Moholoholo Rehabilitation Center

Hello everyone,

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to visit the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, which is only a half hour away from my host family’s house. You may remember that Moholoholo brought a leopard to Dr. Roger’s clinic to check its sex and to see if it was pregnant. The leopard had been captured when a farmer had threatened to shoot the animal if it was not removed from his property. Moholoholo plans to release the leopard into an area where it is welcome. They will put a tracking collar on the leopard to detect its movements. If the leopard stays in one location for too long, then it is suspected that the leopard was shot or snared; Moholoholo may send out a team to check on the animal. Knowing about a leopard’s movements also provides crucial information about the effectiveness of the catch-and-release program. Research is currently being done to determine whether leopards are likely to return to the farm where they were captured.

From the moment I walked into the Center for the 3:00 p.m. tour, I was enveloped by the serenity that pervaded the grounds. Wild animals in cages, which would normally make me feel uneasy, surrounded me. However, the animals were so calm and beautiful that I could barely think of the fenced-in areas as ‘cages,’ but rather as ‘enclosures.’ The animals were here to heal. If they were permanently maimed and could not return to the wild, then they stay at Moholoholo as ‘ambassadors’ for their species. Guests to Moholoholo can get up close and personal with the animals to learn more about them and to value their conservation. Our tour guide described a program in which Moholoholo brings cheetahs to farmer meetings. The farmers are allowed to pet the cheetahs to build an appreciation for their beauty. After these encounters, farmers swear that they “will never shoot a cheetah again.” Examples like this demonstrate how education is one of the most important aspects of conservation.

Visiting Moholoholo gave me a new appreciation for the fragility of animals when faced with human environmental intrusions. For example, our guide described why vultures are critically endangered solely because of human activity. First, let me give you a little bit of background: scavengers such as vultures and hyenas will consume the remnants of a carcass after a predator has eaten its fill. This prevents the spread of disease. Without the vultures, humans and livestock would encounter serious health problems.

The native Africans believe that vultures are a source of good muthi in traditional African medicine. As I understand it, muthi is the equivalent of luck. Eating body parts of hyena and crocodile bring bad muthi, and eating vulture brings good muthi. As a result, natives will poison carcasses in order to kill large numbers of vultures. Poisoning a carcass not only affects the vultures in a certain area, because vultures have a network in which a vulture circling alerts other vultures many kilometers away about carcasses. There is a chain reaction of communication, bringing hundreds of vultures to a carcass; a single poisoned carcass can do massive amounts of damage. According to our guide, a record number of vultures were killed before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. What will save the vulture is education. If people can learn to appreciate vultures for their role in the biosphere, then perhaps people will reconsider before they poison a carcass.

I had some amazing experiences during my Moholoholo tour. Every time we passed an enclosure, we were told how that animal had come to be there. The vast majority of the stories were due to humans—such poaching, keeping the animal as a pet, circuses, or human involvement in the environment. When we visited the birds of prey, we were allowed to enter one of the vulture enclosures. One at a time, each of us in the tour put on a thick leather glove. We held my arm perpendicularly to my body and held a piece of mean in my hand. A vulture landed on my arm and ate the meat! When the vulture was on my arm, it spread its wings and flapped them to brace its landing. Its wingspan was quite impressive. I loved its long eyelashes and long, thin necks. The skin was so thin that I could watch the meet do down its esophagus! It was an incredible to see the vulture at such a close proximity without it being restrained (I had quite an amazing experience with a vulture that came into the clinic, but it was restrained the entire time. This story will come later.) Even watching the vulture from a distance was interesting. Some of them sat hunched over, with their long necks folded down to the middle of their bodies. I thought they looked like henchmen plotting our untimely demise. Others waddled around the enclose picking on the others. And some, much to my amusement, sat with their necks straight up, monitoring the current events with alert skepticism.

I saw lions, a leopard, a serval, a lynx, a cheetah, honey badgers, eagles, vultures, wild dogs, a baby white rhino, and a baby black rhino. I was allowed to pet a baby honey badger and I took a picture with the baby white rhino. All of the enclosed animals were very interested in us humans and were right up against the fences. We were allowed to go right up to them; I stood two inches from fully-grown lions!

When I left Moholoholo, I had a greater respect for how humans influence wildlife. I saw so many animals that were meant to be wild, but could no longer exist in their natural environments. I hope that many of you may have a similar experience in the future, because it was truly enlightening.

Sincerely,

Aria