoppers and restaurant patrons start texting to check whether the Catch of the Day is okay to eat, it’ll hopefully help drive suppliers’ buying habits.”  SASSI is funded by The Green Trust (a partnership between WWF-SA and Nedbank).  “We believe SASSI FishMS provides consumers and anyone else working with fish with a handy and extremely cool tool to help choose fish from healthy populations and relieve the pressure on overexploited species. By giving them a break their populations can recover and they can once again become more widely available.

Ostrich Family – a message from guide Dr Charles

“On the way to the Sasol camp yesterday morning I was forced to drive around the family of ostriches as they would not get out of my way. On the way back to the Impala camp from the Mazda camp I once again came upon the Ostrich family. But this time they stood on the road just before the road enters the trees so I was unable to drive around them and had no choice but to drive behind them. I drove right up to the female who did not move until her brood was a few meters away from the truck and then she moved a metre or two down the road and stopped again. This continued all the way across the bridge until the family eventually turned left at the fork in the road so that I could go right to the impalas. I took the attached photos of the family through the front window of the truck with my cell phone. The parents are very protective of the babies and very aggressive so we must be careful. The chicks are very cute especially when they run away at break neck speed with their short fat legs. The guests enjoyed the spectacle.”

New Collectors Club in support of cheetah conservation

In the past East Africa has produced a number of outstanding wildlife artists, both painters and sculptors, passionate about conservation. Two well known names come to mind – David Sheppard & Simon Combes, both of whom have donated generously throughout their lives in an effort to ensure that there will always be a wild habitat for all our species of African wildlife to roam in.

Another such artist is Allen Hallett, born in Kenya when game there was plentiful and before the dissemination of the indigenous forests. His original career choice as a dental technician gave him the expertise to mould and sculpt both small as well as life size wildlife creations. Having changed career direction, as a ranger with the then Natal Parks Board until 1979 Allen had a ample opportunity to study his beloved animals up close. This led to his plunge into the sculpting world, initially concentrating solely on bronze pieces. Even though success followed in this field with commissions & pieces being sold at Christie’s Allen never lost sight of the fact that conservation, his greatest passion, is expensive and he has always been a regular donor to various wildlife organisations.

Some three years ago his emphases changed to sculpturing functional pewter pieces, not concentrating on the “Big 5”, but giving the little guys some exposure too. Hence the present range includes meerkat & bush baby sugar spoons, tree frog & chameleon pickle forks. One of the wine bottle stoppers depicts a dung beetle hanging onto his prize for dear life. Cheetahs feature on a number of pieces and as Maridadi Pewter cc have been looking to partner with a deserving wildlife organisation for sometime De Wildt became the natural choice as recipient.  To digress for a moment –“maridadi” is one of those wonderful Swahili words which properly borrowed its origins from the Arab slave traders who plied their trade between Mombasa and the Congo in the 19th century, but which has no direct translation into English. Pleasing on the eye – pretty, but then more than just pretty – colourful, but not necessarily full of colour. None of the adequately explain the word, likewise the pieces made by Allen cannot be categorised, they are just very “maridadi”.  The Maridadi Pewter and De Wildt partnership will be in the form that Maridadi Pewter will regularly produce an item to be marketed solely through the Maridadi Conservation and Collectors Club whose membership will come from the like-minded conservation conscious people. The same as those who presently support the work being done by the De Wildt Breeding Programme. The intention is that there will be a token once off-joining fee of R100.00 for which the new member will be given a numbered membership certificate and a specially designed Maridadi Conservation and Collectors Club cheetah key ring. Thereafter the member will be entitled to purchase the custom designed cheetahs that will be produced by Maridadi Pewter for the club every two months. From each cheetah sold, 10 percent of the retail price will go to De Wildt to assist them with their various conservation projects with the cheetah and wild dog programmes.

The pewter collectable will only be available to club members and the intention is to produce 6 different cheetah pieces in 2007 which by the time of the last piece is released will make up a full pride. It could be that 6 wild dog pieces will be the 2008 pieces, but this is not set in stone and input from club members will be welcome. Thereafter – the sky’s the limit. All club items will only be available for a specific time period as the idea is to create a genuine “collectors club” with a strong conservation oriented membership, proud to own and collect really unique sculptures. Also proud to know that every time they purchase from their own Maridadi Conservation & Collectables Club they are doing their own private “bit” to help those who are trying to ensure the future existence of some of this planet’s creatures.  The Club will not have any fancy mission statements, it has but one objective – to promote wild life conservation by identifying a worthy recipient for the funds generated by the club members who, in turn have the opportunity to collect unique limited edition wildlife memorabilia.  Commencing from January 2007 the monthly De Wildt newsletter will feature an article from the M.C.C.C with previews and articles on the forthcoming piece as well as, hopefully, photos of the real live cheetah about to be immortalized in pewter.

Leopard Skins for sale

On Saturday, 11 November a De Wildt team member received a call from a businessman from the neighbouring farm town of Brits. His line of business is upholstery and he reported that he had been approached by men from Malawi wanting to sell animals skins. His question to us was how we could assist him in trapping these traders.  Deon Cilliers our Manager of the Wild Cheetah Project, immediately alerted the South African Police. A trap was set, the skins were confiscated. The men have subsequently been found guilty and fined R700 (about $100). We are all very thrilled that they were arrested but frustrated by the low fines they received. It is important that we lobby for substantially higher fines.

A message from Sweden

For many, many years my mum had dreamt about working with this special species and in June this year it finally came true. We left Sweden and went to a place far, far away with so much heart and warmth that it’s difficult to find the words to describe how incredible our experience was. Our stay at De Wildt exceeded all our expectations and we had a wonderful time there. We were given a warm welcome and we were met with a kind, kind treatment. The staffs who are all very special people welcomed us with open arms and really made us feel at home. You can really feel that De Wildt is a hospitable place; it emits an incredibly friendly and positive energy. You can also really feel the true commitment of the staff. They are all making a difference, every day, doing what they do. You can tell that they love what they’re doing and it’s so important. They work to save an incredibly beautiful animal; it takes a good team work and a great team spirit to do that.

Neither I nor my mum will ever forget the first cheetah that we got to stroke; it was the purring and most adorable Rhett. His purring transplanted itself from the hand, through the arm and straight into your heart. It is quite a difference to stroke a cat that is ten times bigger than your domestic cat at home. Both I and my mum said that we would never wash our hands again after having stroked our first cheetah, ha-ha.

Not even in our wildest dreams did I and mum expect that we would get the chance to just hang out with a cheetah but we did and we got to do it more than once.  One of the best ways to help the centre is to adopt a cheetah, for me it was an easy decision about which cheetah to adopt, but actually I do believe it was Anthony that chose me. When it comes to my mum’s adoption of a cheetah, I went “behind her back” before going down to the centre. Mum was to celebrate her birthday when at the centre so all the near and dear ones chipped in money so that she would be able to adopt and also name a cheetah. This was also one of her dreams and during our stay at the centre she felt a little bit of stress about finding a cheetah to adopt. On her birthday, she had still not found the one that she would like to adopt so she was really in for a surprise, ha-ha. On the evening of her birthday, we got into the car with Ann, the founder and Vanessa, the deputy director and went up to Lover’s Lane. Lover’s Lane is the path in between two rows of enclosures with female cheetahs where you can see cheetah males, pacing up and down the path, courtship the female cheetahs. This is the heart of the centre; this is where the cheetahs are bred. There you can really feel that love is in the air. But this evening, it was about making one of my mum’s long-lived dreams coming true.  Ann and Vanessa had even made sure to bring along some champagne, even though mum saw the bottle, she had absolutely no clue about what was about to happen. When we went up to the enclosure and told her about the surprise, tears of joy started streaming down her face. It is a moment that I will never forget. She was so happy and it was great fun to see her reaction. She adopted a female that she named Freja, the goddess of fertility according to ancient Nordic mythology, a very suitable name as Freja is a very good breeding female cheetah. Just a few weeks after we had been to the centre, she gave birth to Victor, one of many cuty pies that have been born at De Wildt. The funniest thing about that adoption was when we, the day after, had a look at Freja’s details and saw that she has the same birthday as my mum, now that was indeed a goose bump moment.

FROM THE ADOPTIONS DESK…

Happy Holidays to you all from your adopted “babies” and from the team at De Wildt. We wish you health, wealth and happiness for 2007.  November was a rather quiet month but we did welcome some new parents and we have seen a very promising number of renewals. December on the other hand has been very busy, with lots of happily adopted animals. We have done our utmost to send any Christmas gift adoptions as quickly as possible – I hope that they all arrive in time.

I am delighted to report that Betty Blue has been adopted just in time for Christmas. Thank you Tracey! We will be profiling Jaws, our latest addition to the family in the next newsletter so watch this space.  As always, thank you all so much for your continued support. We could not achieve half of what we do without you.

Diamond Level
Roy Robertson, Louis Wolmarans, Margarete Unite, Ann Nagda, Messaging Architects, Tracey Leppan;
Platinum Level
Frans Holsgens, Christopher Calvert, Stig Arnesen, Dr Beth Hirschfeld, Tony & Carmen Kadge;
Gold Level
Karen & Des Levin, Rob Hafkensheid & Michelle Noordhuis, Gerrit Muller, Samantha Muller, Giorgio Cocomello, Pip Vaughan, André & Anette Meyer;
Silver Level
Robert & Emma McQuaide, Tom Heppe & Andrea Johnson, Larise Carte, Erika Rautenbach, Elvia Sutherland, Mrs Dale Phillips, Jarryd James, Jack Davies, Christopher Clatworthy, Connect Direct, Johan and Elna Swanepoel, Fritz & Nicky Dittmann, Laura Bruinette, Ian Wood, Neil Wood;
Renewals
Diamond Level
Lionel Wehrli, Runa Wehrli, Leon Steenkamp, Rachel Cirinlione, Thomas Rütti, Alexander and Rebecca Kendziorsky;
Platinum
George and Beverly Hritz, Thomas Rütti, Tamara Wilkes;
Gold
Nicholas Smith, David Michielson;
Silver
Tighe Maxwell-Whiteley.

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Cheetah@dewildt.org.za
We'd love to hear from you!!