The capture season here is starting to wind down now, and so
I thought I’d go ahead and do a quick post on it and share some stories, pics,
and video. This year I’ll spare you all the details about my research per se,
because most of you are already at least a little bit familiar with it anyway
(and even if you’re not it’s not nearly as exciting as pics and videos). Just
as a brief reminder though, my project year involves capturing and collecting
data from three different species of antelope: bushbuck (the little ones),
nyala (the medium ones), and kudu (the big ones). I typically dart the bushbuck
and nyala from a vehicle because they’re small and like thick cover, and the
kudu from a helicopter.
This year has been full of all of the crazy ups and downs
that always seem to characterize this kind of work, so I thought I’d share just
a few anecdotes with you of situations that started off badly and ended up
working out well. The majority of the time when I dart one of these animals,
things go just fine, but not always!
So, anecdote number 1. When I’m darting the bushbuck and
nyala from the ground I have to use darts that include a small radio-transmitter
inside of them so that I can track them in the bush. After being darted, these
guys typically run off into thick brush, and can go for hundreds of yards
before succumbing to the anesthesia. So, without transmitter darts we’d rarely
ever find them. This year, with one of the first bushbuck I darted, the dart
itself malfunctioned and didn’t inject. It stayed in like it was supposed to
though (because of the barb), which allowed us to keep track of her via the
transmitter dart. So, we spent the next hour slowly following her around trying
to get close enough to get a second dart in her. In addition, because she
already had a transmitter dart attached to her, I chose to use a non-transmitter
dart the second time so that I could shoot farther (the darts are much lighter
and fly much better without the transmitter). After a great deal of careful
pursuit and patience, I finally had another brief chance to dart her on the
move as she walked in front of our vehicle. The good news: the dart hit her
perfectly and injected like it was supposed to. The bad news: as soon as the
second dart hit her, the first one, which contained the transmitter, fell out!
As always, she immediately ran off into the thick bush, and because she no
longer had the transmitter dart in her, we had no way to track her. So begins
the painstaking grid search, which most of the time leads to nothing. About an
hour into our search, a vulture flew by us at top speed, obviously on a
mission. We ran after it, and shortly thereafter noticed an eagle circling
above the area where it looked like the vulture was headed. We searched that
specific area, and after only a few minutes, there she was! Untouched and lying
fast asleep on her side. She was in great shape, and after putting a GPS collar
on her and collecting a variety of other data on her condition, reproductive
status, size, etc., we reversed the anesthesia and she went happily on her way.
Whew! That’s the third time in the past two seasons that either a vulture or an
eagle has led us to an animal that we’d lost track of because the transmitter
dart fell out. Crazy!
A couple of weeks later I had a nyala run across the road in
front of me and stop just within darting range. She was obviously ready to keep
running and I only had a few seconds, so I had to guess the distance instead of
using my range finder. Unfortunately I misjudged and the dart went low. Rather
than simply going beneath her and turning into a missed shot, though, it hit
her in the leg and stuck in the skin there. The dart was a transmitter dart,
and we followed her around for the next half hour, but because it wasn’t a good
muscle hit, she was only partially affected by the drugs and never went down.
Nyala are much more mobile than bushbuck, and eventually we lost track of the
transmitter signal, and her. Rather than give up though, we decided to see if
we might get lucky from the air. The helicopter we’d used for the kudu darting
was still around, and although we’d never successfully darted a nyala from the
air before (not for lack of trying last year!), we had to try; leaving an
animal running around with a dart in its leg is not an option when there’s
still something we might be able to do about it. It was much easier for me to
pick up her signal again from the air, and before long we had her in sight
again. She was obviously affected by the drug, and was running much slower than
normal. She was in and out of the trees a lot, and so it took some patience on
the part of our amazing helicopter pilot Mike Pingo, but eventually Louis Van
Wyck, a game capture specialist who’s here helping out with the capture,
managed to get a second dart into her from the helicopter. The first and only
nyala we’d ever managed to dart from the air!
This is the nyala from the story above. Beautiful animals aren't they?
Just like last year, I’ve also been privileged to see all
sorts of amazing things during the course of my time in the field searching for
animals to dart. Kathleen already posted a few pics of the pride of lions we
came across on the same day that we had the transmitter dart fall out of the
bushbuck. I’ve also been lucky enough to see elephants on at least half of the
days that I’ve been out, so I’ve included a few elephant pics below as well.
The elephants of Gorongosa. I have a graduate student starting in the fall semester who will be spending the next 3 years conducting research on these amazing animals, including putting GPS collars on a bunch of them. Can't wait!
One thing I also did for fun this year was bring a GoPro
camera with me for the aerial darting. As a result, I got some cool
first-person video footage of myself darting kudu from the helicopter, as well as some good footage of one really cool bonus experience I had from the chopper
this year. I darted 9 of the 10 kudu from the air this year, which was a real privilege,
and I’ve included a few pictures and a couple of the better videos for you below.
Getting ready to put a GPS collar on a female kudu on film with Rob Pringle (my collaborator and former post-doc advisor at Princeton) and Corina Tarnita (another professor at Princeton).
Using ultrasonography to measure the depth of the loin muscle on a kudu as one measure of her nutritional condition.
On her way about a minute or so after reversing the anesthesia.
Rob and Corina with a collared kudu, along with a crew from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). HHMI recently provided a major grant to the Gorongosa Restoration Project to fund the construction of an education center.
In this video, we were pursuing a group of about 8 or so kudu that broke up shortly after we saw them. You'll notice early in the video that we focused our attention on one lone female, but when we got close to her I could tell she was in poor condition, so I asked Mike to break off and find the others. Shortly after he was able to push a group of 3 into the open, which set me up perfectly to get a dart in!
In this video you'll get to witness something that was a first for me; two shots at the same kudu, but not because of a miss. If you pay close attention to the first shot, you'll notice that it hits her in the hindquarter and bounces right off! Definitely haven't seen that before. Mike went high to keep an eye on her while Louis got a second dart ready for me, and fortunately the second one did the trick.
Below you'll see a few pictures and a GoPro video of my bonus experience. There's a Mozambican graduate student currently going to school in South Africa who was hoping to collect some data on sable (an amazing species of antelope with long, sweeping horns) as part of their thesis project, and had sent a couple of GPS collars to the park in the hopes of having them deployed this year. Since I was around and Rui (the park vet and head of law enforcement) was super busy with all sorts of other things, he let me do the darting and collaring! Man was this a cool experience. Sable have always been one of my favorite antelope, and getting to have my hands on one was a real privilege.
Me and Mike Pingo's (the helicopter pilot) son Greg with a beautiful female sable. Unlike the species I've been working with, female sable also have horns.
Measuring rump fat depth with the ultrasound. This may well be the first time in history anybody has ever used this approach to quantify condition of a wild sable!
Headed back to the chopper after a successful operation. What a nice sunset eh?
This is the GoPro video I recorded while darting the sable in the above pictures. Rather than truncate it, I've decided to share the full experience with you which, like the kudu video above, required two shots. Unfortunately in this case it was because I missed the first one...
Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed the pics and videos!
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