“The collaboration means benefits for everyone,” said Tala Collection Private Game Reserve general manager Mike Nunan. “Husqvarna has sponsored a comprehensive range of professional equipment – brush cutters, chainsaws, clearing saws, etc – for a work team to eliminate exotic and alien vegetation. This local labour, in turn, is sponsored thanks to a generous donation from Illovo. They are also doing some major rehabilitation, which is all making a huge difference to the animals’ environment.”
While removing alien plants is imperative, there is also a need to thin down over populated indigenous plants. “Within the reserve are areas with thick vegetation and masses of self-sown acacia. This creates a canopy so light can’t get in, and grasses can’t grow, meaning browsers and grazers, like rhinos, for instance, won’t graze there. So with the help of the Husqvarna’s powerful equipment, the bush-clearing team is opening up these areas to the environment: when the rain comes, and these parts are exposed to light, sunshine and animals droppings, the primary grasses will come back. This helps spread the animals out so they don’t all graze in one area and destroy it.”
The 3,000ha reserve, with no large predators, is very well stocked with a diversity of game, ranging from the tiny mongoose up to the biggest of all southern African antelope – the eland. It boasts about 20 species of antelope, including oribi, bushbuck, and reedbuck, with general game in abundance. It is a mix of acacia thornveld, open grassland, and sensitive wetland.
For Illovo, Africa’s biggest sugar producer, this is the second project with which they’ve been involved at Tala Collection Private Game Reserve. Last year they helped have the resident rhinos tagged with GPS monitoring devices so their whereabouts could be tracked 24 hours a day. They also support the on-site anti-poaching team who patrol the reserve day and night.
