About life, work & fun in Hwange
Chobe River Front refers to the National Park along the Chobe River being the border between Botswana and Zambia. The road basically follows the river where we saw loads of elephants and buffaloes, as well as lechwes, zebras and wildebeest and numerous...
Hi there! This is it, 4 years after starting the Hwange Hyaena Project for my PhD I am done. I defended in Lyon on the 10th of July and had all my family and friends to celebrate the end of this long but awesome journey! I'm happy but sad at the same...
Yeterday I drove to Guvalala in a hope to get some data from the collared hyaena. Elephants were drinking at the pan as the sun was setting behind thunderstrom clouds, it was stunning! Then I saw a group of impalas running at full speed. I thouhgt "mmm...
Hi there! Starting from March 2015, I'll be working in South Africa as a post-doctoral fellow for the Bat-eared fox Research Project!! This project is part of the Mammalian Cognition Research group from the University of the Free state in the Qwaqwa Campus....
Last October, a French TV crew came to film us doing our job in the bush. they stay with us for nearly a month and were there during the big capture operation to deploy collars on elephants, buffaloes and zebras. They were even lucky enough to assist...
So for about 2 weeks I stayed in Clarens, a small village at the foot of the Golden Gate Highland Np that I had to cross to get the University of the Free State( UFS) campus in Qwaqwa. Clarens is a really lovely village full of restaurant, breweries,...
If there is a place you have to visit when travelling in Northern Nambia it's this one!! Palmwag conservancy is well known for its desert elephants but we discovered many other species and landscapes worth seeing. There is one tiny part of the concession...
Moremi is literally packed with water, so we saw many hippos but surprisingly very few crocs. Game is also plentiful with lechwes everywhere, zebras, wildebeests, waterbucks and a few reedbucks. We were not lucky enough to see any sitatungas though......
No no, I'm not talking about birds or ungulates, but of French researchers!! As the rains start to pour on Hwange, bringing the bush back to life, we usually go back to the cheese, bread and all the nice food country! Plus, it's the festive season and...
The last stop of our trip was in Etosha NP for 2 nights. It was pleasant to see a bit higher concentration of wildlife there. We stayed at the Okakuejo & Halali campsites, both managed by NWR. Okakuejo has been renovated recently, but Halali would do...
We reached the coast at Henties Bay, and after refueling the car, we headed to Cape Cross, famous for it's Cape fur seal colony. Even though it was neither the breeding (October) or puping (December) season, hundreds of seals were resting on the beach...
Just came back from 2 weeks in SA. I spent a week in Kruger NP for the annual Savanna Science Network meeting, where everyone working on savanna ecosystems, from plants to mammals, birds, fire & management present their work and join to discuss their...
Coming out from the Damaraland rocky desert, we got to Twyfelfontein. We first passed by the Burnt Mountain and then by the Organ Pipes at the bottom of a river bed. We spent the night at the Aba Huab campsite and went to see the 2 000 to 6 000 years...
Fieldwork on the airstrip on impala vigilance behaviour. Trying to understand how herbivores cope with predation risk and competition for food. François & Oliv filming impala Perfect filming conditions (doesn't happen that often...) François & oliv: impala...
2 months after being back to Europe, maybe it's a good time to give you an update. My mission to remove the collars was a complete failure... I had everything (dart gun, darts, drugs, car etc) except for bait and Park rangers... So no collar was retrieved......
After Messum crater, we headed East then North up to the Ugab river again. We followed it for a while then crossed over in the desert towards Doros crater and river. We didn't go to the crater and before we hit the river, we found a wonderful place to...
We spotted her lying in the open plain as we were drving to Dom. Of course, I couldn't resist, so I got closer. It was not so easy to see her in the bushes hey! However, we were on a hyaena mission, so we resumed our drive to Guvalala, really happy with...
One of the reasons I really wanted to go back to Namibia was to return to the Spitzkoppe mountain. It's a group of orange rock formations in the middle of a flat desertic plain, and in my memory it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen....
A pride of 15 femelles and sub-adults feeding on a young elephant killed the previous night. Eventhough, they were more than well fed because they also found a big ele carcass at the same place, they still looked interested in a herd of buffaloes coming...
Here is the logo of my project design by Robin: I need to deploy some GPS collars on Hyaena so I'll be able to know where they've been and how they move. We thereofre need to dart them and put them to sleep to work safely. We cover eyes and ears to limit...
Here are a few pictures of Lucky, our new resident male in the Main Camp area. From a very cute cub to a mighty adult lion... June 2008 - 1 year old At Umthsibi turn off, on a giraffe kill, with his brother, mother and aunts October 2008 - 14 months old...
Here are 2 of the ele carcasses we found while checking clusters of GPS points from hyaena collars. These one still had the tusks, so we removed the ivory and took it back to Parks HQ in Main Camp, to be safely stored. Big male Young female Teeth from...
Masimba and I are the dream team to find ele's tusks in the bush!! We carried this one of 8kg for 12km near Ngweshla. These things are not that easy to walk along with... Still around Ngweshla, but a few days later, we found elephant skeletons with the...
Hi everybody!After days of indecision, I'm finally heading back to Hwange on the 28th of June for 3 months or so...Schedule (plan A!): loads of work such as hyaena captures, calling exercises, downloading, meetings... and I hope a bunch of nice pictures!!Cheers!...
We are now back from South Africa and I'm ready to resume my field work. We were at the annual Savanna Science Network meeting in Kruger National Park. There, tourism is an industry. It was weird to see so many cars in the park. Vegetattion there is as...
