City of Cape Town nature conservation officials have at last captured the elusive young male hippo that escaped from the Rondevlei Nature Reserve in February this year.
It took six darts and a three-and-a-half hour chase in the dark through reed beds and deep water in the small hours of Thursday morning to get the 800kg animal under control.
The hippo escaped when a section of the reserve’s fence was destroyed during the night-time theft of an excavator from a waste water treatment works, and made Zeekoevlei, edged by suburban homes, its new home.
Since then, conservation officials have tried repeatedly to lure the hippo back into the reserve, or to dart it, staking out the vlei by night and enlisting the aid of a helicopter by day.
Council spokesperson Charles Cooper said the animal spent Thursday afternoon in a boma and was recovering from the after-effects of the drugs.
Its future was being negotiated, but it would probably be transported to a game reserve in the Eastern Cape as there had been clashes between the young male and Rondevlei’s older, dominant male hippo.
Reserve manager Dalton Gibbs said: ”Considering that hippos are only caught passively on land, this capture operation in water was a challenge.
”It went off chaotically, but extremely well. We have learnt a lot about hippo behaviour in very difficult and unusual circumstances. Should this problem ever arise again, for whatever reason, we are far better equipped to deal with it since we have worked through all the alternatives.”
The hippo was the first to escape from Rondevlei since hippos were re-introduced there in 1981. – Sapa