Lion Darting - touching a lioness

Roy Nijenkamp, a Safari Guide student at EcoTraining was one of the students who got to participate in a lion darting on Selati Game Reserve. He shares his experience.

"Our group had the privilege to spend three nights at Selati, Arriving in the afternoon; we went for our first game drive. After a nice drive and sundowner, we headed back towards our camp. After a while we saw some tail lights in the distance and almost immediately someone from a research programme contacted us by radio. They requested us to stop and wait for 15-30 minutes or turn around.

Since it would take us an extra 20 minutes to take a different road, we were happy to wait and hoped we could take a glimpse after they left. After about 20 minutes we were contacted again and asked if we would like to follow them to their main camp as they had tranquilized a lioness. We followed the pickup truck with the lioness in the back and shortly thereafter we we’re followed by a second pickup truck.

Arriving at their main camp it turned out there was not only one, but two lionesses! The first female was laid down on the ground and they had to replace her collar as the battery was dead.  Afterwards we were all given the unique experience of touching the large and impressive animal. The other lioness had an anticonception capsule, the size of a rice grain, removed from under here shoulder. These small capsules can last up to 5 years, but are replaced after 2-3 years, to allow her to come into oestrous for cubs. The whole procedure took about 20 minutes, where after the lionesses were taken back and monitored through the night until the tranquilizer has worn off”

Crazy day in Selati

Selati Game Reserve is known for its amazing birding and tree diversity; however it is not that often you see big game wondering in and around camp.

“Our students had one crazy day at Selati. It all started when they set off on their walk in the morning. After a while, Andreas heard guinea fowl alarm calling and they decided to see if they could find out what the guinea fowl were so alarmed about. It didn’t take them long to see a lion through the bushes! Andreas got the students in a safe position, and after a few minutes the lioness got up and moved a bit away from them, to behind some shrubs, probably to find a shadier spot. Andreas slowly checked to see where she went, but then he suddenly saw another lioness hiding in the bush. Eventually they managed to discover four lions in total, two adults females, a young female and a young male. The lions were incredibly relaxed with the groups’ presence and never showed any signs of aggression.

That same afternoon the group set out for the afternoon activity. Andreas first took them back to where he spotted the lions and they were still there. After a while we went back to the vehicle and resumed our game drive.

A few hours later we drove back into camp. Andreas was on the tracker seat and noticed lion tracks over our vehicle tracks at the camp entrance. Andreas saw that they were heading into the eastern direction of our camp. It didn’t take him too long to figure out that they had made a kill inside our camp, right behind the men’s bathroom.  We all got in the vehicle again and drove around to see all four of the lions that we had seen on foot earlier that day, feeding on a Nyala kill.  Another hectic day in the office.”