Poachers

Last week Kaggie and I returned from drive to find our gate wide open. Shocked by this we wondered if we never locked it properly when we left in the morning but realizing that we must have shut it behind us we let Kobus, the base manager, know and soon the locks were changed. A few days later one of the guides on the reserve found a Kudu that had been caught in a snare. Upon hearing this Alex and Andreas rushed out the door and the hunt for poachers and their snares began.
When I hear of poachers I always think of Elephants being slaughtered for Ivory and rhino’s for their horn but there is also a lot of poaching done by people for other animals for their meat. This is what the poachers were looking for.
A few hours later Alex and Andreas returned the poacher’s camp had been found and the poachers were seen but they managed to escape through a hole they had made in the fence. Stupidly they left their ID behind in the camp so we sent it to the police to handle. Since this incident 80 snares have been found and thirty snared animals had to be shot including giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, kudu and impala. We don’t even think we got all of the snares but hopefully there are not many left and we will find them before we loose any more animals.