The Month in Photographs, February & March 2022

Let me start by apologising for skipping February. It’s a short and busy month and by the time I wiped away the sweat we were already halfway through March. So I am combining February and March.

The big event for February and March is the installation of the solar systems at both the centre and at Elephant camp. Which has taken Elephant camp completely off-grid and hopefully covers 60% of the power requirements for the centre itself. It is extremely exciting to be able to welcome the rain and know that our lights will remain on. This project is part of the Savory Institutes’ development of the Africa Center as a Savory Campus. We will in addition also be upgrading the wifi systems in the centre, which will hopefully bring 1st world internet speed to Dimbangombe, fingers crossed.

The Dimbangombe cattle herd has started to feel the effects of the summer, even though they have been feeding on good grass, we have lost a few animals to illness. So our preventative routines have been intensified and the grazing planning adjusted to try to break parasite cycles. An incident of note with the herd occurred at the beginning of March. A few Elephant bulls broke through the Victoria Falls airport fence and were chased off by national parks. Chased so effectively that they ran straight into our herd that were in the grazing paddock closest to the airport. Fortunately, there were no injuries to herders or herd members.

The crop field has somewhat survived the onslaught of elephants that have been very frequent on our eastern boundary with the forestry. For the most part, the solar electric fence has worked, with only a few isolated raids making it through. All being learning experiences for next year.

A rather significant event took place this month, Dimbangombe has gone through the Ecological outcome verification process. It was special taking part in the process to get the land verified where a bulk of the Holistic Management story started. Read more about the EVO process here.

Hope you enjoy this month’s images.

Kind regards, Etienne