Winter has finally arrived, and it is bound to be a cold one in the bush!
We hope everyone enjoyed their month of May, and soaked up the last bit of the autumn weather.
Our month proved to be very productive, as we tackled our preparations for the dry winter months and the upcoming financial year-end.
We also hosted our annual Board Meeting at Ingwelala and celebrated the staff achievements for the year in our annual Awards Ceremony, and we got stuck in to some much-needed veld rehabilitation projects and firebreak preparations.
May brought us cooler temperatures, and quite a bit of wind. The bush is drying and thinning out rapidly, but there is still a lot of biomass in the bush.
Our Fire Danger Index has hovered between “Dangerous” and “Very Dangerous” levels, where it is now, so we urge you to please use extreme caution when making fires, and be conscious of the high fire risk at the moment.
Lowest Temp: 8.0°C (Avg: 13.7°C)
Highest Temp: 34.1°C (Avg: 28.2°C)
Rainfall for the month: 2.8mm
(Avg: 7.4mm)
Projects of the month:
Our main focus areas were:
- Annual financial year-end Board Meeting
- Annual Staff Awards Ceremony
- Argyle Boma rebuild completed
- Beacon Boma structural additions
- Continued refurbishment of the Recycling area
- Installation of the shop window decals
- Veld rehabilitation - Grewia thinning
- Manual firebreak clearing around all infrastructure
- Tree wrapping
- Upgrading of Road and Camp signs
- Invasive plant control progress monitoring
- Continued sightings monitoring and logging
- Continued work in the main garden at Reception
- Continued maintenance of the electric fence, roads, airstrip and river crossings
- Continued removal of trees and debris across roads
- Continued trimming of vegetation on the road verges
- Continued upgrades to Fire Fighting Equipment
Our Month Expanded:
Board Meeting and annual Staff Awards Ceremony
On Saturday, 18 May, we hosted our annual Board Meeting in the Ingwelala Boardroom. It was a productive day, where we prepared for our upcoming financial year-end and the new financial year starting in July. A massive thank you to the Board Members for coming through, and to all of our staff for the preparation and planning that went into hosting the meeting and putting together the board reports and packages.
Following this, we held our annual Staff Awards Ceremony to celebrate the achievements of the staff members and hand out the Long Service Awards for Ingwelala. This was accompanied by a boerewors roll braai, refreshments and cake.
A big thank you to all of the Ingwelala staff for everything that they do, as well as to the Board Members and Members for your contributions and constant support. Our Chairperson, Rory Kirk, presented these awards to the staff:
General awards:
Nonkululeko Makobong
Lesedi Leope
Tessa Woollgar
Nonkululeko Makobong
Lesedi Leope
Tessa Woollgar
Ruan du Preez
Tessa Woollgar
Nonkululeko Makobong
Lesedi Leope
Ruan du Preez
Nico Ras
Josh Hibbett
Willichia Venter
Tessa Woollgar
Congratulations to all of the above staff on their achievements!
Long Service Awards was the big event of the day, where we celebrated and thanked these staff for their dedicated long service to Ingwelala:
Dorries Molobela
Surprise Mathabela
Maria Mabunda
Raymond Monareng
Doreen Monareng
Convey Mashabane
Debrah Ngwenya
Patrick Sibuyi
Amelia Mahlalele
A special congratulations to those who were presented with Long Service Awards. It is a massive achievement, and we are so grateful for the many years of service put in to Ingwelala. It certainly wouldn’t be the same without you, and we are proud to have you as part of the Ingwelala Community. Thank you as well to the Members who attended and showed their appreciation for the staff - it was wonderful having you celebrate these milestones with us!
Debrah, Patrick and Amelia receiving 5 year awards
Convey, Doreen and Surprise receiving 10, 20 and 30 year awards
Raymond and Dorries receiving 25 and 35 year awards
Fire Protection
The Conservation Team has been hard at work manually clearing firebreaks around all infrastructure this month. This involves manually clearing biomass away from the bungalows, office spaces, buildings, staff accommodations, bomas, hides and sites, and extending a firebreak around the electric fence as well, in an effort to lessen the risk of fires breaking out or spreading in camp. This will hopefully be completed by June 30th.
Regardless, we urge you to be extremely cautious with fire - we are at the “Very Dangerous” level, so the fire risk is incredibly high. As a reminder, it is compulsory to have a fire drum at hand for each fire pit. We recommend an appropriate steel container that can extinguish a fire in build in braais. These can be custom made/purpose made to each design and size, available through Reception with opening a job card.
Tree Wrapping
A number of trees have recently been stripped of bark by elephants in the area. Most notably, multiple Marula and Knobthorn trees have been targeted in the last few months. Ring-barking, or the stripping of bark from trees, if substantial enough, can kill a mature tree fairly quickly as it destroys transport and defence layers in the tree. In an effort to combat this, the Conservation Team has been wrapping trees to try to prevent ring-barking on the larger trees in the area.
It is important to note that this will not prevent elephants from pushing these trees over - it will hopefully, however, slow the rate of ring-barking and keep more of the large trees protected and alive. This will be an ongoing process, where more and more trees are wrapped over time.
In this process, heavy-duty, galvanised wire is wrapped around the trees and attached using fencing staples to hopefully prevent elephants from accessing the bark with their tusks. It has been shown to have no negative effects on other animals like leopards, and while it might not look particularly appealing, it is an effort worth trying to hopefully prevent further losses. If you would like to get involved in this project, please email
Camp Signs
During the month, the process of replacing road and camp signs has been well underway. Ruan du Preez, Infrastructure and Compliance Manager, has started updating and replacing multiple camp and road signs, and installing some new signs where they have been needed. This included a new sign for Sibon on Argyle Road, and new signs at the gate, workshop, swimming pool, jungle gym, tennis court and in the Members’ Area.
There are many more signs to be installed, and we are incredibly grateful to Ruan for his hard work as he installs all of these signs himself. It is looking very smart, and we look forward to the finished project in the coming months.
Some of the new signage installed by Ruan
Invasive Plants Update
Following our treatment of various invasive cacti with biocontrol agents in the beginning of the year, we have been monitoring the progress of the various plants we have treated.
Excitingly, it seems the Prickly Pear plants have taken well to the treatment, as they seem to be starting to die off. This means it is time for us to harvest the biocontrol agents from these plants and use them to treat other Prickly Pears needing treatment.
The Queen of the Night cacti are also starting to respond to treatment, although they take a bit longer to die off, completely due to the size and structure of the cacti. However, this does not deter us - we can see signs of them starting to wane, including the yellowing and narrowing of their stems as the biocontrol agents have begun to settle in and reduce the moisture content of the cacti.
We are excited to keep monitoring them in the coming months, and look forward to the next batch of biocontrol treatments we will be able to do, using the biocontrol agents we can now harvest from the existing plants that are starting to die. We will keep you updated on progress as we go.
A Queen of the Night starting to narrow and change colour / A prickly pear, almost dead
Our Staff Member of the Month
This month it is only fitting to celebrate Dorries Molobela as our Employee of the Month! Dorries has just celebrated 35 years with Ingwelala as a Housekeeper, and we are incredibly grateful for her dedicated service to the Ingwelala Community.
Dorries is a hard-working, well respected member of the Ingwelala family, and we are proud to honour her with a 35 year Long Service Award this month!
Thank you, Dorries! You are amazing!
Notes from the Conservation Team
We will be continuing with our usual tasks as planned, but we have some exciting projects coming up that we’d love your help with! If you want to get involved with Tree Wrapping, Invasive Plant Control, or any other Conservation tasks, please let us know - we’d love to have your assistance. If you’d like, please also send in photos of any cats for our ID kits!
We are also looking forward to having you join us on a walk in the bush soon. If you’d like to book a walk, please note the following:
- A maximum of 8 people can book a walk at a time
- Walks are customised to each party’s interests (within reason)
- Walks are subject to availability and environmental conditions
- Walks are subject to age restrictions due to the Big 5 environment
And that’s all for this month! We look forward to seeing you again in June/July!
Josh and Tess
Words by Tess Woollgar. Images courtesy of Dave Annadale, John Llewellyn, Tess Woollgar, Josh Hibbett and Don Bowden