OPERATION NOAH

Operation Noah started in 1958 in which 6,000 animals were rescued. The first three men staring the rescue work were Rupert Fothergill, Frank Junor and Danie Bredenkamp. After the wall was plugged, nature began to struggle to come to grips with the new phenomenon, the waters of the Zambezie began to back up the small river beds so reversing its course. On that 1st day the river climbed six feet up the wall in 9 hours.

Other members of the team to join were Barry Ball, Len Harvey, Tommy Orford, "Tinkie" Haslam, Peter Joans, Stuart Claarson, Mike van Rooyen, Boyd Reese, Bert Milne and Peter Moore.

Launching of the Ark

Camp scene at one of the islands. Rupert Fothergill, Peter Jones and Tinkie Haslam

Some of the small green boats. The Buffalo, Warthog and Tess.

Mike van Rooyen looking for an island.

Rupert and Len Harvey releasing the Waterbuck from the net.

Rupert and Stuart Claarsen capturing a porcupine.

Frank Junor was the main person capturing the reptile family. Birds were also rescued from nests which were slowly being flooded by the rising waters.

Rupert Fothergill

A porcupine being saved from the water.

John Williamson a Vet

A little help to overcome the stress.

Frank Junor was gored by a buffalo on Sunday 8th March 1959 while trying to dart the animal.

A duiker was the first mammal to be caught and transported to safety. All animals were weighed and measurements taken. John Williamson from the Department of Veterinary Services was one of the first helping.

In four and a half years of Operation Noah 10 elephants were destroyed on islands so other game could be resuced. 23 elephants were guided from islands or were found swimming and guided to main land. Boyd Reese

Tommy Orford

Rupert Fothergill retired from the department in July 1972 and died 26th May 1975 at the age of 62.

What alot of great mean doing a great job.

Photos courtesy of my Mom, Kate Reese.

THE GATHERING FOR CHOOSING THE KING OF THE ANIMALS AND BIRDS

A very long time ago the animals wanted a king. They cast lots, and the lot fell on the elephant because of his size. The birds chose the ostrich on account of its size.

It is said that there was only one lake at which all the animals and birds drank. The elephant, the king of the animals, went down and drank first along and he made the water muddy; also he prevented the king of the birds the ostrich from drinking. All the birds complained bitterly because their king drank afterwards and because he drank muddy water. There arose a great war between the animals and the birds. When the fighting began the animals prevailed over the birds. The bat ran away; he was on who sat on the fence.

And so, after some days, the eagle asked that he might be the king of the birds and lead them all into the fight. The eagle was very brave, and the army of birds stood steadfast. The animals were beaten when the army of birds was led by the eagle. The bat asked to join up with the birds, but the birds drove him away because he did not help them when they were fighting. The bat then went and asked to join up with the animals, but they drove him away too. From that hour the bat resembled a rat with wings like a bird. He became ashamed to go about in the day-time. He went out when it was dark.
This story tells us that we ought not to be sitters on the fence.

A MATABELE FOLK-LORE

THE STORY OF THE ROCK-RABBIT

It is said that in the older time the Creator distributed tails to all the animals. He set aside certain days for handing them out. First of all he sent messengers into all parts who cried out, “Come all of you to the Creator and get your tails.” All the animals went one by one, but the rock-rabbit was lazy and did not go. He asked the other animals to bring him his tail, and he did this again and again as the animals passed him on their way to get their tails. At last the tails were all quite finished, and the animals thanked the Creator. Then the rock-rabbit saw that all the other animals were complete with tails, and he was jealous because he felt he had nothing on. So he, too, went to the Creator and asked for a tail, but the Creator told him that there was none left. From that day to this the rock-rabbit has had no tail, simply because he was lazy and asked other to do his job for him. He took to living in caves because he felt he was not properly dressed, and when the other animals hold a festive gathering he does not go because he has no apron to clothe himself with.

The moral of this tale is to do things for yourself, and a proverb has come into being which says,
“The rock-rabbit lacks a tail through asked favours of other people.”

LION ENCOUNTER

Whilst I was working at Nemba Safaris, the owner’s daughter and I were sent from camp back to the farm to stock up on supplies. We were designated an old land rover bakkie that had no doors and no roof, which did not worry either of us having done this route on numerous occasions without incident. We even decided to put the wind screen down whilst driving through the park, as we would not be going at any great speed.
We set off from camp after breakfast and being two girls let free from clients, we were in high spirits with the wind whipping through our hair and not a care in the world. We immediately started jabbering away as we trundled down the first stretch of the road which was fairly dense bush, but easy going as you just let the vehicle steer its way down the ruts of thick Kalahari sand.

We were half way down the track of thick sand before hitting the harder calcrete road, when Leanne pointed and shouted “Lion!” I immediately stopped and being the intrepid photographer, grabbed my camera and started taking photos. I wanted to reverse a bit to take some better shots without bush interrupting my vision. I carried on snapping away and Leanne oohed and aahed about what a beautiful specimen he was. When I finally decided that I was happy with the pictures I had got, I put my camera down and decided to take a look around to see if there were any other lions around, only to discover that there was a female lying right next to the road. We had passed her going north, and then reversed passed her and now had to go past her again to carry on our trip! When all this sunk in we became decidedly terrified of having to drive past her again. We sat around for a bit on the baking hot African sun waiting to see if she would move – but as luck would have it she decided she was perfectly happy with the spot she was in. So we held our breaths and put foot down, kept our eyes forward and took off as fast as our little landie would go in the thick sand.

After that, we decided we had better be a little more vigilant about looking out for game, whilst carrying on with our girlie chats.

ELEPHANT BULL

As the big fiery ball began to make its way to retirement for the day, my body was hot and sweaty, so I ambled on down to the water-hole with my ears flapping to cool my body and keep the buzzers away. An orchestra of birds was warbling a song for me, and a troop of monkeys were hoping around me in the tree tops getting a last bite to eat before nightfall.

A few of my rellies were at the pan and we enjoyed a good long welcoming drink from the clean piped water, before having a much appreciated swim in the pan. Ahh what bliss! When I had finished up with my immersion I mumbled a cheerio to my herd and ambled off feeding and coating my skin with cool Kalahari sand to keep nasties off my skin. When I got to the hard baked road there were two very large colourful machines making their way towards me. I thought, well there is not much else to do so let’s have some fun. I decided to stroll down the road in front of them. Unfortunately, a pang in my stomach soon got the better of my so decided to step off the road and grab a bunch of lush green grass shoots.

While I was enjoying a juicy morsel the two irritating machines tried to creep up closer to me, so I wandered back onto the road to see if they would back off. Damn, that pang is back – gotta sort it out – time for another munch. Amazingly enough every time I had to relieve the hunger the noisy machines would creep up again. Soon another green machine started coming down the road towards me making a loud banging noise. Darn it is the man who is in charge of the park and now he is going to spoil all my entertainment!! Oh well, that was fun while it lasted!!

THE GREAT ESCAPE

One day for some reason, as all kids do, my sister, Karen and I decided to run away from home at the very mature age of 11 and 14 respectively. There was no forethought to packing a suitcase or taking provisions with us, only our terrier called Winnie.

We snuck off from the house early one morning while Dad was at work and Mum was too busy with house chores to notice our disappearance. We ambled down the dirt road and across the vlei in front of our house towards the airstrip as if we had all the time in the world. We lived in Hwange National Park and the airstrip was only used for Parks planes and small private ones, as it did not have a long enough runway for anything bigger. We decided it was best to go to the east of the airstrip as it was in an alcove of trees and no-one from the front row of houses would see us.

We were feeling quite chuffed with ourselves for getting this far and no-one seeing us and stopping us. We were eager to get behind cover of the trees and sauntered around the corner only to come face to face with a ‘giant’ Saddle-billed stork. It was taller than either of us! Our bravado was short lived and we took off at a sprint around the next clump of trees. Well you can imagine our fear when we saw an elephant bull standing on the other side of the airstrip. By now our hearts were racing and we were so petrified that we took off along the airstrip in the opposite direction at great speed. Finally, we decided that we were far enough away to start walking again, added to the fact that we were quite breathless from both fear and exertion.


By now our adventurous spirit had deserted us completely and hunger was gnawing at our guts so home didn’t seem like such a bad place to be after all. We strolled down the dirt road back towards the houses with Winnie in tow, when suddenly as Yellow-billed kite started dive bombing us over and over again. Once again we ran as fast as our little legs could carry us but not fast enough for that kite. It picked on the smallest body and actually took a hunk of hair out of Winnie’s coat! Well that was just the final straw. With tears streaming down our faces, voices hoarse from screaming we were desperate to get back to the comfort and safety of home.

All thoughts of running away from home totally out of our little minds!

CULLING OF ELEPHANT IN WANKIE NATIONAL PARK

I am going to write now on the controversial subject of Culling that went on in Wankie. I know a lot of people will have a lot to say on the subject, but it had to be done and has been and gone.

Imagine there were two men and eight women in a house with a freezer and pantry full of food and drink. Now there is no access to the outside world, so no extra sustenance can be obtained. Due to lack of entertainment breeding will take place, so numbers will multiply, and food will diminish – so what is going to happen? Eventually the folk in the house will die off. This is akin to the 1970/71 draught in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park when they decided to let nature take its course and they had 6000 elephants perish due to lack of food or water. What an agonising death!! I saw a sable manage to get within a couple of metres of a pumped waterhole and collapse first onto bent front legs and then let out a heart rendering below as death slowly came over him. Some of you will say this is nature, but man has restricted these animals so they cannot roam as far and wide as they did in David Livingstone’s time, so man must now look after them (elephants and all other animals) and their habitat.
Now put this scenario to herds of elephant that man has now confined to a National Park – they eventually cause destruction to the trees with either pushing them over to get the foliage and pods at the top of the tree or ring barked them, so they don’t have a chance to re-grow but die off, and the grasslands are denuded to just Kalahari sand – what are these animals now going to eat, never mind the rest of the animal population that is in the same National Park.
During drought years in Wankie elephant would rip up the pipes from the pump to the water hole to try and obtain water. They have even knocked down fences to picnic sites and tried to get water from where there was a tap to supply visitors with water. They have pushed over windmills in search of water. A moat had to be built around all windmills and pumps to try and keep the elephants from destroying them. An article in the Rhodesian Chronicle states on the Dett vlei “Courtney Selous hunted on it and spoke of its thriving plant and animal life. Its name derived from ndetima, meaning a marsh or bog, testifies to this. Investigation has shown parts of it were covered by vast forests. Today much of the vlei, running for more than 15km near the main entrance to Wankie National Park, is a dustbowl. Repeated fires and cattle grazing have taken their toll. Little vegetation grows and most animals keep well clear. Rangers have travelled long distances to investigate what they thought was smoke, only to find it was a dust storm on the vlei.” Overgrazing!! I did a trip through Hwange September 2011 and found there was a lot of destruction in the Mopane woodland, and will be interested to see the results in August 2011 when we do another trip through Hwange, as now there is no culling, just poaching from higher officials!
Dad did try and keep as many pumps and windmills in the Park (even in the wilderness areas) operating so that animals would be dispersed to save the vegetation being destroyed around just a few pans. He also used to get the Parks pilots to fly the Park and if any of the pump attendants had a problem with their pump they could wave at the pilot who would then inform ground staff to go out and fix them. Often Dad flew with the pilot.
The men that did the culling operations did not enjoy this job, but were professional about it, with killing a herd in under a minute and darting the younger animals. This is far cry from what Adolf Hitler did – killing 17 million civilians including 6 million Jews targeted in the Holocaust and between 500 000 and 1 500 000 Roma (Adolf Hitler – Wikipedia), and what a lot of other leaders have done to mankind, just read Peter Godwin latest book “The Fear The Last Days of Mugabe”, the genocide going on in Africa. Are these leaders being made to account for their sins? The rest of the world idly sit back, complain but do nothing! One day they will all meet their maker!! All the meat was dried and sold to the local community, the ivory was the property of the Government and the skins sold and the only thing left was the intestines and entrails. The profits of these sales would then go back into National Parks to maintain the roads, pumps and rest camps.

This exert was taken from Dad’s diary:
MONDAY 1 AUGUST 1977
First cull from Linkwasha – 24 including 2 captured one each for Bristow and Schulz. Barrie flew with Mike while I went down with Len Roberts – just beyond Mandundumela.
Average dried meat per elephant 97 kilo last year – 106 kilos this year.
Average hide – weighed after 5 days in salt 137 kilos.
Wild Life Contractors paid 80c per kilo for dried meat while in Salisbury 95c per kilo – hide fluctuates current $2.15 per kilo, but last year 85c.
Usual profit in a year $4000.00 after all expenses, income tax, depreciation and interest.
Len paid $20 per day while on the job – so much per hour for use of his plane on company business – allowed on trip per week to his ranch on the company. Private land rovers so much per mile on company work – amount per hour and mile not stated.

The timber used for drying the meat on had to what was lying around due to elephant destruction. They would take on an average of 25 elephant a day within a 30 mile radius of their camp site if possible.
The young elephants were taken to holding pens at Umtishibi to settle down before being sold off. Now folk might think this is awful to have one’s family shot and now be homeless, but think of a child who is dumped or given up for adoption! How many of you folk reading this can remember your life as a two or three year old – not many of us remember those years of our lives – we are resilient at that age. A lot of these babies are now being used for tourists to interact with them and get to learn all about them in safari camps. I don’t whole heartedly agree with riding them, as they are still a wild animal and should be entitled to their former life. I always wanted a squirrel as a pet in my youth, but Dad would not allow it, as he said they are wild animals and must stay wild.

This is just my point of view, and may not be everyone’s. I grew up in National Parks, so enjoy seeing the animals in their natural environment, and do feel that hunting and culling is a necessary action to keep population from exploding and destroying themselves and the vegetation.