Top team to track lion

A PRIVATE specialised team has offered its help in tracking the lion which escaped from the Karoo National Park nearly a month ago.

Bidvest Protea Coin, a security solutions provider, sent a team of four to work with Karoo Park manager Nico van der Walt and his group of rangers and trackers to find the lion.

The park’s team had picked up the lion’s spoor about 110km in a north-westerly direction from the park last week, and they had hoped the rain would assist in providing the trackers with fresh spoor.

Bidvest chief operations officer Waal de Waal said: “We have one of only two choppers in the country fitted with forward-looking infra-red (FLIR), or thermal imaging infra-red cameras, which allows us to pick up heat signatures on the ground over a radius of 10km when flying at night.

“We will be joined by a drone pilot… equipped to fly at night. We hope the combination of FLIR and the drone will be able to get the rangers on the ground closer to the lion.

“We are happy to assist South African National Parks at no cost, with the hope that we can play a small role in seeing a happy outcome with the lion’s return to Karoo National Park.”

The lion was first spotted outside the park on February 15.

Van der Walt said the teams were searching between thicketed canyons, steep, rocky hills and mountain tops.

The search team also consists of about a dozen rangers and trackers sent in from Addo Elephant, Camdeboo and Mountain Zebra National Parks in the Eastern Cape.

Van der Walt welcomed the use of technology in the search.

“Should the aerial team be able to track the lion down overnight and keep an eye on him while the ground teams are resting, we will have a much better idea of where to continue our search, hopefully from much closer, in the morning. This will give us an advantage over the lion,” he said.