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Cobb
The main food source for lions in the park. What a great weekend! On Friday we headed up to Queen Elizabeth National Park to visit the wildlife vet, Dr. Siefert. He wants to get the goat project started in the park, to decrease the number of lion poisonings and poaching. Due to dwindling numbers of their main prey animal food source, the Cobb, lions and leopards have been going into communities within the park and killing livestock. Since their livestock are their livelihood, the farmers then poison or shoot the lions, which further decreases their drastically low numbers. Dr. Siefert would like to introduce a completely zero grazing goat project within these communities, so that the livestock will be protected from the hungry lions and there will inadvertently be less lion poisonings. Zero grazing goats involves building a solid pen, which is raised off of the ground, so that feces can be scraped away. The goats will live in the pen 24/7 and food and water will be brought to them. The best food source for the goats is Napier grass, also known as elephant grass. The elephant grass should be harvested when it is young, as this is when it is the most nutritious for the goats. The grass
I couldn't get enough of the elephants, they are amazing!is then cut up into small pieces and let to dry before being fed to the goats.
Dr. Siefert is originally from Germany, but has been in Uganda for almost forty years, working to protect the wildlife that he loves so dearly. He truly is an amazing man and has a wealth of knowledge. At supper he was talking about everything from politics to religion to problems within the park. All of us were trying to absorb every word, until we were distracted by a pissed off male elephant running through the outdoor area of the restaurant.....only in Africa! The elephant wasn't the last of the wildlife that we saw the first night. There was a warthog and a few water buck outside when we returned to our rooms. I decided that I was going to head to bed early, since we were going to have an early morning. I brushed my teeth, changed into my pjs and went outside one last time to say goodnight to the others. Sarah runs up to me in a panic and says "turn off your headlamp, turn off your headlamp, there is a hippo over there!". I quickly shut my
SMILE!
Some boys from the community that wanted their picture taken! light off and we watched the hippo until he went out of view behind some buildings. Even though we couldn't see him, we could still hear him munching loudly on the grass.....imagine what those huge tusk like teeth could do to a human! I thought all of the excitement was over, so I decided to do one last pee run and hit the hay. As I was leaving the toilets I could hear some rustling in the nearby grass. I turned on my light and there was an elephant standing about twenty feet away! I stood there for what seemed like an eternity watching the elephant until I got the guts to make a run for my room....the elephant didn't even move haha.
On Saturday we went with Dr. Siefert to the communities that he was introducing the goat project to. We explained the project to them and the benefits that they would get out of it, such as less livestock predation and fresh goat milk! We also gave the communities elephant grass cuttings and seeds to plant, so that they could start establishing the food source for their goats. There were a lot of kids at
Lake Edwardthe first community that were curious about us muzungus. Whenever we stopped within the community the kids seemed to know we were there and within a few minutes there would be ten kids crowded around us. They wanted us to take their picture, but we had to make sure to show them as soon as we took it. They were all incredibly cute! Along the way we saw some more animals, like cape buffalo, baboons, cobb and more elephants!
This morning we got up bright and early as there was a lion that Dr. Siefert needed to change the radio collar on and we were going to go searching for her! Dr. Siefert's assistant, James, was up on the roof of the vehicle, trying to pick up a signal from the radio collar. The first animals that we came across on the game drive were elephants. They were acting quite aggressive and even chased after the vehicles, but we managed to drive away quickly! Next we drove through a cobb mating ground. The cobbs are unusual in that the males will pick out a spot of about 20m squared and stand there, waiting for the females to
Mud Bath!
Some cape buffalo staying cool in the hot sun. walk through and pick one of them to mate with. We even saw a few males that had lost one of their horns from battling for mating grounds. Finally James had a signal from the collar! We drove around in circles for a while, until we narrowed down the signal and were very disappointed when we figured out that the lion was resting in a thicket and we would be unable to see her! 😞 We then drove around the park for a few more hours, trying to pick up another signal, but we were unsuccessful. I think that all of us were pretty disappointed, especially Dr. Siefert. Hopefully we will get a chance to come back up to the park on another weekend and see some lions!
We are now back home in Mbarara. I am feeling quite under the weather. I seemed to have picked up some sort of bacteria or parasite this weekend....its not pretty. I have decided to name him Marty. I hope he doesn't stay for too long. Bed time now for this tired girl! I hope you are enjoying my blogs! Don't forget to scroll down to see more pictures!
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