Kruger Magazine

It is heart-warming to have received some First Visit contributions from the younger generation. It means our readership age stretches wide – literally from young to old, including teenagers – and our goal is becoming a reality! Well done to all these future conservationists that send us emails – we enjoy reading your stories and endeavour to publish them all over time. With our schedule being quite tight, our travelling (as it is mostly by road) gives us the opportunity to just chat – no laptops and mobile phones occupying most of our time. It is then that we contemplate content ideas for future issues of KRUGER MAGAZINE, and it is also then that we cannot help but affirm to each other how blessed we are – and then say ‘thank you’…

Those who have visited the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Hoedspruit, Limpopo, will know that it is one of those must-visit places when you are in the area. For those who don't know, Moholoholo is famous for a lot, but mostly the videos of the naughty honey badger called Stoffel. When we decided to do the Species ID on the serval in this issue, we had to go and visit Moholoholo, as they have a breeding programme for serval with the aim of releasing these beautiful cats back into the wild, as threats to the survival of this species are many. Keeping these threats in mind, Moholoholo slowed down on their breeding as habitat loss, secondary poisoning and poaching for their coats are obviously of great concern. The breeding programme started by chance…

UNFORGETTABLE 2013 Our first unforgettable visit to the Kruger Park happened during the Women's Day long weekend of 2013. My brother and I are nonidentical twins, and we were only three-and-a-half years old at the time when we were first introduced to this famous park. Our dad would have preferred to have taken us there just after being released from the neonatal emergency unit, but of course, Mom did the sensible thing by insisting that we had to be stronger and older (we were born at 32 weeks!). That August in 2013 we were privileged enough to stay in the house of our dad's uncle and aunt, Hennie and Tokkie van Deventer, at the Sabie Park Nature Reserve near the Kruger Gate. Sabie Park, a 345-hectare area, borders the Kruger National Park, and…

When one drives in the Kruger National Park as often as we do, there are certainly some areas that seem to be so perfect for a camp to somehow pop-up and share its wonderous secrets. Areas like this are seen by a privileged few that work as rangers for SANParks. That is, up to now. We were privileged to be invited as part of the first guests at the new Kruger Untamed Tshokwane River Camp that has just opened for the winter months of 2023. After an environmental impact study, hours of hard work and dedication, the Ripape riverbank has been transformed into a quiet wonderland of soft lantern glows under leadwood trees reaching right into the seasonal riverbed for the winter, after which it will disappear on 30 September 2023 as…

“Seldom seen, it is one of the Kruger's most elusive cats.” The serval (Leptailurus serval) is one of the most beautiful members of the cat family Felidae. It derives its name from lobo-cerval, the Portuguese name for a European lynx, but its generic name comes from the Greek leptos, meaning ‘fine or delicate’, and ailouros meaning ‘cat’. It occurs widely in sub-Saharan Africa, and there is also a relict population in north Africa in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. They were extirpated in Tunisia but have been reintroduced into the El Feidja National Park. They select the wetter savanna and grassland habitats, but are absent from the rain forests, and the extreme drier areas. Three subspecies are recognised but only one (L. s. serval) occurs in southern Africa where it was initially more widely…

Our KRUGER BIRD CHALLENGE was initially created to generate funds to finance the production costs for the regular Conservation Projects that we showcase in each issue of KRUGER MAGAZINE. The project was launched on 21 September 2021. Little did we know how popular it would become. From individuals to couples to groups – some of which have registered for a second round, mostly to better their own previous challenge. Many of our registered challengers are groups, including friends, families and even business colleagues. It is an ideal group activity, and we are quite sure that there is a lot of ‘inside challenging’ within these groups, making it even more challenging! 400 days after the first registrations started pouring in, we had the first challengers’ Checklists coming in, and by that time we already…