Game reserve in the Karoo

Before I post about the geology I saw in South Africa (later today or tomorrow), I’d like to share a few photographs from a small game reserve we went to one evening.

This reserve wasn’t huge, but still rather large (took about an hour to drive across). It was established to provide a place for animals that have, unfortunately, been pushed out of habitat or, worse, threatened by illegal hunting. Ideally, they aim to re-introduce some of the animals back into the wild or to much larger reserves.

A photogenic zebra in the late afternoon sun.

At first, these two rhinos (female on left and junvenile male on right) were slightly concerned with our presence, but they eventually were more concerned with their dinner.

The highlight for me was the cheetahs. Absolutely beautiful animals. They were kept in a separate large enclosure becuase they aren’t quite ready to hunt and the reserve may not be large enough anyway. Cheetahs are typically solitary animals, but the few they have here are relatively happy hanging out together. In the next year or so, the reserve plans to try and re-train them to hunt live prey in hopes of getting them ready to back into the wild.

They also had a very rare Barbary lion. There are only a few of these animals left on the planet and none in the wild. This particular male was saved before it was killed to be a trophy. For some reason, people pay a lot of money to come shoot an animal like this WHILE IT’S IN A CAGE, just so they can get it as a trophy. So, while living on a reserve isn’t ideal, the alternative is stuffed in some a#$hole’s office.

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