Safety Caps are essential to problematic animals, as confrontations are bound to occur with commercial interested cattle farmers found near national parks. Over and over again man and animal collide. Often, many predators, such as lions graze the land, searching for prey, for food and finding farmers’ partially unprotected herds. However, Botswana has some noteworthy projects that were created to protect such endangered species. The government has prohibited the killings of problematic predators. Instead, they offer the farms, in which animals were killed, compensations. Unfortunately, the amount they receive is often not enough for the farmers, in contrast to what they charge when they sell shooting permits to private and sometimes even illegal hunters. A further issue regarding government compensation is the fact that the farmers must be able to prove that their animals were killed b predators in order to receive any money. But sometimes, that is not so easy. Even if farmers do succeed in finding proof that an individual animal killed some of their herd, it is still possible that predators snatched stock days or even weeks before. Finding such time-lapsed proof is nearly impossible. Hence, most farmers often result to an easier solution: they shoot or poison the predators themselves. Often, they will also allow hunters from the U.S. or Europe to shoot them for a large sum and make a profit off of it.

Our Goal

Naturally, the Kalahari-Predator Conservation’s goal is to actively offer our assistance to farms, thus, finding and capturing predators with the help of experienced track readers and therefore saving them.

The Project

At this point, our project is not as easy at it seems, as many farmers are not all willing to work closely with us yet. In their eyes, predators are still number one on their hunting list. Often, they think, even if the animals were captured they would probably be back on their ranches in no time to kill more of their stock. However, it has been proven that predators that live in packs rarely recur to the farms, whereas the risk of re-offense with nomads is higher. Still, the likeliness of repetition can be miniaturized if such nomads are simply brought deeper in to the National Park and thus farther away from the farms. Yet, there lies a danger in such proceedings, as the nomads then occasionally tend to cross pack regions, where they are attacked. We take in such problematic animals and give them a home on our own Game farm, where they must spend the rest of their days on vast grounds. Of course, it is not the most ideal solution for a wild animal, but it is still better than being shot or poisoned and they are able to naturally unfold. This kind of keeping may be quite complex, but it ensures the life of a predator. The catching of an animal requires many helpers, automobiles and extra costs, which are currently bared by private individuals. The capture is a spectacle and therefore demands absolute expert knowledge in predator species. We try to keep from straining the animal as much as we can and avoid using anesthesia.
Lately, our project has been receiving more and more approval by the affected farmers. Hence, it is to expand continuously.

Milestones

The current milestone regarding the Safety Cap project is the expansion of our grounds. The growth will allow us to take in even more problematic animals.
Furthermore, we are currently working on a joint plan with the government to ensure more protection for such troubled predators. A final important milestone for us, is informing the farmers. An extensive project is currently in the works to clarify our proceedings to all the farmers all around the Kalahari region. Our goal is to integrate every farm in to our Safety Cap project, so we establish communication on both sides and thus find more ways to prevent predator killings. We want to achieve this by the beginning of 2010.

Project Costs

Project Responsibility

William de Graaf, founder of the Kalahari-Predator-Conservation Project is responsible for the project. Willie works intensively with the national park authorities and has life long experience in dealing with, capturing and protecting predators.