UPDATE: Roaming elephants fenced in after accident
Urgent and very costly measures were implemented on Monday morning to prevent elephants from gaining access to the Mica/Gravelotte main road.
This follows a very serious accident in the early hours of Saturday morning when Tim Maake, former Municipal Manager of the Greater Mopani District Municipality, crashed into one of seven elephants roaming on the main Mica/Gravelotte road.
Fortunately, Maake was not injured but his BMW X5 was severely damaged and written off.
Miraculously the elephant seems to be fine and roaming around with the other members of its herd.
The elephant was part of a herd of seven animals which was since guided back to the area they escaped from next to the Olifants River.
The accident was expected and predicted.
The Herald group has reported recently of free ranging elephants roaming the main roads in search of food.
The severe drought and pressure due to the number of elephants, in the Kruger National Park and other reserves, led to elephants searching for alternative habitat and food sources.
“This is just a typical drought scenario, they are hungry, but we also have waterbuck, nyala, hippo, buffalo, rhino and other animals running out of the park searching for food,” according to Craig Spencer, Head Warden of Balalule Nature Reserve. Spencer, said that they realised that the situation was critical.
On Monday morning a task team and helicopter managed to herd the elephants back to the safety of the reserve. They went to inspect the fences to make sure that once back behind the fence, the elephants would not be able to come out.
“There was never a boundary fence where the animals were escaping as the park is separated from private farms by the Olifants river which cannot be fenced,’ Spencer told the Herald.
They have now erected fences behind the private farms to close this gap. He said that the parks boundaries are porous because of the landscape and that it is difficult to fence rivers.
“The fences are costing a fortune to repair and the costs of a helicopter with an experienced wildlife pilot, does not come cheap either. There were whole sections of the fence that needed redoing from scratch. We are very grateful to Wayne Wagner, a private landowner bordering the reserves, who has agreed to help us with some of the costs of the fence repairs. He has also kindly agreed that his land which borders the river and provides easy access to elephants should be incorporated into the Private Nature Reserves. We need more property owners like this, those who agree to range expansion for elephants and who are willing to contribute towards making these plans happen,’ Spencer said.
Spencer told the Herald that no elephants were harmed during the rescue operation and that their range was increased by 1500ha.
“All are back safely inside the boundaries of the Greater Kruger. The new extension to the ranch is a private farm, that has accepted the elephant’s use of his land as a corridor and has been fenced into the Balule Nature Reserve. All elephants returned to Balule as it was the closest and they have a very professional management team to manage the relocations, human wildlife conflict and financial responsibilities,’ Spencer said.
A big thank you goes out to Elephants Alive and Transfrontier Africa that came to the rescue to resolve the problem.
Also read:
BREAKING NEWS: Car hits elephant on main road
Rogue elephant roam main road…again
HOEDSPRUIT: Chaos as elephant strolls on main road
