In September 2023, Wild Wonderful World funded the transport, veterinary and medicine costs for the collaring of 8 Oryx antelope, 8 Hartmann's Zebra and 16 Springbok antelope in Iona National Park, Angola. The project was completed in collaboration with Back to Africa and African Parks, the latter organisation in charge of establishing the management of this new reserve. Iona National Park is a newly-established reserve and forms part of the Namib-Naulduft & Skeleton Coast Protected Area spanning nearly 50,000 km2. This collaring project is one of the first of many in rehabilitating Angola's national reserves after the decade-long civil war.

The focus of this operation was to collar zebra and antelope currently on the reserve. The collaring data will be used to analyse animals' use of the newly established reserve, in order to identify areas in which to focus currently limited resources. The target areas for collaring were identified based both on census and sightings data, as well as wanting to have a wide distribution of collars across the park and not focused on high density or easily accessible areas. The collaring operation was executed with helicopter assistance and ground teams. All animals were successfully collared in three and a half days, with a distribution across the majority of the park. Samples were collected from all but two springbok. Two springbok individuals had run particularly far and experienced significantly protracted down-times. All  other immobilisations proceeded smoothly and without ay major concern or complications. In addition, a Zebra/Donkey hybrid stallion was immobilised in order to collect both DNA and disease samples for evaluation (see photos). Attempts were made to locate and collar both brown hyena and cheetah but unfortunately were unsuccessful due to the challenging conditions and terrain.

For future collaring operations, where logistically feasible and reasonable, we are looking at raising additional funding for a fixed wing aircraft. This would improve the efficiency of the operation as extra eyes in the sky to locate target individuals and as a way to limit helicopter flying time. As the tracking results are coming in, we will be reporting on the initial findings in due time. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive our latests updates!

Thanks to Iona National Park, African Parks, Back To Africa and Wildscapes Veterinary Services for making this collaring operation a success! African Parks is a phenomenal organisation and this is hopefully the start of a much greater conservation story. Getting involved at this grassroots level is vital for our long-term relationship with park management and the opportunity to be involved in translocation & other larger projects across Africa.

We are currently still fundraising for a similar operation in the Luengue-Luiana National Park - which forms part of the same Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), an almost 520,000km2 transboundary wilderness area spanning Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. As with the Iona NP project, funding is the main limiting factor to get these game reserves up and running. By funding the collaring of 4 elephants, 5 sable, 5 roan, 5 buffalo and two carnivores, WWW NPC is hoping to support this budding national park. Because of the vast area the carnivores will be a bonus and chance operation but it will either be cheetah, wild dog or lion.

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