Anti-Poaching in Dinokeng Game Reserve | The Lion Whisperer

[Music] oh [Music] right good morning everybody um i'm on my way into work it is freezing cold winter has hit the sun is just popping its nose over the horizon it's a beautiful time of day i'm snug as a bag so no worries there but i'm on my way to work but not to the sanctuary i'm on my way to meet a really interesting character named tim higgs and he is the head of anti-poaching at denneken game reserve many of you who follow me will know that i've been doing some fundraising for dana king because when covert 19 hit basically their income went to zero but what was still expected of tim and his team it was still expected that they were to go out daily and fighting off the poaching incursions which are increasing on a daily basis and the reason for that is as times get tougher the money gets tighter people are going to resort to poaching to feed their families this episode is going to be a really good insight to what it takes to lead an anti-poaching team in a reserve such as dana king hello good how are you is the weather cold enough for two pairs of socks so there's one pair of socks weather eh yolks don't feel that cold eh [Music] [Laughter] gonna be tough to work here [Music] [Music] area size eighteen and a half thousand i mean who knows i mean it's somewhere between that and twenty last depending on who's fan start who's decided to fence themselves out yeah and i think apart from that it's probably the game reserve in south africa with the highest human population on these corners yeah so that means we have you know the highest rate of you know incursions yeah and you get more resources yeah always the problem where is the dilemma [Music] hello my darling what's your name hello scarlett look at you what do you smell i know what you smell hey you smelling lions eh you know that smell yeah smart dog beautiful dog um we're going to see her put her nose to the test uh we know that there are some tracks up ahead and so we're going to head off to those tracks okay so this is not exactly just a walk in the park this dog sets off at a rate of knots i mean it's literally a half walk off run these guys are going to be super fit to keep up with this dog but with like all tracks time is of the essence and remembering that we are in a big five game reserve you could run into dangerous game at any point in time and look at that she's found the intruders hey huh tim what have you been up to well done hey and that's a reward well done yeah my girly such a good dog that was just really a demonstration of the capabilities of the bloodhound which is incredible so i mean tim and and another guy set off on a on a path in a no particular predetermined direction and they the aim was for them to try and um confuse the dog which as you can see didn't happen at all i mean once that dog gets the the the scent and and locks it locks onto it there's no stopping her so she's really used in specific situations and um tim was saying that you obviously don't use the tracking dog all the time it's only when you really need to um do something specific whereas the rest of the time ninety percent of the time or ninety ninety two percent of the time they're kind of just doing the patrols visually looking seeing so people have been asking me what what what is poached what are these guys after so basically it starts off you know they may be just gathering some firewood and they see a game part so they think all right here's a game part lots of animals we can see the tracks let me just put up a snare and see what i can catch and a couple of days later they catch an impala and that provides meat for them and their families and that's just what we call subsistence poaching but then eventually that progresses to something more because they start to catch more and more animals and then perhaps one time in a snare there's a lion and now the guy thinks to himself what am i what do i do now but uh he knows the local sangoma um so off come the paws off come the the head and they sell those body parts to the sangoma now suddenly he has a thriving business now suddenly the modus operandi changes and these guys are now poaching not only for bushmeat they're thinking to themselves hey all right i can catch not only enough meat to feed my family but i can catch meat to sell and i can also catch other indigenous species like lion or hyena and i can sell that also onto to the muti market so you can see somebody who just started off collecting firewood can suddenly be turned into a a poacher who eventually can even start poaching animals as um you know as as rare and as sought after as as rhino and even elephant so it's really just one progression off to the next it's it's uh it's sad um when you see it like this and i don't a lot of people say to me or don't you get angry yes i get angry as to what happens um the consequences of of what's going on here but really i think um you've got to show empathy you have to have an empathetic side to you to understand what's really going down where people are starving people are living below the breadline and now with covert um it it sent the country into a recession and there's job losses and and and yeah what do people get what do people have to do to to survive so you have to always look at it from the other side as well that's exactly the middle so if you move your hand down yeah hold it like that right left stop okay yeah feels good so one of the best anti-poaching devices you can utilize in the bush especially in a big five game reserve is a horse so this anti-poaching unit has four horses and i must just say really really well trained animals i haven't been on a horse as well trained as this in fact i haven't horse ridden much in my life so this is quite a unique experience for me and but if you think about the advantages of a horse no problem in going off-road 4x4 easy the vantage point is amazing so you've got from compared to being in a car you've got the ability to see very far into the distance the other advantage about a horse is that it can cover so much more distance than you would if you were just on foot and you can go literally anywhere the other animals don't see horses as something that's a threat so you can get really close to game without having any problem with the game the rhino the lion etc so we're on our way to the site or the area where most of these poaching incidences occur and a lot of the snaring happens so we're heading out that direction obviously riding there on horseback makes light work of the situation hopefully we don't find anything in the snares yeah whoop all right so we've just found uh a snare how many snares you see there's two snares all right i can't even see them so here's the game path so we're just going to go around but just shows i mean you can't even see them so how's the animal meant to see this especially at night look at that okay i can just see it now he sticks his head or his body through he thrashes and i'll demonstrate okay so if i'm the animal i'm gonna come through here and so it happens and this thing just tightens and tightens and tightens until there and now the animal's caught but obviously the animal doesn't do what i'm doing the animal thrashes and the more he thrashes the more this digs into the the throat and the neck and suffocates the animal this this snare particular snare has been set for head height and probably to catch something like an impala bushback or impala that kind of size but doesn't stop this snare from catching a lion i mean a lion's head height is exactly that that head height so this snare here could quite easily have caught um a line a line is this an is this a a commonly used snaring root so animal doesn't really stand a chance it's it's it's absolutely i've mentioned it a few times it's a terrible terrible way for an animal to die um if you can just imagine the the horror the pain and suffering and depending on when if somebody actually even finds that animal to put it out of its misery some of them will such and dark and suffer for a few days before before dying yeah yeah oh gosh another one wow just so systematically placed everywhere yeah the animal comes [Music] i mean again doesn't stand i hope in health it makes me so angry [Music] you know on the one hand it makes you angry but on the other hand you kind of like are empathizing with people who resort to this to feed their families gazia i really appreciate you taking the time to show me what your daily duties involve but i think the audience out there really needs to appreciate what you do for our wildlife on a daily basis i mean you guys are all putting your lives at risk to make sure that there is wildlife for people and for future generations you know so okay scarlett and you yes also you it's it's now more than ever that that i think the viewers out there need to appreciate what you guys are all doing uh to ensure that the wildlife stays alive i mean just we've had a snippet just a snippet of of what you know a day in the life of an anti-poaching team involves and i appreciate that i really do i don't think we can ever fully articulate to the audience what you guys get up to in a day alright guys so thanks for watching it's been really interesting making this video giving you a little bit of an insight into what it takes to do anti-poaching here in dinner king if you did enjoy the video please do share it with your friends share it far and wide if you're a subscriber to the channel thanks if not why not why don't you simply subscribe it is for free if you want to take it one step further become a member it's it's really through the memberships that we can bring you these great videos gets us out and about and we can slowly but surely bring you the content you want to see so yet again thanks for watching and until next time [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: The Lion Whisperer

Views: 125,230

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Id: liTj6dlds6k

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020