Fiona Macleod
When tourists in the Letaba rest camp in the northern Kruger National Park saw an animal swimming furiously across the flooded Letaba River last Sunday, they thought it was a hippo. The river had breached the camp’s perimeter fence and the animal headed straight towards them.
As it emerged from the water, they discovered it was not a hippo but a bedraggled, exhausted lioness. She flopped down on the ground and growled while the tourists scattered.
“It seems she had got caught on an island when the river rose and had to swim to dry ground,” says Arrie Schreiber, Letaba’s senior ranger.
By the time Schreiber was alerted to the presence of the lioness in camp, it was dark and she had disappeared. The tourists locked themselves indoors for the night.
“We swept the camp on Monday morning and found her up against the fence in the eastern corner. She was panicking and very dangerous, so we had to shoot her.”
The lioness was one of the few animal casualties of the floods in South Africa’s premier game reserve. Scientists and rangers in the reserve say in contrast to the human misery brought by the extraordinary rains of the past six weeks, they have been a boon for the natural world.
The reserve’s “weather man”, Nick Zambatis, recorded an average of 490mm of rain at 22 of its 36 monitoring stations in February; figures for the other stations are unavailable because staff had to be evacuated. The figure is 570% higher than the normal February average of 86mm.
As the rains in the area continue, some of the rivers are rising even higher than when they first flooded in early February in what was dubbed the worst deluge in the past 100 years.
Senior scientist Leo Braack says the floods have cleansed the waterways of years of silting, caused by damming and the build-up of dense vegetation along the rivers. Alien vegetation like lantana and water cabbage has been washed away.
“The clear benefit has been to counter certain negative human impacts, brought about through damming rivers and regulating water flow,” he says.
Where the waters have receded, it looks like a giant mower has moved along the rivers, upturning huge trees and covering them with soggy vegetation. But already there are signs of new growth on banks and islands.
Braack, who lives about 500m from the Sabie River in Skukuza, watched as water swirled thigh-high through his house during the initial floods, robbing him of furniture and appliances. His garden became the refuge of small mammals, rodents and snakes, including a dangerous Mozambican spitting cobra.
While some of the smaller species may have taken a knock, says head ranger Antoinette van Wyk, it’s boom time for the large herbivores and for predators, who take advantage of the long grass to stalk their prey.
“Its also a good time for tourists, because the impalas, blue wildebeests and zebras are hanging around on the roads – they get foot rot from the wetness and don’t like the long grass. We get reports of lions, giraffes and elephant bulls on the roads. The elephants tend to sink in the mud because of their weight.”
Tshokwane section ranger Don English says burrowing animals like wild dogs, hyenas and jackals will not have been affected much by the floods because they don’t normally make their dens near rivers.
Hippos and crocodiles tend to head for quiet waters, so they’re turning up in unusual places. Last month a crocodile swam across the fence around Shingwedzi camp in the north of the park. The reptile was removed and released into the river.
English says there have been unusual sightings of birds, and water birds are having a field day. At the end of February, he rescued a Sooty Tern, a sea bird that spends most of its time on the wing over the sea, after it had been blown off course by cyclone Eline.
The scientists and rangers are keeping detailed records so the impacts of the floods can be documented. But, says Braack, “nature operates in cycles. There are lots of extremes, dry seasons are followed by wet seasons. We have to see these floods in that perspective.”