October 12, 2011
I wish you all could see the beautiful place that I am typing this from. It’s called palmfountein which translates to palm springs. I’m am currently looking out on a bubbling brook that pours over redish gray smooth rocks into pools. Around the water is lush green grass with the bank of the river lined with palm trees. I do not feel like I’m in arid Namibia that for sure. It feels more like the Nile River. Anyways this is the second campsite that we have stayed at since we left the Ehi-Rovipuka conservancy office. Our first camp was at a hunting lodge. We had befriended a hunter who works at this lodge while we were staying at the conservancy office. He ate dinner with us and swapped stories, wicked nice guy from the middle of South Africa. I’ve come to the conclusion from the South Africans that I have met so far this semester that they have impeccable manners, very old fashion, plus a baller accent. Because of the hospitality that we showed him we got an invite to camp at the lodge which meant running water! We stayed here for two nights while we were doing foot patrol training and game drives. On the last night that we were here, Hardus and Phillip, our hosts, drove us out to a watering hole at sunset. Not only was it a beautiful watering hole which probably is a waterfall in the wet season, but we also got to see a python. It was curled up in one of the lower pools with it’s freshly drowned hyrax kill laying feet away. Bekah tried to coax it out with a stick but we eventually gave up when the stick had broken down to about a foot long. Not good risk management. I offered to help get the snake out but was quickly told that if I moved towards the snake I would quickly be dropped off at the nearest port of departure. I figured I better let Bekah handle the snake. We decided that the snake was about three feet long, pretty neat. So the place that we are currently staying at is also a favorite hang out of elephants. We almost didn’t stay here because we were worried about elephants literally walking through camp. The first night was an experience. As I was getting ready for bed I heard a loud sound outside my tent. At first I thought that it was just Dennis, the creator of Round River who is visiting us, snoring. Then I realized that his tent is about three hundred feet away from mine. Thus it was not a human sound. Since I am in Namibia the options became elephant or lion. Ellie and I had a conversation between our tents as to what we thought it was. We decided that we’d prefer elephants so we went to bed thinking it was that. Turns out it was a lion according to Vehi when we asked him about it the next morning, cool. But have no fear there were also two herd of elephants that walked by our campsite during the night. I do love how after I heard the noise I decided to zip up my rain flap, as if another layer of plastic would protect me. If anything it would probably make my escape harder. But I am alive and well so no worries.
So I promised that I would tell you about what my project entails once I learned what it is. So here’s what I’m doing for the next eight weeks. I will be driving around five different conservancies collecting data on the species within. We will do this by game drives (aka safari’s where you count the number of animals that you see) and game walks (also counting the number of animals that we see). To determine the population size of the species, in particular large four footed animals, we will be using the ‘distance sampling’ method. Basically whenever we see an animal we stop the car and take a GPS point of where we are. We then shoot a lazar distance finder at the animal to determine how far away from the car it is. Finally we use a compass to determine the angle that the animal is off of North using the car as our main bearing. Ultimately this information is used with the help of GIS to determine the distance that the animal is away from the road. This distance is then plugged into Distance 4.0 (or something like that) which is a software (which we currently don’t have) that will calculate the density of the species based on the number of animals of a species and their distance from the road. The walking counts consist of us hiking to the top of a hill and then sitting there for two hours counting all of the animals that we see in the distance while also taking their distance and angle. Initially we tried to count animals while walking along a transect but we quickly discovered that the animals fled from us before we even knew they were there. All of the data that we collect will then be given to MET (the Ministry of Environmental Tourism) for Namibia, aka we are doing research for the government of Namibia. SO NEAT! This is the first time that I feel like my research serves a purpose which is maybe why I’m enjoying this so much so far. Previously even though I was answering a question when writing up lab reports it felt silly since my professors already new the answer to the question since they’d done the lab for years. But now this research serves an actual purpose and people are excited about our findings. Hopefully it goes well.
Tomorrow we are heading back to home after a long time away. We will then spend a day in Wereldsend recuperating and then we are off to the Torra conservancy. Hope all is well in the states!
All my love.
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