Staff Writer
AFTER a three-week, 300km walkabout, the escaped Karoo lion is back in the fold.
This time SANParks staff are taking no chances: they have fitted the lion with a satellite tracking collar.
The young male, which escaped from the Karoo National Park on June 5, led his trackers a merry dance, moving north-east, then southeast, ducking through thick bush in gullies and ravines, and over hard mountainous terrain.
Then the three-year-old circled back towards the park from where he had escaped under the fence, which had been damaged by heavy rains.
Nico van der Walt, manager of Karoo National Park just outside Beaufort West, said yesterday the trackers had cut its spoor just 20km from the park – after the animal had walked an estimated 300km over the weeks when he was free.
They followed the spoor and spotted the lion above steep cliffs in the Nuweveld Mountains. The helicopter was called in and a SANParks’ vet immobilised the lion by darting it from the helicopter.
“It was brought to safety under extremely difficult conditions. It had to be loaded into a sling underneath the chopper while lying immobilised on the mountainside. This was the most dangerous part of the operation as the helicopter blades were not more than 2m from the mountain edge with the lion lying 3m from a high cliff,” Van der Walt said.
After being flown by chopper back to the park, the lion was released into a boma, where he will be kept under observation for the near future. Van der Walt said the lion had been fitted with a tracking collar so that if he should go walkabout again, they will know where he is.
“We are happy to report that it is in good health.”
Lions, which once roamed the plains of the Karoo, were shot out by settlers. The last wild lion was shot near Leeu-Gamka – the Afrikaans and Khoisan words for lion – in 1842. In 2010 two lions, two lionesses and four cubs were re-introduced into the Karoo with their release in the national park.
Fundisile Mketeni, SANParks chief executive, said the tracking and capture had not been easy, but had been boosted by individuals and communities that had helped, some from as far afield as Botswana.