الكاميرا حول العالم .. الحيوانات والجفاف .. مجلة فن التصوير اللبنانية _ ع٣٣

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animals and drought

Clem Kotsi, the curator of animal affairs, knelt on the bare ground and pointed his gun at a white rhinoceros, 40 yards away from him - 35 meters - then pressed the trigger, sending one shot at him. The weight of the animal was 1365 kg.
That is, less than his normal weight by 225 kg, which made his skin hang loose on his hideous structure. The shot sent an additional needle loaded with ten milligrams of derivatives - morphine -, five centimeters long, and settled in the buttock of the rhinoceros. The latter rose up in panic and set off with his female and calf through the jungle for a distance of three kilometers to escape from the men who were tracking them on foot.

Twenty minutes later, the Rhino slowed down as if dizzy, and soon fell to the ground. Here the men came forward and rolled the rhinoceros into a sling to lift it into the truck, which transported it to Love Star Farm, to raise the animals there. Injection of a stimulant. So he regained consciousness and rose to his feet, then joined seven other rhinos that were picked up by the Kotsi team concerned with the affairs of national reserves for wild animals. The female and the calf were left to be a target for the same team the next day.

It should be noted that operations like this could mean saving the white rhino, along with three other endangered species, in southeastern Zimbabwe. This, and the officials of the reserves and animal farms there are planning to capture 28 rhinos, 300 out of the 600 rare black antelope, and many other giant animals, including a herd born of an animal, the wild wildebeest, of 30 heads. It should be noted that these capture operations take place in 11 huge animal farms covering an area of ​​160 square kilometers, which is home to the largest part of Zimbabwe's wild animals.

As for the animals that are rescued, they will wait in the farms until the drought ends, and they will be fed there with sugarcane sticks, and cubes of horse fodder, as they will be released at the end of the southern hemisphere summer, and that is if it rains and the grass grows again, because the jungles are now barren. And there are no animals that graze on herbs, what we eat in the natural areas covered with mopane trees, and huge baobab trees.

As for the only herbs present, it is a two-year-old gray whose taste is not palatable by the animals concerned. As no new grasses grew this year, because the rain that fell amounted to a total of ten centimeters, the annual rate of 50 centimeters. “Thousands of other animals have died and will continue to die, but we are confident that animals like the African zebra, zebra, impala and the like will survive in large enough numbers to return to reproduction again.

And it has already happened that the jungles are now full of animals that have fallen and died from famine. In the neighboring Gunari Zhou National Animal Reserve, the Department of Reserves completed last month a select killing of 2020 elephants and 300 hippopotamuses, because the land is no longer able to secure food for them and the elephant meat has been sold. To local tribes for one dollar per kilogram, while ivory is auctioned, ivory from African elephants is traded in a process that controls
globally, but it is not prohibited.
Wild animal breeding farms have obtained a decision from the responsible departments that allows them to successfully capture impalas, wild cows, antelopes and other ibex for sale for meat, provided that sufficient numbers of them are maintained so that they can be seen by tourists and hunted by hunters.
Colin Saunders said that wild animal farming and hunting brought Zimbabwe more than $1 million last year⏹