We hope that July was an enjoyable month for everyone, and that the temperatures weren’t too cold!
It was a busy month for us, as usual, and we enjoyed having the camp nice and busy for the last bit of the school holidays. We also celebrated World Ranger Day on 31 July.
This month was filled with diverse projects, including everything from electric fence repairs to swimming pool repairs, gardening, bush walks, stone cairn upgrades and bird list creating. Temperatures were very cold for a week or two in the beginning of the month, and the last week of the month we experienced mostly overcast weather and extreme wind.
Our Fire Danger Index has been mostly at the “Moderate” level, and with the severe winds and very dry conditions we urge you to be cautious when making fires, as usual.
Lowest Temp: -1.5°C (Avg: 7.9°C)
Highest Temp: 34.9°C (Avg: 28.9°C)
Rainfall for the month: 0.0mm
(Avg: 5.5mm)
Projects of the month:
Our main focus areas for June were:
- Fire Risk Management - burning stack piles of old thatching grass
- Ingwelala Bird List
- Animal intervention Attempt: Snared hyena on Buffelsbed
- Aloe treatment in the garden at Reception
- Sibon and Ingwelala fence repairs
- Final additions to the Recycling area completed
- Installation of new safety showers
- Repairing and upgrading of road/sign cairns
- Swimming pool repairs
- Sightings logging and monitoring, as usual
- Water conservation, as usual
- Continued verge trimming and tree clearing
- Continued work in the garden area at Reception
- Road and airstrip maintenance
- Bush walks continued
- Introducing new Staff Profiles on the website
- Storage facilities: moving Bungalows in and out of storage
Our Month Expanded:
Fire Risk Management: Burning stack pile materials
As part of our Fire Risk Management strategy, we eliminate any stack piled materials that may become a fire risk through the dry season. This includes any thatching material not used for brush packing, any excess paper/wood items that cannot be recycled, and any large invasive plants that have been removed from the area.
To eliminate this risk, we do a controlled high intensity burn of the stack piled materials. Our first burn was in June, followed by the second burn in July. This involves the Conservation team, with all our fire-fighting equipment, setting the materials alight and moving the materials around creating air pockets until the pile has completely burned away safely.
Thank you to the Conservation team for their hard work through the intense heat of the burn. The burn was successful, and we plan to burn more as and when necessary.
Animal Intervention Attempt: Snared Hyena
Following a report of a snared hyena on Buffelsbed from Bungalow #8 on the evening of 10th of July, the Conservation team and the Warden of the Umbabat rushed out to assess the situation and mobilise a team to treat the hyena as quickly as possible.
We managed to catch up with the Members fairly quickly, who had stayed with the hyena until we could arrive. Thank you to Bungalow #8 for calling us so quickly and for staying with the hyena until we could arrive! The hyena had a snare deeply embedded into the neck region. Unfortunately, the hyena crossed into the Kruger National Park through the bush, and we could not keep up with it for long enough for a veterinary team to come out and treat it immediately.
The hyena with a snare around its neck: 10 July 2024After a further 3 hours of searching and trying to find it again, it was decided that we would bring a vet out the following day to do a call-up in the same area, hopeful that the hyena had not moved too far and would re-surface for us to treat it. The call-up process involves the team heading out at night with the veterinarian, where we chain a harvested carcass to a tree (so it cannot be removed from designated darting area by other hyenas or predators), drag a trail of the carcass smell from surrounding roads towards the carcass, and then audio of hyenas feeding is played intermittently over a speaker mounted above the carcass. This encourages hyenas in the area to investigate, hopefully drawing out the snared one in the process. A massive aid in this is the use of a thermal imagery camera, which eliminates the need for us to use spotlights when checking each hyena for a snare around the neck.
Unfortunately, even with many hyenas immediately responding to the call-up, after 5 and a half hours the snared hyena still had not shown itself. It seems the hyena has probably left the area or was not a local hyena (one that was wandering through as opposed to part of a resident clan). We are still looking for the snared hyena, but unfortunately no further sightings have been called in. Should reports or sightings re-surface, we will call the veterinary team out as quickly as we can to attempt treatment once again.
Various heyenas viewed and photographed using thermal technology during the call-up
Aloe Treatment in the Garden
Over the years, you may have noticed that the various aloe species in the garden at Reception sometimes have a white “scaley” growth on them. The scale you can see is actually from insects and their eggs, which have been particularly prevalent this year, and can easily kill the aloes if left untreated. To remove the scale, we have been treating the aloes with a highly effective and low toxicity scale-specific insecticide designed for safe use on plants.
The process of treatment involves diluting the product in a spray bottle, spraying the solution all over the affected parts of the aloe (it must cover the entire surface of the scale and eggs), and then polishing the surface of the aloes with soft cloths afterwards. This has proven to be highly effective, and almost all the scale has been removed from the aloes. The scale is bound to come back over time, so this is a process we will go through whenever the scale re-emerges. Thank you to the Conservation interns for taking this project on - we really appreciate all your effort with the countless aloes in our beautiful garden!
Fence Repairs: Sibon and Ingwelala
Elephant pressure on the fence has increased through the dry season, as is expected. Elephant bulls, in particular, are attempting to get into the fenced areas to access fresh water and food.
This has resulted in some damage to the fence, earth mats and the gate support structures at both Wahlberg’s Gate and Giraffe Gate in July, and to the perimeter fence at Sibon as well. Our Conservation team has been hard at work replacing knocked-over poles, snapped wires, ripped-up earth mats and live floor mats, as well as whole sections of the Sibon fence where an elephant bull broke through during the month.
In each instance, all damage has been fixed within a few hours, which has been a massive help in reducing further pressure on the fence structures. As mentioned above, increased pressure on the fence is expected through the dry season, as the plants in camp will be more plentiful and nutritious than the plants outside of camp, and the water quantity and quality is also better in camp. Naturally, the elephants can smell this and will try their luck with the fences.
We will continue to monitor the situation and repair any damage as quickly as we can. On the positive side, regardless of the damage done in July, the elephants did not break through the Ingwelala camp fence!
Final Additions to the Recycling Area
We are so happy with our refurbished recycling area and can finally say the last additions are in place: a new latch for the door, and our new signage!
Our recycling area is one of the most important facilities on Ingwelala, and we want to make sure that we make good use of it and keep it sanitary, neat and efficient. You’ll see either Nellie or Timothy at the recycling area to assist you with offloading your waste. They also assist with further recycling efforts by making sure all refuse has been sorted into the correct categories.
Please make sure that your waste is sorted correctly and is placed in the relevant area(s) of our recycling space if Nellie or Timothy are not around to assist you. The main categories of waste are: Metal, Paper, Glass, Plastic and Organic. If something you are throwing away does not fit into these categories, please place it to the side facing the carpark (the front of the building), where our team will handle it accordingly. Thank you, and happy recycling!
New Safety Showers
Once again, Ruan has outdone himself by installing brand new safety showers for our team - both at the Workshop and at the Conservation Office - areas where someone might be exposed to chemicals and/or acids.
These safety showers are freely accessible and very easy to use, and our staff have been trained accordingly in case there is any need for someone to use one of the new showers. We are incredibly pleased with how well they function. Thank you, Ruan, for doing such a brilliant job of the installations, and for making Ingwelala even safer. We appreciate you!
Upgrading and Repairing of Cairns
Multiple of the stone cairns in camp have been re-done or upgraded over the month, and others are still under construction. Some of this comes from the signs and structures simply needing to be updated or their positions moved, while others come from incidents where cairns have accidentally been knocked over by vehicles during the busy season.
Ruan and the Maintenance team have been hard at work repairing and upgrading them, along with the updated signage, and they are looking great! This is not an easy job and takes quite a bit of time to balance and support the stones correctly, so thank you all for your hard work! If you spot a cairn or sign that you think is looking tired, or perhaps needs a facelift, please feel free to let us know. We will do what we can to get them all into tip-top shape! Thank you.
Swimming Pool
For those of you that were here towards the end of the month, you may have had a swim in our half-full swimming pool or seen our teams hard at work in and around the pool itself. We had a leak in a jet pipe underneath the decking that needed attending to.
Fixing the leak was a 5-day event where the Maintenance and Conservation teams dropped the water level, removed the relevant decking, dug to expose the pipe, replaced the necessary section of the pipe and covered everything back up. This also presented a great opportunity for a deep-clean of the bottom of the swimming pool at the same time, and to clean out the drains at the deep end of the swimming pool.
We then re-filled the pool over the course of another 4-5 days. Thank you for your patience while we tackled this task. We can happily report that the leak is repaired, and the water pressure in camp is back to normal!
Storage Units
This month has been particularly busy for the Conservation team - our storage units are full, and we have been busy moving Members’ items to and from bungalows/storage units for re-builds and re-thatches. We have also had many requests for storage units, so we wanted to include a section here on how to book a storage unit and what is required for you to book one, if you might need one.
If you’re looking to potentially book a storage unit, you can email Reception or the Conservation team at
There is also a Storage indemnity form that must be signed, along with a stock sheet of all items going into storage. These must be signed and completed by you before we can move any of your items. Please also note that we cannot pack the bungalow up or wrap items for you in the moving process. All packing/sorting/packaging must be completed by the Member before the arranged day of moving. Once all is in order, the Conservation team will assist you with moving your items into storage using our truck and bakkie.
We unfortunately cannot assist you with moving items off the reserve (e.g. to Hoedspruit) for storage purposes. We hope this information helps!
Notes from the Conservation Team
We would like to thank everyone that has joined us on a bush walk during the last 2 months. Some highlights from walks so far:
- Lions on a kill Multiple elephant sightings
- Multiple buffalo sightings
- 2 Sharpe’s Grysbok sightings
- Plenty of general game, including giraffe, zebra, impala, nyala, kudu, steenbok, hyena, klipspringer and duiker
- Artefacts found: a grinding stone, pottery pieces and stone tools
- Highlight tracks: Aardvark, lion, leopard, civet, honey badger, porcupine and wild cat
Some highlight phrases uttered so far, that absolutely made our day:
- “This buffalo dung feels like cake!”
- “You’re joking - there aren’t really lions are there?”
- “Isn’t the mermaid a bit far from the sea?”
- Us: “Is there anything you’re afraid of encountering?” - reply: “No, these people are all slower than me!”
There will also be a Conservation Work Party over the long weekend in September: please see the flyer linked to the card on the home page for information if you’d like to join us in the field.
Please also see the “Food for Thought” section if you want to read about the importance of protecting soil in the bush. Thank you!
Josh and Tess
Words by Tess Woollgar. Images courtesy of Tess Woollgar and Wimpie Pretorius