Hyena Focus

Since the poaching incident the reserve manager, Kobus, has been worried about the number of hyena on the reserve, as we don’t see them very often. Therefore he has asked us (GVI) to do hyena focus. This means counting how many we have and trying to make ID’s for them. The quickest way to go about this is to bring a dead carcass into the area where they are suspected to be and do all night shifts to watch as they come feed.
The first carcass, a donkey, was brought Wednesday night. We did shifts of three hours each and call all staff when the hyena showed up to help in identifying them. My shift was 2 am to 5 am. When I arrived one hyena was feeding but the arrival of my vehicle scared her away. We sat and waited but only a side-striped jackal showed up. Finally, after an hour the first hyena reappeared and soon the while clan showed up. To our surprise there were only five of them as opposed to the last time we saw the whole clan there were at least 9 maybe 10. They hyena seemed very skittish constantly stopping to smell the air and running away at the slightest sound or unknown scent. We thought it must have been because the lions were seen in the area just a few days ago. It was at this time we noticed a snare around the neck of one of the younger hyenas. The snare looked very bad but the hyena, who probably chewed himself free, seemed to be coping with it quite well. Maybe it was the loss of so many of their clan members to snares that made them so uneasy.