Ecologist Paul Dutton and Spirit of the Wilderness - flying for conservation for over 41 years ... 

... against the proposed international airport at La Mercy and the negative impact this will have on one of the world’s largest roosting colonies of migrating barn swallows.  More about this in our next newsletter.

The Bateleurs have been busy!  We have already flown nine missions this year, and have another eight in the pipe-line, despite the fact that we had three weeks of holiday and three weeks of being off-line.  I apologise to our pilots who have not had requests for volunteers for some time, but due to our lines being down we had to resort to contacting individual pilots for missions.  We have now placed our faith in iBurst so you should be hearing from us much more often.

A number of missions from last year on which we still need to report are projects that we are providing with ongoing aerial surveillance, and below we give you the latest on them. These include flights for The Cape Leopard Trust, the Wild Coast, Pelicans, the Mhlatuze estuary for the Oceanographic Research Institute, plus Abrie Kruger flew another mission over the Brits Granite mines as part of our routine surveys for the Brits Bankeveld Bewarings Forum.

Unfortunately we are unable to describe in detail three very interesting missions that we flew for Working for Water as we have not yet received reports from the passengers.  We went to a considerable amount of work to arrange these flights which we assume contributed to the knowledge on just how badly certain alien invader plants are impacting on our environment.  We thank our pilots:  Morne Jonker for putting us in touch with Jean D’Assonville, who did two flights over the George area between the Gwaing and Kat Rivers, to determine the extent of pampas grass infestations; and Johan Ferreira who flew his Caravan in order to give as many as seven passengers from Working for Water the opportunity to survey the Hantam River System north of Calvinia to determine the infestation of Prosopis – this flight enabled Working for Water also to evaluate the impact of  their earlier work in the area;  and Jock Kannemeyer who flew a group of Working for Water personnel over Elandsbaai, giving them that so important aerial perspective.

In response to a request from Birdlife South Africa, Billy Greig flew a mission to help them and the Department of Environment and Tourism (DEAT) with an aerial inspection of an alleged illegal resort development near Nylstroom.  Although we have some good pictures from this flight during which members from the Department of Environmental Affairs in Limpopo were able to gather information and see this development for themselves, we cannot use them because “This investigation has now reached a stage where the Department has to decide as to whether or not they are going to institute criminal proceedings and unfortunately the photos can therefore not be used in any articles until the matter has been finalised.”   All this happened in October/November last year and it now seems, due to a multiplicity of factors complicated by staff changes, that it will be a very long time before the investigation is finalised in order for the matter to proceed to court.

Given this tardy investigation, one hopes that compliance with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations on the part of the owners - and due regard for the public participation process - will be insisted upon, at the very least. 

Another mission undertaken by The Bateleurs and flown by Avroy Shlain was to give Nick King and Pat Fletcher of the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) an overview of problems they are concerned about:  the site of the proposed De Hoop dam on the Steelpoort river (which flows into the Olifants) to establish whether work on the dam had already begun, as well as a look for themselves at the granite mining in the Brits and Rustenberg areas.

And now for environmental news beyond the southern African region.

Mike Fay is featured in the National Geographic again, in an article titled “Defending a Forgotten Herd” in the March 2007 edition.  I count myself lucky, and hope those of you who met him through us do too, to know this extraordinary man:  a fearless explorer and scientist who has become a legendary figure in African Conservation.  He gets things done!  I urge you to read his story ‘Ivory Wars’ with pictures by Michael Nichols.  It is very timely, very emotive and adds immensely, I think, to the issues and decisions facing those who have the fate of the elephant in their hands.  Of particular interest to those of us who regard flying as an integral tool for conservation, is the ‘note to readers’ at the end of the story.  In it is a seldom-made plea, I presume by the editor:  “In addition, an airplane is needed for daily surveillance.”  I wish The Bateleurs had the resources to give this support!   Page 154 in the same issue is devoted to “How to Help”.  The Wildlife Conservation Society and the African Elephant Conservation Fund are acknowledged by their inclusion, and on the next page pilot and Zakouma administrator, Luis Arranz, is commended for the survey flights he carried out.  We salute you all.

But before I finish with flying over other parts of our continent, I read with great interest in Save the Elephants (the e-mail news provided by Melissa Groo) a message with the subject “Some People Play Golf; We Save Elephants”.  The message included:  “While many of the aircraft (sic used for conservation and security purposes) are provided by local government, there are eight planes in countries throughout Africa that have been donated by Israeli, US and French aviation agencies with funding and co-operation by animal welfare and conservation organisations around the world.”  The article is long but I would like to quote one more bit:  “Bill Clark, chief of Interpol’s Working Group on Wildlife Crime, has privately headed up the project, working with a dedicated team of Israeli volunteer mechanics and pilots to restore old planes.  Clark has also co-ordinated with aviation suppliers in the US and France to supply two more light aircraft to Ghana and Kenya.”  If you would like to read the entire article you will find it at  http://www.themedialine.org/ .

I would like to say  THANK  YOU  again to all the pilots who have joined our ‘Volunteer Environmental Air Force’, especially those of you who have flown time after time and who have been generous beyond words with your expertise, your aircraft and your time.  Although it is late in the year for this message, we hope that there will be many more exciting missions for you to fly for The Bateleurs in 2007.

Here now are the missions that we can bring you in more detail.  When we were asked to help the South African Crane Working Group (SACWG) with their surveys of crane populations in far-flung areas of our beautiful country, Jay van Deventer, a Bateleur pilot and director, jumped at it – distances and difficult terrain are challenges to him.  We start with his story which concludes with some of the preparatory work that went into it: 

Bateleur pilot Jay van Deventer (left) with Bradley Gibbons, Project Co-ordinator of the Karoo Crane Conservation Project at the Graaff-Reinet airport

Identifying Breeding Sites for Cranes 

by Jay van Deventer 
    
"The Endangered Wildlife Trust approached The Bateleurs to assist them to locate breeding sites for Blue and Crowned Cranes in three of their research sites, specifically around Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape, Ugie in the southern Drakensberg and Wakkerstroom in northern Natal. The brief included locating nests with GPS co-ordinates and counting chicks and eggs.  As the pilot, that’s worth considering;  counting chicks and eggs!.
 
Much like the birds I was hoping to help, my Lambada motor glider has long wings and long legs.  Her 15m wingspan makes an emergency landing on roads severely dodgy, and at 14 l/h she will carry you at 100kts indicated airspeed for over 1500 kms before running out of unleaded petrol. That’s not shabby by any aviation standards, but it’s a long way without a hostess or an onboard toilet.  Setting off on day one the task involved 3500km’s straight line distances between destinations before starting to look for eggs. It wasn’t without some trepidation that I packed my computer, travel baggage and kite surfing equipment into the Lambada and headed off from Aviators Paradise for Graaff-Reinet.

To describe this mission as an adventure and a privilege would be an understatement. To tell about it unfortunately is beyond the scope of this note but perhaps one of the special moments ... After leaving early I arrived (via Bloem for refueling) around midday in Graaff-Reinet to meet Bradley Gibbons, the EWT Project Co-ordinator. Concerned about the scope of our planned survey area and the difficulty of spotting blue birds on grey rock, I decided to do a short ‘test’ sortie.  After blasting around the plateaus and valleys around Graaff-Reinet  Rienet well below 100ft agl for over an hour, we headed back without spotting a single crane.
 
On securing the aircraft for the night we drove into town, a little concerned and disappointed about the afternoon’s failure, to discover that I couldn’t check into the B&B because I had left my wallet in the plane.  Having imposed on Bradley to drive me back out of town to fetch my wallet we arrived at the airfield to witness - after the dearth of cranes - a dance of cranes. A mating pair of Blue Cranes was wandering around near the Lambada. On cue, the male decided to get frisky.  The female Blue Crane, confident in her monogamous relationship, (they mate for life) is a high maintenance lady. Before he got lucky he treated us to his spectacular courtship dance in the setting sun with my Lambada as a backdrop.
 
In conclusion we successfully found the breeding pairs and logged the location of the nests at all three sites. For those pilots amongst you, you actually can count crane eggs from an aircraft, but your passengers better have strong stomachs.  As a pilot I did some spectacularly rewarding flying, saw Blue, Crowned and Wattled cranes in some of SA’s most beautiful regions, searched for Bearded Vulture nests in the Berg and circled over massive dolphin pods and Great White sharks off the Wild Coast. The Bateleurs certainly get you out there but it beats the hell out of flying around the patch.”

This is one of the maps prepared beforehand by Jay, and below is a paragraph from one of his messages to SACWG personnel: 

“As you can see there is a bit of commuting to do, I anticipate around 30 hours of flying time (to put that in perspective a private pilots license can be achieved in around 40 hours flying time).  I anticipate weather problems, in point of fact we have not had a window of opportunity to do this mission in the last two months !! To accommodate this I have allowed the following week 11 to 14 to try and complete the mission if we have weather problems. I need you both to try and keep yourself flexible in terms of timing over this period, unfortunately we are in the hands of the gods (and global warming).”

Mark van Niekerk, Field Co-ordinator for the SACWG in the North Eastern Cape wrote the following : 

“This data is being used to determine the productivity of Grey Crowned Cranes, in an effort to fine-tune conservation actions of the species and ensure its long term survival.  Little current information is available on the productivity of these birds, and there have been large declines in their numbers over the past decade. Most of the information on the species is anecdotal in nature, making it imperative to determine current information in order to adjust conservation strategies and address the threats facing the species.

The mission on the 6th December proved very successful indeed, with a total of 13 nests located.  One nest contained three eggs, while at three of the nests the chicks had already hatched. At two of the sites where chicks had hatched, three of the chicks were present.  The remaining nest contained two chicks. Follow up visits to these sites will be conducted to establish the survival rate of the fledglings and the chicks.  This will help to establish the number of birds recruited into the adult population.   An added bonus to the flight was the sighting of a pair of Wattled Cranes  -  this was one pair of an estimated five pairs, only, in the entire North Eastern Cape!”

Bradley Gibbons of the Karoo Crane Conservation Project provided these comments: 

“An aerial survey was undertaken on 05 December 2006, between 06:30 and 09:30, to locate pairs of Blue Cranes in the Nieu-Bethesda area in the Karoo. The mission was flown by Jay van Deventer of The Bateleurs, in a 2-seater ultra light aeroplane.  We flew over areas that cannot be reached by vehicle because of the hilly terrain and vast distances.  The area contained ideal Blue Crane habitat in the valleys around Nieu-Bethesda.  This data is required for a Blue Crane breeding project undertaken for the Darwin Initiative.  It would have taken many hours and many litres of diesel to locate these pairs, nests (as well as possible nests that could not be confirmed from the air) and the chicks.  Our thanks go to The Bateleurs for making this possible.”

And then, from Wakkerstroom in Mpumalanga, we received the following report from Glenn Ramke:

“Many years have been spent traversing kilometres of roads and talking to dozens of landowners in my quest for the flocks and nesting pairs of Blue and Grey Crowned Cranes still making the highveld grasslands their home range. But there are limitations to many areas and except for the observations of farmers, far fewer sightings would be recorded.  Then along comes the wonderful goodwill of people prepared to give of their time and the use of their own aircraft, and in a few short hours many of the ravines and far off wetlands can be monitored, and included or excluded as sites where cranes are to be found.

The ideal would be to have one’s own aeroplane to be able to do this sort of thing at will,  but as this is not a reality, the next best thing is to have the expertise and willingness of the volunteer pilots from The Bateleurs who give us this added option for the work we undertake.  The enjoyment of my flight was heightened by the confidence I felt in my pilot, who was thoroughly professional, very friendly, and dedicated to making the whole experience exceptionally pleasurable.

In gratitude on behalf of the Cranes, I thank you all for your time and effort and hope you will be able to continue your great service to all aspects of conservation for many years to come.”

To add to all the above, pilot Kim Robertson flew the fourth mission to look for crane nests, in KwaZulu-Natal.  Here is the report from Andre Roussouw of the KZN Biodiversity Programme at the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), who also provided the photograph (abvoe) of a Grey Crowned Crane on a nest:

“On Wednesday the 13th of December 2006, Kim Robertson and I took off from Howick airfield at 06:00 in the morning.  Our mission … to find Grey Crowned Crane nest sites. Grey Crowned Cranes build their nests with dry material from the wetlands. A large mound of this material is built up to form a protective moat. The nests are very difficult to locate from the ground but can easily be spotted from the air.  During the flight we covered the wetlands in the Howick/Mooi River area, and located three new Grey Crowned Crane nests, two Blue Crane nests and a Wattled Crane nesting in the Gilboa area. This known Wattled Crane site has not been used for a considerable time and it is extremely exciting to see it being used again. Furthermore, a number of Cranes (all three species) were spotted feeding during the flight.  Many thanks to Kim and The Bateleurs for this invaluable service and their considerable contribution towards the conservation of the Cranes of South Africa.” 

The Wild Coast Team at the East London Airport.  From the left:   Peter de Villiers, Rob Stegmann, the Colonel, and Barry de Groot

Following another of our monitoring flights over the Wild Coast  we received this Report from Rob Stegmann, now with the Eastern Cape Parks Board: 

"On the 1st December 2006, standing at the Margate Airfield with a cloud base at 1200ft, with intermittent rain, I wondered if I was going to be hearing the drone of the approaching aircraft belonging to Barry de Groot and his partner Peter de Villiers.  With all the last minute arrangements having miraculously fallen into place and finding myself without a substitute plan for getting back to East London, I was quite relieved to see ZS-AFP land and taxi up to the fuel pump. Barry warned his passengers (a former SAPS Colonel currently employed by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) in East London, and me) after casting his eye skywards, that the weather did not look too promising for flying.
 
But Barry decided he would give it a go and shortly thereafter we were rolling down the runway.  Then we were up in the air and on our way coast-wise along the Wild Coast towards East London.  The purpose of our flight was to undertake an aerial survey of the illegal cottages along the Wild Coast as part of the government’s effort to curb illegal developments that are halting the potential for sustainable development.  Without the help of The Bateleurs we would have to spend a month on foot patrolling the coast and only then commence with a law enforcement exercise to follow-up on the illegal developments.  This would be time consuming and we would not achieve our desired results - the perpetrators would already have left by the time we arrived to investigate the original survey findings.

This flight was unique in that a group of dedicated men committed to conserving the Wild Coast was awaiting the results of the survey in order to travel to the identified hotspots and tackle the problems manifested by the survey.  Soon after the Wild Coast Sun disappeared below the windscreen we located the old silk screen movie site used by Leonardo de Caprio ... rehabilitation of the site appeared quite impressive from the air.  Time and again I saw familiar sites where cottages were broken down and I described to all aboard ZS-AFP the arrests of their owners, and the accommodation provided by the State for these people.   These stories could have come out of an adventure book that would keep audacious minds reading on and on ... Then we flew past Water Fall Bluff and Cathedral Rock, standing as though frozen in time.

While I noticed that most of the problem areas on the north eastern part of the Wild Coast had been addressed, our flight identified a total of 38 matters in need of attention.  These included the construction of new shelters and structures, sand mining pits, illegal camping within the coastal conservation area, the clearing of sand dunes, the quarrying of gravel, and the ever-present slash and burn operations carried out by local people under the misguided notion that they will have better harvests if the forests are cleared for their crops.

The sand mining sites on the Wild Coast identified during this flight will form part of a separate report to be sent to the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs (DMEA) for follow-up and investigation. 

One or two of the areas that had been identified during an earlier survey by the ground crew were old and needed no further investigation, including the quarry site at Agate Terrace. Despite the heavy rain that had occurred during most of the earlier ground operation, the team had been able to undertake a considerable amount of work.  A second ground operation has been planned for mid December and this will tackle hotspots along the remainder of the Wild Coast, identified during this flight.  However, before the second ground operation is undertaken several arrests are planned.  These will be effected soon, if they have not already been made.
 
On finals into East London I thought over our trip and commended Barry on his superb flying skills which will place him in the annals  of the flying fraternity and carve his name in time.

As we neared the Kei River one of the Big Six, a large whale, lay capsized on the beach in the shallows of the surf zone.  I wondered if we were ever going to be able to turn the tide and pass on some remnants of our heritage to the next generation.  It is not only the people wearing a khaki uniform and wandering lonely areas who will make a difference.  As great a good will be achieved by those serving behind the scenes in organisations with a noble calling.  I salute the members of The Bateleurs and thank you for the work you are doing."