New wildlife drug in Letaba makes history
The Letaba region was part of history recently when a new wildlife anesthetic drug combination was successfully tested on local primates.
The drug was successfully tested at the Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre of Bob and Lynn Venter and also at the CARE facility just outside Phalaborwa.
A team of seven veterinarians from 6 different countries and veterinary students from abroad, all participated in the project.
The group was hosted by Letaba River Lodge during the project.
The Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre near Eiland is in the process of releasing a troop of 96 chacma baboons, some of which have been rehabilitated since 2011.
Many of the baboons in this troop were orphaned or wounded as babies and needed to be hand-reared and rehabilitated by the centre until they could finally form part of a troop again.
After many years of rehabilitation, the troop has finally become cohesive enough that they can be released into the wild again – something which has taken countless man hours and an immense amount of money and dedication from the team at Riverside.
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The release of this specific troop has been carefully planned over the past year and entailed the immobilization, microchipping, transporting and release into a pre-release enclosure on the release site which is situated on the border of Botswana (an almost 7 hour drive from the centre).
The baboons will stay in the latter enclosure for up to 2 weeks before finally being released into the wild. Since all the animals required immobilization during capture, Wildlife Pharmaceuticals was afforded the opportunity to test a new anaesthetic drug combination (Bamanil) on 15 of the animals.
The remaining animals were immobilized with a commonly used anaesthetic combination (medetomidine and ketamine) which was also donated by Wildlife Pharmaceuticals as part of their ongoing product safety evaluation.
To date, Bamanil has been shown to be safe for the reversible anaesthesia of cheetah, lions, leopards, wild dogs, giraffes, blesbok, tigers and for the standing sedation of elephants.
The Bamanil project in baboons forms part of the MSc project of Dr Lynne Backstrom, a veterinary post-graduate student from the University of Estonia, under supervision of Dr Aleksandr Semjonov from the University of Estonia.
The remainder of the Wildlife Pharmaceuticals team consisted of Dr Cobus Raath, Dr Liesel Laubscher, Dr Silke Pfitzer and Dr Lizanne Meiring.
The project was a great success and all 96 baboons were darted, immobilized, microchipped, morphological measurements taken and transported to the release site between 16 and 20 April. It was an enormous team effort with more than 40 people involved in the entire process.
All the animals were safely anaesthetized without any complications and transported to the release site where they will remain in the pre-release enclosure for the next 2 weeks.
Both anaesthesia protocols proved to be safe and Wildlife Pharmaceuticals looks forward to furthering the investigation into the anaesthesia of other primate species and/ or drug combinations.
Wildlife Pharmaceuticals would like to say a massive thank you to Bob and Lynn Venter from Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre for allowing the team to work with this very special troop of baboons and for accommodating us and welcoming us with open arms. It was a very special experience for everyone involved and the facility is truly a state of the art facility.
Wildlife Pharmaceuticals would also like to thank Letaba River Lodge for accommodating the team on our arrival and for the great hospitality
