February Update

I’ve been in South Africa for a little over a month now. When I arrived in Johannesburg, the sky was clear and sunny. I rented a small car and headed north, stopping in Pretoria to meet Embassy staff for coffee and conversation. From there, I continued on to Thohoyandou.

I had barely arrived when the rain began. For the next five days, it poured, and Limpopo began to flood. I used the time to recover from jet lag, find the local mall, and connect with my host at the University of Venda. Thankfully, he had a Toyota Hilux 4×4 (a “bakkie” in Afrikaans) that I could borrow.

When the rain finally broke, I returned the rental car and drove west to Louis Trichardt. There, I met two interns working with WildComm, a non-profit conservation organization. Together, we continued on to Leshiba Wilderness Reserve, about an hour and a half away. The road was riddled with potholes large enough to ruin your alignment, and shallow ponds filled with dark red water. The soil here is a deep, rich rust color, and it’s impossible to tell how deep the water might be. We made it to the base of the mountain, shifted the bakkie into four-wheel drive, and began the climb.

It rained constantly for the next week and a half, but I was on the mountain — sharing space with giraffe, zebra, impala, wildebeest, and baboons. We checked camera traps, and I began learning the landscape. Walking in wet boots and socks became the norm. Eventually, the weather cleared.

Using the program Distance, I had randomly placed ten transects across the reserve and was ready to begin walking them with Joe, the camp manager. Fortunately, Joe had previous experience conducting Barbary macaque surveys in Morocco and was no stranger to challenging fieldwork.

Some transects were manageable. Others were demanding. Two were extremely difficult. The vegetation was dense, the elevation steep, and the terrain thick with thorny trees and plants that seemed determined to deter us. But they didn’t.

We weren’t looking for baboons themselves, but for evidence of baboons. In this region, baboons are wary. Long before you’re close enough to see them, they’ve already moved on. So we documented their presence indirectly — by recording dung.

Across ten transects, we found three dung piles. I used that encounter rate to design a larger survey for the entire Vhembe Biosphere Reserve (VBR), a 30,700 km² region composed of diverse habitats.

Over the next nine months, I will walk 140 kilometers of transects in search of baboon dung, while also speaking with people who are struggling to live alongside the animals I admire so much. My hope is that together we can identify meaningful coexistence strategies and estimate the size and density of baboon populations throughout the VBR.

Each month, I’ll share an update: Have I obtained permission to walk transects on private property? If so, how many? What did I encounter along the way?

I’m deeply grateful for this opportunity and happy to share my journey with you.