MANAGERS REPORT

Dear Friends and Colleagues

The Lodge

From all of us here at the Lodge, we hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and we would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a fantastic New Year ahead for 2008.

As of this month we have launched our new website, very fitting as we approach the 10th year mile stone that the Lodge has been open. I hope you all agree it is not only stunning, but even more user friendly than before. We have embraced technology and now have the ability to upload the Rangers Reports directly from the Lodge, and in time, as soon as we have mastered it, hope to be able to update the pictures on a regular basis, and bring you even more updated information on life at the Lodge. www.leopardhills.com

After all the rain we have had, the Lodge is looking stunning and with all the lush green vegetation, blends into the surroundings. We are hoping for good follow up rains before the end of the season to put us in god shape before the onset of winter.

Employee of the Month

As we wrap up the year, it is with great pleasure we can announce June Dhlamini as our Employee of the Month for December. Well done, and the good news winning the December award is that you only have to give back your Employee of the Month Badge next year!!!! Also very pertinent is the fact that June has been with us since the Lodge opened nearly 10 years ago.

Community Development

We have unfortunately had a very frustrating time on the Community Development side of things this month. Having planned so hard to get everything in place to build over the Christmas period while the kids are out of school, we were aiming to have everything in place for the opening in January. However we have been delivered a huge blow from certain individuals, wielding powers in the form of the Community Development Forum, CDF. Having completed the fencing around the perimeter and having the builder and supplies ready to be delivered, we have been told to stop everything, because certain individuals within the CDF are not happy for us to build at this particular location. What astounds me more is the fact that these individuals do not reside within the Dumphries Community, but in a Community area further away from the boundaries of the Reserve, where their own children have access to schools and day care facilities, and they do not face the same dilemmas as the children from the Dumphries A Community, whom we have committed to help uplift. We have worked very closely with the local community on this Project and have the full support of them to build on the site that has been designated, only the Chief can now overrule the CDF on their ruling in this matter, and this is now our next step. We have requested a meeting with the Chief and are awaiting feedback as to when this will happen, hopefully early in the New Year, and hopefully we can begin the New Year with a positive outcome to this saga once and for all.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed so much to this project, for your patients and understanding. The one thing I will guarantee is the fact we will succeed in the end. It would be so easy to walk away and be done with it, but that being the point, it is the easy option. We have committed ourselves to making a difference in the community and we are not going to give up now. At the end of the day we are doing this for the children and it is unfair for them to suffer as a result of selfish beaurocrats, we will not let that happen.

I would like to make special mention of Andrew and Julie Bell and thank them for their wonderful donation towards the Community Development Fund. Andrew ran the Dublin Marathon in his best personal time of 3 hrs and 46 mins, and with the help of sponsorship of family and friends, managed to raise a significant amount of money for such a good cause.

Thank You

As we close the year we would like to thank a number of people for making the year so successful, and there are too many people who have contributes to this to mention everyone. Firstly I would like to thank the Leopard Hills Team on the ground here at the Lodge, who have worked tirelessly to achieve what has been our best year yet, thank you to you all. Secondly, to everyone at our Reservations Office, Kelly and the Team have been outstanding in their hard work and dedication over the year. Finally a big thank you to everyone at the Seasons In Africa Marketing Office for the incredible efforts over 2007 and the hours and hours spent travelling the world to put the Leopard Hills name out there, well done to you all.

Rangers Report

I am going to hand you over to Marius for this months Report, the last for 2007, as we look ahead to a very special 2008 for Leopard Hills and all its Staff and Guests. As always thanks to Marius for his pictures used in the Report, and thank you to Gavin Crighton for his picture of the Hippo herding the Buffalo out of the waterhole.

Take Care and kind regards.

Duncan and Louise Rodgers
Operations Director and General Manager

Rangers Report

The month of December was for all of us a very festive month and the African bush provided us with many early presents. Almost daily we saw fantastic sightings of all the big cats and on many occasions we saw different species of predators in the same sighting.

We had no less than 7 cheetah sightings which is a record for many years now and the female cheetah and her cub were seen on a regular basis

Leopard

With no less than 44 different leopard sightings in the last month we had an absolute feast in viewing. Raymond, Hannes and his guests were very privileged to see 3 different leopards in one sighting. The Wallingford male leopard, the Tai Dam female leopard and her 7 month old cub were all seen on an impala kill on an afternoon safari.

Hannes and his tracker tracked down a young male leopard one morning. The leopard was walking around in circles clearly looking for something, maybe a kill or the scent of a rival leopard. Eventually they found some blood and stomach contents and kept on following the leopard on his scent trail. The grass was really long but the leopard was still tracking and as he came close to a bush a hyena came rushing out running away from the kill that he clearly stole from the leopard. The leopard took his chance; rushed in and stole back the rest of his kill and successfully hoisted the kill up into a nearby tree.

My guests and I were treated to an awesome show of strength and power from a young sub-adult leopard. The leopard was no other than Makwela’s youngster and is known to many of our guests. On an afternoon safari my tracker Abraham spotted her lying in a Marula tree just after we left Camp. As we went off-road we came across 2 warthog piglets running away from us. We watched the leopard for about 40 minutes lying and walking around the tree before we moved off in search for more animals.

On our way back to camp that evening I got a call over the radio from one of my colleagues that the leopard had caught one of the piglets we saw only hours earlier. When we arrived at the scene the leopard sat up in a Jackal Berry tree with her kill. She suddenly dropped it and went down the tree in a flash to retrieve it before any hyenas could steal it. Then she picked it up with her mouth and climbed 15 meters back into the tree. Then in true leopard style she jumped from one tree trunk to the next with the dead warthog dangling from her mouth. After finding a secure place for her kill she lay down and enjoyed her hard earned meal in peace.

Cheetah

We had some of the most special cheetah sightings that I have seen in the 4 years that I have been working in the Sabi Sands. The male cheetah that visits us every month had a month of bad fortune. Gary and his guest watched him speeding after an impala one afternoon but unfortunately missed. The next morning he caught a wildebeest calf just to loose it minutes later to 2 hyenas that were waiting nearby. At the end of the month my guests and I were fortunate to view the cheetah again, after a group of blue wildebeest gave its presence away.

After an extensive search for more than an hour, a group of wildebeest kept on charging forward towards a nearby bush. On closer investigation we found the cheetah moving fast through the bush. On his travels he came across a journey of giraffe and a grumpy buffalo bull wallowing in the mud. Finally he found what he was looking for a group of impala, we watched the cheetah stalking and were right in the middle of the action as he chased the impala only meters away from our game viewer vehicle. He missed again and after a while had a go at another herd once again with out success and I had hoped that he would have made a kill later in the day.

Hannes and his guest watched a female cheetah and her 8 month old cub feeding off an impala kill that she killed the previous night. While she and her cub were feeding a couple of white-backed vultures started to circle above them. As the vultures came too close she jumped into the air trying to chase them away. After about half an hour there were about 40 vultures. They moved forward and as they approached closer and closer she and the cub finally ran off.

Lion

Another month of phenomenal lion viewing for our guests and ourselves as we had the privilege of seeing all three of our lion prides and the coalition of the Mapogo male lions on a regular basis.

All prides had an absolute feast on all the plains game and their new born young. The Shalala pride had another battle with their age old enemy the Southern Hyena clan. Once again the lionesses got overpowered after 15 hyenas chased them of their kill.

The Mapogo male coalition of six lions made a brief visit in the beginning of the month. The coalition has unfortunately spent most of the month east of our traversing area as they mated with yet another pride of lions. On an afternoon safari Gary and his guests saw one of the male’s feeding off a warthog piglet that he caught just minutes before they arrived -who says male lions don’t do their own hunting ??

Buffalo

The big herd of about 500 Cape buffalo spent most of the month in our traversing area. Our guides and their guests had many hours of great viewing of these massive bovids. On a morning safari Gary and his guest saw about 200 buffalo drinking water at a one of our dams. Two hippos that were lying inside the water were not very happy with the intruders in their dam and the male hippo promptly made it his task to remove the buffalo. He gently nudged a couple of relaxing buffalo out of the water.

Rhino

Plenty of rhino were seen in the last month. The crash of 7 rhino spent most of the time in the central part of our traversing area. We had many rhino sightings in the North which is good news for us as most of our rhino sightings normally come from the Southern part of our reserve.

Elephant

As in previous years the month of December was a tough month for us regarding elephant viewing. Most of the herds moved east towards the Kruger National Park on their migratory routes and we are anticipating their return soon. We still had regular sightings of all the bulls in the area.

Specials

We had another great sighting of serval in the last month. Hannes and his guests saw two white-tailed mongoose mating which is a very special sighting indeed.

Kind Regards
Marius, Hannes, Gary and Raymond

Sightings totals for the Month

Leopard:44 Lion:42 Cheetah:7 Elephant:36 Rhino:27 Buffalo:11 Serval:1

Note: The above sightings totals reflect the number of individual sightings of animals, not populations of animals in the area. e.g. If we see a herd of 12 buffalo this is noted as one sighting. These sightings are then tallied to get the figure reflected above.