Tasked with an evaluation of a private hunting concession, one of seven in the Matetsi conservation area, run by the Zimbabwe wildlife authority. Our visit was during the dry season, which in this part of the world is completely different to the lush verdance of the wet season.
Conditions following a previously dry year were desperate and with the current failure of the rains (November) a large portion of the wildlife appeared to have moved away seeking better conditions elsewhere (probably in Zambia). The trees appear to be dead, the grasses appear dried out and brittle and extensive bare and dusty soil patches abound. This is the savanna woodlands in the dry and exacerbated by the current drought.
The impact of the elephants on the woody shrubs and trees is clearly obvious, with most of the small Mopane trees looking like an attempt at a massive bonsai project. Elephant feeding impact on young mopane trees is very severe but many of these areas were very bush encroached to start with, which is typical of mopane woodlands. The elephants are thus instrumental for controlling mopane bush encroachment. In some areas, the mopane is practically monospecific with little or no ground cover at all. Here the damage to the trees is extremely severe with the site left desolate and with almost no cover after the attentions of the elephants.
Mopane, however, is known to be able to survive moisture stress, low nutrient soils and fires (and it is assumed), elephant damage as well. Naturally the severe drought conditions affects the visual impact significantly, making the damage look worse than it actually is. For this reason we recommended another look at the veld two or three months after the start of the rain season.
Despite the dry conditions, we saw a surprising number of natural springs, still with pools and some with running streams. The black soils derived from the larval basaltic rocks are clay rich and nitrogen-poor and are an important feature of the flat valley floors where they mainly occur as deep deposits that store water in the lower lying vlei areas. On the study area these black soils are rich in organic material due to the dense grass cover that they support in the seasonal wetland-like conditions.
