Uganda's Kasubi Tombs

Linkhttp://www.creativenonfictioncollective.com/index2.php/
The widely reported story about the destruction by fire of one of Uganda’s UNESCO Heritage sites in Kampala lacked one thing. This was any photos of the remarkable structures at the Kasubi tombs before the fire. One such report came on the BBC web site here and showed the fire itself and a crowd scene. For those who know the place, the fiery skeleton of the main building seen in the BBC report is easy to discern. Here are a few pictures taken during one of many visits that my veterinary students and I made in the years that we went to Africa to study the wildlife x human x livestock interface and took time out for some cultural enlightenment.

During the visits we walked up a long path, which gave one a great view of the huge thatched building, about 40 metres wide.

Under the awning, with its intricate woven thatch, one sat in front of the pictures of the last four kings, with spears and other memorabilia on show, and listened to the guides tell us about the history of the people and the site.
The tombs, built in the 19th century, are where the last four kings of Buganda were buried. Buganda, founded in about 1500 AD is the largest of the four kingdoms of what is now Uganda and once controlled a big swatch of land from Lake Victoria to the Kagera River that begins its journey to the lake in Rwanda. Kampala lies right in the middle of the Buganda region. Indeed, the tomb site and the king’s palace are in the heart of the city.

The kingdoms were abolished in 1966 and it was only when President Museveni allowed their reinstatement as cultural institutions with no political power in 1993 that they came to the fore again. King Ronald Mutebi is the current king. His role is largely ceremonial but it would seem as if he, or his advisers, have been flexing their muscles and there have been some confrontations with Museveni’s government. Last year there were riots after the government blocked Ronald from visiting part of his kingdom.

The latest riots occurred after protesters prevented Museveni, who is an Ankole from Western Uganda, from visiting the tombs where the fire was destroying the above-ground structures, which were made entirely from vegetable materials and would have made a natural fuel for a rapid burn. Sad.

Wildlife Disease Association, book marketing, The Trouble With Lions, Polar bear, bison

Writing from the forecourt of the Coles bookstore in the Edmonton City Centre Mall, where I am surrounded by copies of The Trouble With Lions and the big 2’ x 3’ poster that the U of Alberta Press made up for me. I’ve never tried this sort of selling before, but I’ve discovered that selling books can only really be done by the author getting out there.

This has been best exemplified over the last 3 days in Edmonton. I have been here attending the annual meeting of the Wildlife Disease Association, with its great website (here) the world’s premier group of like-minded scientists who concern themselves with wildlife in general and the diseases that affect them in particular.

The major themes of this year’s conference have been the overarching concern with global warming, and the more specific field of northern wildlife. Neither was any surprise, first because global warming is having a huge impact as animals move ever more northwards as the climate gets warmer and the habitat changes, allowing species to push at the edges. When I say species, most of us will think of things like white-tailed deer or moose, but as students of disease systems we have to remember that microscopic worms that can kill their hosts can also move into warmer climes because they can overwinter when conditions allow it.

The “poster child” species that has grabbed the attention of the media is the polar bear, and there is no doubt that they are charismatic, dangerous and already in trouble as the polar regions are warming faster than any other on earth. Over a period of about 12 years, starting in the early 1980’s I made several trips to the north, sometimes twice a year, to work on polar bears and wood bison. One publication from those days is about the development of a new drug for polar bear capture. You can find an abstract here but I'll have to put the pictures in when I get home. Home and now able to get at pics. Here's a favourite polar bear picture.

I'll also have to add pictures of our bison work, but a couple of abstracts of the original work are here, the first about the capture, the second about reproductive studies (pregnancy diagnosis). And here are some bison pictures.


With both species I was of course working with teams of biologists who were studying a range of issues centred on the ecology of the animals.

Who knows, one of these days I will put together a book about those trips, but right now it lies in 2nd place on the mental Rolodex of work as I have begun the research on my next big project, which I am calling, for now at least, The Virus and the Vaccine: How Cattle Plague Changed World History.

Wildlife blogs, wildlife poisoning, wildlife pictures

Been thinking about blogs, wildlife poisons and attempts to forestall or even reverse some of the trends that seem to be going on.

A major blog collector lies at a site called Saving Endangered Animals. Within the main home page are a large number of blog images, each one a mini-portrait of someone or something of relevance to the subject.

There are Quick Links and blogs galore – too many for me to count. Some that are relevant to my own books The Trouble With Lions and Wrestling With Rhinos are of course about those species, but also about the bigger problem of wildlife poisoning.

Two lion specific ones that tell how things have changed in Kenyan Maasailand, and give a glimmer of hope for the bigger picture in Africa are from the Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project - and its close relative the Lion Guardians.

The Furadan issue -a subject to which I have referred in previous blogs (see May 5th) comes up in several places. Furadan is the trade name of a carbamate poison developed as a crop insecticide, but happens to kill mammals and birds with seeming impunity - is a given plenty of coverage in a blog called Stop Wildlife Poisoning.
The authors are seeking as much information and input about poisoning incidents as they can possibly get. If I have a quibble with their opening statement of May 15th it is that they seem to restrict their search to Kenya. From my own experience, related in the opening sentence of The Trouble With Lions and in other stories in the text, I know that the stuff has been used in Uganda, and it would not surprise me at all if reports of its use turn up elsewhere.

Another general blog, which also refers to an upcoming article on poisoning with Furadan, is the East African Wildlife Society’s blog; neatly named The Water Hole. For those who don’t know it, the EAWLS publishes an enjoyable magazine called Swara (Kiswahili for antelope). It carries a wide variety of articles on wildlife subjects and does not shy away from appropriate commentary on controversies or comment on the behaviour of politicians when they ignore or actively try to damage wildlife initiatives.

From the Wildlife Conservation Society comes their “State of the Wild 2008-2009” announcement, which you can find here. This is a notice about their latest book on the subject. It consists of a series of important essays by well-known scientists and, right at the start of the web site, a marvelous series of photos of rare and critically endangered animals. All you have to do is click on the first image, a Sumatran rhinoceros, and up they come. If you think African rhinos look primitive, wait until you see this one.

Another taste of what if in store for me, when my copy arrives, and for those who care to get the book for themselves, lies in the advance praise written by natural history writer Carl Safina. He states

"This book delivers much more than the 'state of the wild.' It identifies the trends, trajectories, and principles that must organize our thinking. Think of it as an information handbook for the coming rumble over life on Earth. It's much less about what is—and much more about what's coming at us".

I have ordered a second copy for the library at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and will ask for it to be put on reserve so that students who are to join me in Uganda in February next year will have some reading material.

A final fascinating titbit that came up on the BBC website this morning was also about rhinos, but not in Africa. Take a look at this film clip captured on an automatic infrared camera that is aptly titled Rarest rhinoceros wrecks camera. Six "R" sounds in four words. The headline writer must have enjoyed the alliteration in that one – virtually a no-brainer!

Response to comments about kob numbers

Thanks for your comments on my posting of May 19th Jeff. You are right about the kob migrations in the Sudan. I did mention this amazing sighting on pages 417 and 418 of The Trouble With Lions when I was searching for more hopeful signs about some of the disastrous effects that humans have had on wildlife populations.

The report came in from the Wildlife Conservation Society through their web site and was also featured by The National Geographic in a Internet report filed by Nick Wadhams titled Massive Animal Herds Flourishing Despite Sudan War, Survey Reveals at this web site

Michael Fay, a WCS biologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence is quoted as follows in the National Geographic piece "Seeing thousands upon thousands upon thousands of white-eared kob streaming under the aircraft, day after day, was like I had died and was having the most unbelievable dream you could ever have."

Apart from my natural interest in the story, simply because it brings some measure of hope, one the folks involved in the finding was of particular interest. This was Paul Elkan, with whom I worked in Cameroon in 1996 when I helped out an overstretched Dr. Billy Karesh with his veterinary work on forest elephants, a one-month program described in The Trouble With Lions. Billy is the director of the WCS field veterinary program, and has written an entertaining book called Appointments at the End of The World: Memoirs of a Wildlife Veterinarian. For those who don’t know it, and are interested in conservation and the role of vets, this is one to add to your bookshelf. It was Paul, who is the WCS program director in Southern Sudan, who took the photo shown the article.

Anyway, back to the kob. There are three subspecies. The type species, the Western Kob is from northern savannah zones of West Africa are Kobus kob kob. The ones we have been working with in Uganda are K. k. thomasi. The lower picture shows two Canadian students together with Dr. Innocent Rwego of Uganda and Dr. Jacques Iyanya of the DRC working on an immobilized kob during our research studies. The kob in the Sudan are the white-eared kob, K. k. leucotis. It is numbers of the two former ones that have declined so sharply, but it is worth noting that Jonathan Kingdon remarks that population numbers of the species can fluctuate considerably. In his Field Guide to African Mammals, which contains a small spattering of his fantastic art work from the massive 7 volume major work to which I referred in my original blog Kingdon gives some more hopeful insights. His map on page 405 does show both the former and current ranges and he states “Despite having been eliminated from many areas (notably from all the shores of L. Victoria), kobs readily recover from near extermination.”

Uganda 2009, elephant kills

Preparations for next year’s trip to Uganda with students from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine are going ahead more or less as usual. The students have taken on the responsibility for much of the detailed organization, and in particular have already purchased their tickets. They will leave Saskatoon on the morning of Saturday the 31st of January and arrive, no doubt exhausted, but probably also exhiliarated, in Entebbe late on the Sunday evening. They have begun the process of getting al the vaccinations they will need, and are no doubt making sure that the clothing and supplies list that they have been given is more or less ready. However, they do have a full summer of work to complete al lover the country, so I do not expect to hear much from them over the next 4 months. When they get back to Saskatoon in September it will be time to really get going.

Meanwhile there is another group of students from the WCVM already in Africa. This year seven students who have just finished their second year courses have made Uganda and Tanzania their destination. The run under the “flag” of Global Vets which is an entirely student-run organization that has seen small groups go to a wide variety of places, including Peru, India and now Africa. You can follow their progress through their blog, accessible here, but just like the blogs that we develop in Uganda in February, they are likely to be intermittent. This is because Internet access is variable, and very much subject to the vagaries of electrical supply. The demand f or power all over the continent far outstrips the ability of the local suppliers to meet it. This leads to one of two scenarios. Either one is subject to sudden power cuts, which can be sudden and unexpected, or more or less predictable, when so-called “load-sharing” takes place. The other possibility, which is in some ways more annoying, is the phenomenon known as a brown-out. In this situation the power is reduced, and the bulbs just burn, but without much conviction. While this may not seem to be much of a problem, it is in fact the worst possible insult to one’s laptop or other electronic device. It is best to run any such equipment through a charge protector.

Recent reports from the Wildlife Disease News Digest, which is provided by the Wildlife Disease Information Node (WDIN), accessible here, have covered the slaughter of elephants in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The reports have suggested that the slaughters were largely related to the acquisition of ivory, and linked to the recent reports of the return of sanctioned elephant culls in South Africa. The elephant culls are highly controversial, with distinctly polarized opinions on both sides. The slaughter in the DRC is likely to have another element that has gone somewhat unnoticed. This is the bushmeat issue. Freshly dead elephants provide a mountain of meat. In 1975 in Rwanda, when I was involved in the capture of young elephants and their translocation to the Akagera National Park we were faced with an impossible problem. The elephants had taken to killing people and destroying crops. Fields of maize or beans would vanish in a single night. These are not crops as Westerners would think of them, but small fields that held a family’s entire food supply for a year. At the time the techniques develop by Clem Coetzee and others in Zimbabwe and South Africa had not been developed, and family groups were not captured and moved. The captured juveniles were the remnant of groups that had been shot. Within a day or two of the shootings entire carcasses were stripped of everything edible by local villagers. They had no readily available sources of protein. Their beans (if they had not been trampled), and sometimes fish from the lakes, were it. Meat was a luxury. For a fuller account of these events you can go to one of two sources. There is the dry scientific article that I wrote with my co-workers (Haigh, J.C., Parker, I.S.C., Parkinson, D.D. and Archer, A.L., 1979. An Elephant Extermination. Environmental Conservation, 6(4), 305 310) or the more personal material that appears in chapters 29 and 30 of my book Wrestling With Rhinos: The Adventures of a Glasgow Vet in Kenya. Here are a couple of pictures to give some idea of the scale of the project.

There is an extra layer. Take a look at the lower picture and note that there is one adult cow whose trunk is virtually severed. She had been caught in a snare, and her trunk has become a useless lump of grey sausage. When we fist saw her it was hanging down to the ground. As she ran with the herd to get away from the helicopter she was in real danger of stepping on it as it dragged along between her legs. The snares had been set by hungry villagers to try and catch whatever they could – they were engaged in bushmeat hunting. The elephants had had the misfortune to find the snares and, full of curiosity, pick them up and play with them. Over a quarter of the elephants we dealt with had damaged trunks.

Of course snares are indiscriminate, and do not always kill, but their use is widespread, and as ancient as hunting itself. In my latest book The Trouble With Lions: A Glasgow Vet in Africa I have discussed this fact in several places. The most dramatic example was witnessed by Dr. Patrick Garcia, who had been with me in Uganda in 2005. A few months later, on a working trip to Tanzania, he witnessed the dying moments of a lion that had a snare around its belly. This is one of his photos from the book.

Poisoned lions

The opening sentence of The Trouble With Lions reads “In 2005, Canadian veterinary students traveling with me in Uganda were horrified to learn that villagers in Queen Elizabeth National Park had poisoned two lions”. There are several references to the poisoning of lions, and other animals, throughout the text, and no one should be under any illusions that this sort of activity is going to stop any time soon. Recent reports from Kenya’s Maasai Mara are of grave concern to both the herders (the landowners) whose livestock use the area, and to conservationists, tour operators and of course tourists. Since the self-destructive events of the elections in late 2007, and the mayhem that followed for months, tourists have stayed away in droves. This has led to a virtual collapse of the tourist sector, and naturally to a massive decline in revenues. The lack of income has in turn created an impossible situation for those funding agencies that were trying to help by paying cash sums to herders whose cattle and goats or sheep were killed by lions and leopards. Without tourist dollars they have no source of funds.

It is not just the large predators that have suffered. I found this story in a blog managed by Wildlife Disease Digest which I check regularly here. This one was dated 30th April. and tells briefly how two lions died in Kenya's famed Masai Mara. The full story appeared in Britain’s Daily Telegraph and tells how a hippo that had died after consuming the insecticide carbofuran was in turn eaten by lions. Even with the poison diluted to that extent four lions developed marked signs of intoxication, which with this compound involve nervous signs. Two of the lions died. A telling photo taken in the Mara shows a lion whose legs are not working properly, and more details of the story can be found on the Telegraph site of 29th April here.

It is not just lions that are taking a hit. Birds are highly susceptible to even the tiniest doses of carbofuran, sold as Furadan in East Africa, and there have been a number of incidents of secondary poisoning of vultures. The largest known incident occurred in April 2004 near the town of Athi River, just 30 kilometres outside Nairobi, when 187 vultures, mostly white-backed vultures, died. Many hyaenas also died.

Vultures and hyaenas have also died in the same way in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National park, and these included an entire clan of twelve animals near the village of Kasenyi, on the shores of Lake George.This was in sharp contrast to the scene in 2007 when we watched over 100 of the birds, as well as several eagles, and a magnificent saddle-billed stork, foraging over ground where they had found a large number of grasshoppers.

The Wildlife Disease Digest blog has many other stories about wildlife and their diseases from around the world. It is one to keep any eye on.

When we launched The Trouble With Lions at the Literary Cocktails in Edmonton we had planned for it to take place on the same day the Jane Goodall was there to deliver one of her inspirational Roots and Shoots talks, and so we hoped that she and I would be able to meet again, so that I could thank her for writing the foreword, and of course give her a copy of the book. Sadly, fate intervened and it became utterly impossible, largely due to the bizarre machinations of the two airlines that fly out of Edmonton. I had to get home early the next day to present the semi-private launch at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, which had been planned months in advance. Neither airline could get me back home before 11.00 a.m. and even then I would have had to change planes in Calgary and cover two large sides of a triangle to get home.

The upshot was that I missed Jane’s talk, which, by all accounts, was as captivating as ever. That meant that although I had been able to sign of copy of the book for Jane, I did not organize myself well enough to get her to sign one for me! Duh! You might say. However, Peter Midgley and Jeff Carpenter of the University of Alberta Press had the presence of mind to get copies signed by her, so at least someone has copies with both names in them. It looks as if I shall have to send one to someone in her office and ask them to find her on her world-wide travels and sign it for me.

Meanwhile Linda Cameron, head of UAP has been in London and tells me that there has been interest in Australia, as well as the UK and USA. I have just sent off copies to Uganda, so let’s see what sort of reaction we get.

The Trouble With Lions in Uganda

On to the next phase. We have started to prepare for next year’s trip to Uganda. I have been taking students there for several years now as a part of the 4th year curriculum at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine. Our principal objective is to study the human x livestock x wildlife interface.

There are two archival blogs written by students that give a bit of the flavour of the work, as well as the good times & impressions that everyone garners. If you entered this blog through my web page you will find both of those entertainingn> accounts very easily under the blogs button. If you found me some other way you can go to the web page which is at and not only find the student’s impressions, but also see footage of rhino capture taken with a Super8 camera almost 40 years ago, or see a revolving series of pictures of battle of the giants where two bull hippo create mini tidal waves. You can also hear the first part of a radio interview that aired on the morning of the launch of The Trouble With Lions: A Glasgow Vet in Africa.

The ten students who will join Jo and me have already chosen their jobs and Leanne has been preparing minutes and agendas. The dates have been selected, with the crew leaving on Jan 31st from Saskatoon, arriving at Entebbe late at night on the 1st Feb. They are due leave Uganda on the 27th Feb, and several of them plan to stop over in Amsterdam on the way home.

I have sent each student a list of the things that will be needed as their “essentials” bits and pieces for travel to tropical Africa for a month.

Meanwhile The Trouble With Lions is available on line, and through several bookstores. Together with Cathie Crooks of the University of Alberta Press we are planning some readings in Manitoba as well Minnesota and South Dakota. No reviews yet, but kind words form those who picked up copies at the launch.

On to the next phase. We have started to prepare for next year’s trip to Uganda. I have been taking students there for several years now as a part of the 4th year curriculum at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine. Our principal objective is to study the human x livestock x wildlife interface.

There are two archival blogs written by students that give a bit of the flavour of the work, as well as the good times & impressions that everyone garners. If you entered this blog through my web page you will find both blogs easily under the blogs button. If you found me some other way you can go to the web page which is at and not only find the student’s impressions, but also see footage of rhino capture taken with a Super8 camera almost 40 years ago, or see a revolving series of pictures of battle of the giants where two bull hippo create mini tidal waves. You can also hear the first part of a radio interview that aired on the morning of the launch of The Trouble With Lions: A Glasgow Vet in Africa.

The ten students who will join Jo and me have already chosen their jobs and Leanne has been preparing minutes and agendas. The dates have been selected, with the crew leaving on Jan 31st from Saskatoon, arriving at Entebbe late at night on the 1st Feb. They are due to leave Uganda on the 27th Feb, and several of them plan to stop over in Amsterdam on the way home.

I have sent each student a list of the things that will be needed – take a look and see if you can spot anything that would be on your “essentials” list for travel to tropical Africa for a month.

Meanwhile The Trouble With Lions is available on line, and through several bookstores. Together with Cathie Crooks of the University of Alberta Press we are planning some readings in Manitoba as well Minnesota and South Dakota. No reviews yet, but kind words form those who picked up copies at the launch

The launch in Saskatoon

Refinery Launch of The Trouble With Lions

What a turnout! Thanks so much for everyone who came along, we had about ninety folks take a big slice out of their evenings and come to join Jo and me at Saskatoon’s Refinery for the public launch. The intimate space of the basement gave everyone a chance to mix and mingle and lots of folks purchased copies of the book. My hand got a bit tired signing and also making sure that every single copy had the typo on page 237 corrected. More of this below.

After a glass of what-you-fancy we headed upstairs to the theatre where Cynthia and Jim had laid out the chairs on three sides of the room and set up a couple of tables for my toys – a computer and projector, as well as the sound system for Brother Kurt, who would play some music in the “intermission”.

Jim McCrory, well known broadcaster in the Saskatchewan scene led the event of with an intro, and then I told a few stories about some of the work in the early days, when I was translocating rhino. I ran an old two minute movie clip, shot on Super 8, of the actual techniques of rhino capture and with the technical revolution this has been digitized for use on PowerPoint. I also related the account of how a San man (used to be called Bushman, but that is no longer appropriate) captured ostriches with a small snare and a piece of ostrich shell. Ostriches are fatally attracted to anything white, so Anton, which was the man’s Westernized name, gave us a dramatic demo of how a bird will dip its head into the trap and end up with the snare around its neck. As the snare, made of very strong natural fibre, is tied to a stout tree the ostrich is doomed and the man and his family have a nice pile of meat. Of course this is just one example of how humans have acquired their meat from wild animals since time immemorial. This leads into a discussion of the wider subject of what is now dubbed “Bushmeat”, an emotional subject that has become a high-profile issue in many forums.

From there we listened to Kurt, who is a member of my writers group, as he played a couple of well-known tunes for us – Wimoweh, and She’s Got Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Feet.

After that break I headed into the newer territory of our work in Uganda, and this occupies the last six chapters of the book, covering conservation, human tragedies, teaching, humour and the very complicated human x livestock x wildlife interface. One of the humorous events occurred when a female member of the party, standing in what passed for a shower, sluicing herself off with water from a cup repeatedly dipped into a plastic bowl, became convinced that a Peeping Tom was giving her the once over. It was a local member of a wildlife troop.

And the typo? The caption of the photo of the hyaena on page 237 has one crucial word missing. Here is the photo, and anyone not in the know would at once recognize it as being of the groin region of a male. It is not. The caption reads “External genitalia of a juvenile spotted hyaena.” One crucial word is missing. Between juvenile and spotted should come the word “female”. For a fuller explanation you can take a look at the text, or for the real detail buffs go to the actual science references in the bibliography. The ultra short version is that early in the life of the fetus the chemical events that lead to either testosterone or oestrogen being the major sex hormone are not the same in hyaenas as they are in other mammals.

It seems as if no book is ever published without a typo or two. Peter Midgley, the managing editor on this project, himself a published author, told me that Persian rug makers would always insert a deliberate error so that their work would not rival the perfection of Allah.

Launch minus 20 hours

The pressure is on. Last minute details to attend to, as the public launch of The Trouble With Lions in Saskatoon is less than 24 hours away. Food has been ordered for the post-storytelling social. Last week I went to the liquor store and picked out a couple of decent wines, an Australian Shiraz / Cabernet, and a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Of course they will sell at the cash bar before the event for a bit more than the “Chateau Box” that is normally available at such dos, but thems the breaks. I intend to try the red, but not until after the formal part of the evening.


It will not be a reading in the normal sense of the word. The plan is as follows. There will be about a half hour for folks to grab a drink and do some visiting. Jim McCrory, long-time friend and well-known radio and TV host will be the MC. Then will come the book event. This will consist of about 15 minutes of stories, accompanied by pictures. Storytellers in the Middle Ages used to use the double technique that was called Cantastoria. The equivalent in Japan is called Komishibai. This will be a 21st century update of those honourable traditions – using PowerPoint (who’d have guessed?)

We also have an unusual ”Intermission” lined up. Brother Kurt Van Kuren is a Benedictine monk at St. Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, Saskatchewan. He was once a professional rock musician in LA, but now he is the chief cantor at the abbey. He also happens to be a member of the writers group that I was lucky enough to join almost two years ago. They have been vital to the evolution of this book.

I did have one run at a “reading” when the students of the Western Canadian Veterinary Association let me have their noon-hour time slot at the WCVM in Saskatoon last Friday. This was a more-or-less private gathering, and also my very last formal session at the institution where I have worked for the last thirty-two and a half years.

As soon as I had finished the reading I was off to Banff where I met with like-minded authors from the world of creative non-fiction at the annual cn-fc convention. Some big-name authors were there, and for the fist time a small group of students who had been sponsored by the association joined us. It as great to have them along, as the majority of the regular members have grey hair, and the young always keep one on one’s toes. The Banff Centre is just a magical place to gather for any kind of artistic event. The food is amazing too – not to mention the scenery.

Saturday 29th March

The students who came to Uganda in February did their presentation yesterday at noon. There was a great turn-out and lots of interest, not least from students in first, second, and third years of the DVM course who might be considering going on such a rotation in future years. Most of the students who had been to Africa could not make it to the talk, as they we heavily engaged in other segments of their final year work. Danica was monitoring a cat as it recovered from anaesthesia, Rebecca was scrubbed in to a lengthy surgery on a dog, and Nathan was off somewhere on a large dude ranch helping to castrate a bunch of horses.

It was obvious from the stories that Tyler and Sonja chose to relate, that the rotation had been a huge success and had made a profound impression on all of those who came with Jo and me. Without question the most emotional stories were about the children in the two primary schools that we visit each year in Queen Elizabeth National Park. We have supported them for six year now & the progress is palpable. I have almost a full chapter devoted to them in The Trouble With Lions (launch date now only 14 days away!)

It was also obvious that a major highlight had been the day we captured a male lion and replaced his collar, which had grown so weak that it was only transmitting a signal about 300 metres.

Tessa, our professional photographer had taken over 6000 pictures during the trip and has whittled these down to something under 1000, with hopes to cull even further. She thinks that she will eventually be able to get them all on to two DVDs. Then she has the challenge of getting her movie footage edited. That will take time.

Meanwhile you can see how the students reacted on their own blog site at http://blogs.usask.ca/awe/

One set of Tessa’s pictures, taken for the fun of it, showed most of the female students, who were dressed in coveralls, holding up a dart gun as if it were the ultimate “Great White Hunter” weapon and they had just shot one of The Big Five. Tyler, who was speaking at the time, acknowledged that each year I offer a “Birds of Africa” calendar as a means of raising funds for the two schools and suggested that I might like to alter the content of the calendar and offered these pictures instead. I could only think of one thing to say, and so responded “These birds have far too much clothing on to be of any use in a calendar.”

Next, we meet with the 2009 crew on Monday to begin the preparations for next February’s trip. Busy times.

Lion health check

My examination of the lioness that night followed a practiced procedure conducted by the men I was with. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to be as up-close-and-personal with her as I was without the aid of some bait, some drug-filled darts and the support of a team.

Read more!

When the lions arrived, Lue darted both animals from the safety of his Land Cruiser. Soon, the lions were lying on their sides, bathed in a pool of light coming from the vehicle parked no more than ten metres away. Ten metres farther on the light faded rapidly and beyond that lay who-knows-what in the pitch dark of the African night, a sliver of the old moon just appearing over the horizon, not enough to make any difference.
My burly, bearded colleague Mike Briggs approach the animals with commendable caution, prodded them with a pole he kept in the vehicle and pinched the upper ear of each in turn. Their lack of reaction was reassuring and meant that we could all get out and start work. I followed Kallie from my somewhat uncomfortable seat astride the gear shift, stethoscope in hand, and checked the vital signs of the lioness, Heart rate, sixty beats a minute, six breaths in thirty seconds. All was well.

Rhino capture in the early days

For many years black rhino were captured from vehicles using ropes. I became involved in rhino translocation in 1969 as the techniques changed to drug immobilization. Here a partially drugged rhino is pulled down before he can run into a deep gully and injure himself.