The HOEDSPRUIT HERALD took a peek into the ever busy and ever interesting diary of local wildlife veterinarian Dr Peter Rogers. Dr Rogers and the ProVet team have been extremely busy attending to a number of animals falling victim to being caught in snares recently.
Last Saturday evening, a report came in of an elephant that was limping badly close to a waterhole in the Greater Kruger area. The following morning the elephant had not moved far and the ProVet team set out to locate the animal. As it was darted from the helicopter, Dr Rogers could already see the blood and pus oozing out of a wound on the elephant’s leg.
Upon inspection, they realised the wound was caused by a snare from some time ago, “It was an old snare wound, probably more than a year old. The skin had already grown over it already. It was a real battle to get it out, we had to cut down quite deep into the flesh to find the cable,” Dr Rogers informed the HERALD.Half of the snare came out with a pair of water pump pliers but the cable snapped in the process and so the team had to start digging from the other side.
Once the entire wire cable was removed, the elephant was treated with anti-inflammatories and painkillers and was woken up.
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That same afternoon, the ProVet team were called out to a wild dog in a snare close to Hoedspruit. People out on a game drive noticed that the male wild dog was staying away from the rest of the pack despite them having just killed an impala. Though using binoculars, the onlookers realised that the animal was caught in a snare.
Dr Rogers told the HERALD, “It was a cable snare, just like the elephant’s one. We were actually scared that when we turned him over that his head would actually come off. The snare was right down to the trachea on the one side and on the other side it had cut through the nuchal ligament.” The team sutured the skin, gave the wild dog painkillers, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. Within an hour of the operation, it was reported that the wild dog pack made another kill.
In addition to the other cases, last Saturday the team were called out to a warthog with a snare around its mouth on a wildlife estate close to Hoedspruit. The warthog had got caught just behind his tusk and could not open his mouth. Dr Rogers told the HERALD, “We had to alleviate his suffering. Because it was a man-made problem, they didn’t want to shoot the animal, they wanted to rectify the problem.” Dr Rogers went on to say that it was “very satisfying” to be able to give the warthog another chance.
It is not only wild animals that have fallen victim to being caught in snares. Recently a Hoedspruit resident went on holiday and left someone to look after their two border collies. Within a few days, one of the dogs disappeared and despite huge search efforts, the dog could not be located. After five or six days of being gone, a farmer was doing some bush clearing on his land and his eye caught a black and white object. The collie was in a snare still attached to the tree but thankfully she was still alive.
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She was rushed to the vet and the snare cut away but unfortunately the wound was very septic. To make matters worse, the dog scratched the wound open and it was bleeding profusely. Thankfully the ProVet team noticed it quickly and were able to attend to the issue.
The fight against poaching, in all its forms, seems to be a never-ending battle.
Dr Rogers concluded by telling the HERALD “These are four snares I have seen in such a short space of time. Obviously the people [poachers] are going for smaller game and getting other animals, collateral damage one could say. The wild dogs go under fences and get caught in snares set for warthogs.”
