Khumbula
Thina Sanctuary's Vision and Potential 9th
March 2016
I first came into
contact with Fleur Wales-Baillie through a mutual friend of ours who had
expressed concern at the fact that Fleur was having some major issues
with her staff with
regards to the fact that 145 Wildebeest had disappeared during her
absence from the
property and arrived to help her try to locate them.
Fleur had been told about my past experience with Security and
Anti-Poaching and on the
day I arrived she was very concerned with her animals because the day
before she had been
advised to do a game count and afterwards was under the impression that
all her animals
were gone or dead. Unknown to her was that over that period
of summer is the worst time
to attempt a Game count because the bush is too thick to give an
accurate estimation of
what is around. Game counts are generally done at the end of
winter when the bush
naturally thins out.
We went out together and located the majority of her game just doing a
basic count from
the truck. We came across a large amount of Wildebeest
carcasses with many of them being
close to the roads. There was no sign of any Waterbuck or any
carcasses. At the moment we
have accounted for just over 1/3 of the Wildebeest while an estimated
100 have just
disappeared like the Waterbuck.
During our investigation we found that the Supervisor that was in
charge at the time did
not report any of this to us and due to his negligence many of the
Wildebeest died when
they could have been saved with just a phone call.
We are picking ourselves up slowly and just looking forward to a bright
future as the
Khumbula Thina Mountain Sanctuary is a real slice of heaven and has
such untapped
potential that could easily be transformed into a beacon of hope for
all Wildlife.
I see us pioneering concept technology, accepting likeminded
individuals to come and learn
about our unique heritage and paving the way for top class
Research/Medical facilities.
While working and building in South Africa has its challenges, what we
are doing here is
worth fighting for and hopefully our successful efforts will seed
similar projects throughout
Southern Africa... Otherwise the next generation will have nothing to
marvel over.
Marc Hulett
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