Welcome to the NKOMBI quarterly newsletter, keeping you up-to-date with everything that has been happening in the past few months.

All the control burns are carried out during winter when the temperature is cool and the grass is dry in preparation for the summer rains that stimulate grass re-growth on the burn-sites. Our volunteers all gained hands on experience in burning both firebreaks and block burn’s, learning how to factor in wind direction, habitat type and control a fire to limit the chances of the fire becoming wild.

Unfortunately not all farmers are so concerned with controlling fires and on a number of occasions the Nkombi team stood on standby with wild fires approaching the perimeter of the farm. On one evening a fire managed to jump a tar road and alighted grass underneath our fence line but we were there to extinguish the flames. Everyone learnt the importance of burning firebreaks when Africa’s grassland is at its most vulnerable.

Game Capture

Winter is also the time when we live capture and translocate excess game from the reserve. Being in the middle of a drought we captured over 250 large mammals, which is higher than average to prevent overgrazing and increased competition of resources until the summer rains bless us at the end of the year. Nkombi Volunteers got the opportunity to work with Sean and Emma from ‘Vet Safari’ running curtains in the boma, injecting tranquilisers into Tsessebe, Blesbok and Impala, separating wildebeest herds in the crush and holding Blesbok outside the boma whilst the animals already on the trucks were arranged to enable the Blesbok to travel later that day...

Download the complete newsletter.

You require Adobe Reader to view this document.