The Phinda Private Game Reserve is located next to the St Lucia Wetland Park in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. At Phinda, 29,866 hectares of farming land was reclaimed for wildlife, including 790 hectares of critically endangered ancient sand forest. Cheetah, rhino and pangolin are actively protected. Along with Africa Foundation, the reserve works closely with neighbouring communities, employing locally and investing in community education and welfare.
We stayed at Mountain Lodge 12-15 November 2023.
A female cheetah and her almost grown cub put on a display for us. It is amazing to be in an open top jeep just a few metres from these magnificent cats. Lions are their biggest threat. If a ranger sees a lion stalking a cheetah they are allowed to intervene.
Dung beetles are fascinating creatures. Large animals such as elephant and white rhino produce large dung piles. These soon attract large numbers of dung beetles. They roll it into balls. They mate on the dung balls and their eggs are laid in the balls. They then bury the balls. The young have a ready supply of food.
Dung beetles are very ecologically important. As they mix the poo nutrients with the soil and by removing exposed poo limit flies. They are being introduced into cattle farms in Australia and South America to remove cow poo.
Dung Beetles roll poo balls with their back legs. The ball can be much larger than the beetle.
Elephant numbers have to be controlled as they can be quite destructive. The critically endangered ancient sand forest area is protected by electric fences to keep the elephants out.
The lion population of Phinda is carefully controlled. There are currently two adult males who are brothers. The males are periodically exchanged with other reserves to improve the gene pool. Male lion cubs are usually sent to other reserves before they mature. When a male lion becomes dominant, he will kill any cubs of any other male, so new males can only be introduced once cubs are sufficiently mature.
Black rhinoceros have pointed snouts. They are browsers that feed on leaves.
White rhinoceros have square jaws. The are grazers that feed on grass.
For some strange reason rhino horn is highly valued as a traditional medicine in Asia, even though it is just keratin with no medicinal value. A kilo of rhino horn is worth more than a kilo of gold! For this reason poachers kill rhinos for their horns. At Phinda, the there is a team that sedates rhinos and removes their horns to make them worthless to poachers. They also clip their ears in a pattern so that individual animals can be identified at a distance.
