If as a youngster you’re already heftier than many adults and you have the biggest, baddest back-up ... then perhaps it’s not surprising you’re full of nonsense.
We saw a hint of this dynamic recently at the Marion Baree Waterhole in the Addo Elephant National Park between Matyholweni and Main Camp where we were watching a small group of elephants drinking.
A warthog covered in white mud appeared and trotted towards the waterhole – and then pulled up smartly when one of the elephant calves spotted it and waved its trunk as if to say, “hey you!”
While the two adult jumbos and the other calf carried on peacefully drinking the bully proceeded for the next half hour to harass and intimidate the hog. Each time it edged closer to the waterhole, the mini-jumbo lumbered into a mini-charge and the warthog had to dart away.
After half an hour, having drunk their fill, the adult elephants moved off in a stately march followed by the bully and its sibling and only then could the warthog take its place at the waterhole. It was immediately joined by half a dozen other hogs which had been waiting in the wings and who then hurried up and kneeled down for a drink.It was a comical episode but part of the more serious underlying issue of water access and availability, as the park’s conservation manager, John Adendorff told me.
The drought had meant that the water level had dropped across the park and even collapsed in some places. What was left was being hogged by the elephants at the expense of other animals, including endangered species.
Sometimes the negative affect was indirect as territorial species were displaced resulting in conflict, pushing up stress levels and reducing resistance to disease, he explained.
To address the problem, Adendorff , 50, and his team have established a water gradient system employing different methods to reduce access to elephants at three “partial exclusion waterholes”. One method involves  bees, the tiny nemesis of elephants, with a perimeter wire set up to trigger a beehive when nudged by an incoming jumbo.
Another works with electrified strands hung around a perimeter wire hung just too low for an adult elephant to move under. If the odd calf got through that was not a problem, the aim was just to prevent the herds getting through on mass, he said. It was an ongoing challenge to make the system work, however, as some of the elephants had learned how to push down the supporting posts .The elephants were not being cruelly denied water because for every partial exclusion waterhole there was an open waterhole less than 5km away, he emphasisedI also got to talk to field ranger Sgt Sandile Gunya, 48, who told me how he grew up on a farm in Patterson and when he saw the Addo rangers undertaking helicopter-assisted game capture he was convinced that this was for him.
After school he got a park job maintaining the famous Armstrong Fence – the structure originally made of tram rails and lift cables designed by early park manager Graham Armstrong to keep the elephants in and away from farmers’s citrus orchards – and from there he worked his way up.
In 2013, Gunya was trampled by a buffalo. Besides spending sometime recovering in hospital he had also had psychological counselling and this had helped immeasurably in enabling him to get back on the job and happy to work with wild and potentially dangerous animals again, he said.
On the last day of our short visit to Addo I got to go up with Adendorff in his Bat Hawk micro-plane which had just received a R180000 upgrade from Stop Rhino Poaching and which he flies every day as part of a multi-pronged anti-poaching programme.
The aim was to be proactive and aware and to establish a continuous presence, he said. We swooped over animals and tourists and then the community of Nomathasanqa on the edge of the park, a key partner in the battle against the poaching scourge.
Turning for home over an expanse of renosterbos he pointed out a den of spotted hyena, the iconic scavenger that was reintroduced to the park in 2014 after being wiped out over a century ago. I glimpsed a hyena cub sitting in a clearing by a burrow looking up at us – wild, vulnerable and totally unique.
Addo campstay where to sleep
Matyholweni Camp where we stayed the first night in the Addo Elephant National Park is a tranquil little island of log cabins in a dense expanse of valley bushveld, a short distance but a world away from the N2 and Colchester. Cheeky Southern boubous joined us on the veranda while we braaied and that night we heard jackals calling.
I had been bracing myself for over-commercialisation and noisiness at Main Camp but it was immaculate, peaceful and efficient and one sensed the hand of Nick de Goede the crack new park manager.
Just spending time in camp was a pleasure. Besides the restaurant and shop there was a lookout point over a waterhole, an underground hide and a bird hide, a wheelchair friendly mini-trail and an interpretive centre filled with fascinating artefacts and information. You can also book here for guided horse trails and game drives.
To book for Matyholweni and Main Camp in the Addo park you can call SANParks head office at 012-428-9111 or 082-233-9111. Or do it through the various SANParks satellite offices including in Port Elizabeth at dlouw@nmbt.co.za or bookings@nmbt.co.za
Roaring thunder as buffalo and lions face off at AddoLiving in the Bay in close proximity to the Addo Elephant National Park is a privilege many nature lovers treasure.For some a trip to the world-class park is only on the cards when they have visitors with whom to share it; others try to get there as often as humanly possible.
Freelance IT contractor and photography enthusiast Pete Leyland falls in the latter category – and his most recent visit a few weeks ago paid off handsomely when he and his party were treated to a memorable interaction between the park’s lions and buffalo. The thing about Addo is that you never know what you might see, Leyland says. “We’ve been fortunate to have some other magnificent sightings, too, in Addo – from aardwolf to aardvark and even brown hyena.”
Leyland’s lion-buffalo pictures elicited many responses on the popular website Africa Wild, of which he has been a member for about four years. “My parents were with us as they were visiting from the UK; we’d spent a few nights at the Nyathi section the previous week but this was just an afternoon visit to the park,” he said.
“We came across the lions in the middle of the day as they were feeding on an earlier hartebeest kill. There were three adult females and three sub-adult males. “Most of the lions were full and sleepy, and so we drove around other sections of the park before returning in the evening to see whether there might be a bit more activity.”
The lions were still very relaxed at this point but, as Leyland and his family sat watching, a herd of buffalo was steadily moving towards the lions who were downwind of them. “The buffalo had been grazing in the distance on Mbotyi loop, and as the afternoon wore on, they had slowly been meandering in our direction,” he said. “They were now only a few hundred metres away on the other side of the road from the lions – blissfully unaware of the cats due to the wind direction!
“The herd continued to get closer and closer until they crossed the road in front of our car – still unaware of the lions about 30m away. “The lions, by now, had dropped into hunting positions and eventually startled the buffalo into a stampede back towards the road. They thundered across just in front of us until some of the bigger bulls turned to face the lions. “Very quickly the tables were turned and the buffalo were chasing the lions. “This continued back and forth a few times until there was something of an uneasy stalemate and the lions settled back down at their hartebeest kill.” Much as they would have loved to stay longer and see what happened in the night, the Leylands had to leave due to Addo’s gate closing times.“Having the chase taking place so close to us was amazing,” he said. “The stampeding buffalo were thunderous next to our car.“We later heard that the lions didn’t manage to take one of the buffalo overnight as they were seen early the next morning a few kilometres away with another fresh hartebeest kill.”
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