Posted October 28, 2026 in All
Top Reserve News This Quarter
We were delighted to receive several donations this quarter:
- Three new ‘silent Field Ranger’ camera traps from both an intern and Wildlife Protection Solutions – we are looking forward to putting them up to help us protect the reserve.
- Balula, our male cheetah, needed a new collar and the Forever Wild Foundation have donated a new solar collar for him – this shall be put on him early October.
- We received five alien plant sprayer knapsacks from Conservation Outcomes.
- From the sale proceeds of our small merchandise shop we have been able to purchase an additional seven camera traps for use ID’ing our leopard population.
Animals of UmPhafa
We have introduced a further 182 blesbok to keep up with the demands of the cheetah and leopard, as well as trying to sustain an ongoing population.
Two new species were recorded this quarter, including the long-tailed widowbird and Savanna spiny sugar ant, recorded by one of our interns.
We have put several carcasses out at the new vulture restaurant, and apart from two Cape vultures, the carcasses have been eaten by leopard and bushpig.
Cheetah, Storm, sprained his ankle in August, so we had to dart him and pop him in the Boma for a few weeks to recover – he has been out and about on the reserve again these past few weeks and has taken a liking to eating blesbok and is showing no issues with his sprained ankle.
It’s been several years since we have seen ostrich chicks and last month, we found one of the females sitting on about 12 eggs so we are hoping we will have new life roaming the reserve soon.
Busy Field Rangers
We have now recruited our full compliment of Field Rangers with three new Rangers joining us – we wish them well in their new roles.
This past quarter, the number of illegal dog hunting incursions has increased significantly and with more patrols being done with the increased numbers of Field Rangers we hope we can nip this increase in incursions in the bud! The new cameras will also be a big help!
Caring for the Reserve
We jumped in this quarter with doing our block burns to improve the bush for the animals – in total we have planned to burn 1700 Hectares but managed to get 2200 Hectares burnt and just in time for a large downpour of 70mm’s of rain which was very welcome.
The main focus this quarter was repairing the roads. In total we fixed 2620M, repaired 128 mitre drains and made 41 new ones. Alongside this, we did another 5 gabions to try and slow down the flow of the water during high rain to prevent further erosion.
We also continue to recycle as much as possible, an old shed was repaired and given a new lease of life, our new camera traps needed new security boxes and these were made from old steel as well as some new cages made for our existing cameras. We fixed an old grass slasher so that we could use it to remove alien plants rather than cut grass.
Community & Project Meetings
We have had several meetings this quarter including being invited to the inaugural KZN Wildlife Forum which was interesting and we are pleased to be a part of.
The Ezemvelo Honorary Officers also had their annual meeting for the Northwest part of KZN – UmPhafa were delighted to receive a Certificate of Appreciation from the chairmen for supporting the Honorary Officers.
Intern Program / Researchers
We had 21 Interns visit us this quarter, including another university.
They got to see the blesbok release several times, looked after Storm in the Boma until we were able to release him again. They checked on the serval that was released last quarter as it looks like his collar has stopped working. They also got involved in several maintenance activities including block burns to prevent wildfires across the Reserve, making bat boxes and brush packing as well as several other activities that are a part of our ongoing maintenance program to continually improve UmPhafa.
Getting Social
Our followers have increased significantly since last quarter.
We love to see the number of followers and likes increasing, with the most popular video being Storm’s release into the Boma with over 9.7K views, the other top stories were all about the cats – Servals being released into the Boma and Storm being released on to the Reserve.
