‘Painted dog’ is getting on well
Rare game on Komani’s doorstep can be seen at Wildschutsberg
But that is just where things went wrong. Although Greg has used the dart gun on many occasions without mishap, this time the dart hit the bone of the foreleg and a US vet visiting at the lodge said she thought it was broken.
To bring the injured animal to the vet in Komani was much more difficult than bringing one’s pet dog, “but the vet calmly did a wonderful job to put a pin into his leg and we were able to get him home while he was still sedated,” Harvey said.
He is doing well and walking on the injured leg.
Greg has had the Bengal tigers since they were cubs and they were hand-reared, but have since been encouraged to be wild. There are high hopes that they will breed as they came from the Free State, like the wild dogs and many of the other exotic animals, and the climatic and other conditions are very similar, so they are acclimatising well.
Wildschutsberg has also started a quagga breeding project, one of very few in the country. The quagga has the same DNA as the zebra, but it only has stripes on the head and shoulders and the rest of the body is white. The animals in the project are selected because of their light colour and fewer stripes and it is hoped that over many generations they will ul- timately be able to breed a quagga again as they have become extinct.
The only other such project in the Eastern Cape is at Shamwari.
The mountain zebra ( in Afrikaans), found in the Mountain Zebra National Park, near Cradock, is another sub-species that is darker and has more stripes and bigger ears.
There’s truly never a dull moment at Wildschutsberg, something new is happening every day.