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Roan numbers have definitely plummeted in the Park.

There are CERTAINLY none left of the Pretoriuskop population, and the waterhole theory seems good enough for me as far as the rest of the Park is concerned. Kruger is on the absolute fringe of their African distribution, so unfortunately it seems as though they will eventually disappear there.

Yes, reintroduction was done in north and south of Kruger from Malawi in the 80's, but obviously has not worked, despite aerial immunisation against anthrax, which probably caused more stress-related problems than good.

Still, my rarest big antelope to see in the Park, and long may they continue.

Last spotted in 2004 at Kremetart windmill, only one!

First spotting near Gudzane dam in the 80's, amongst a herd of Sable (The "roble" bunch).

Richprins

Just a couple of minutes, the Roans showed theme selves before they disappeared into the bushes. H1-7 near the turn-off to Punda Maria.

Wow!

Quite a healthy-looking herd!
What year was this, Nico?

Good pic.

Richprins

Hi Richprins, this was 2005 between Shingwedzi and Punda Maria on the H1-7. They were very shy and disappeared quickly into the bush.

Wow, you lucky fish...


How big was the herd?

Thanks Nico

Maybe SANPARKS can share their views on roan numbers. Your pic suggests at least one very healthy herd - so all is not lost!

This despite the ending of Anthrax immunisation and the presumed release of roan from the protected N'washitsumbe antelope camp near Klopperfontein.

Richprins

About 15 animals WAC

Gee, thats quite big...

Roan in the park have just taken a nose dive over the last decade (together with Eland, last I heard 300 in the park).

My last sighting of Roan in the Park was about 15 years back when we left Shingwedzi at about 4:30 and determined to see Roan did not stop for anything that morning, as we headed up the H1-7 after about 30km we started to see them at the water points. They however were not interested in being "viewed" and moved off quite quickly. However at the end of the day we got to see 48, mostly family groups.

Since then I have seen them at Nylsvlei, but being on foot they were real skittish and moved off as fast a possible. Interesting there they were grazing in the floodplain which that year was between 30-40cm deep in water. They were a largish group which mingled freely with other herbivores.

Saw 2 near Klopperfontein waterhole 2 weeks ago

See this link

http://celtis.sanparks.org/parks/vaalbos/tourism/activities.php

for Roan Antelope as one of the six things to check out for at Vaalbos National Park. That was new to me that they where originally extended that far west into the arid savannas.

Moutainview-you know that Vaalbos has been de-commissioned right? You can read about it here

:-) we're still waiting on the official proclamation of the new park...Did you have that old URL cached? If not I'd love to know where you acccessed the site...

Hi Dianne

Yes I was aware. I did a search in the seach engine at the top left hand side. It gave several results for Vaalbos. One interesting one dating back to 2002 [I think] which stated that SANparks translocated 81 Roan into Vaalbos and Marakale from Botswana. What I found interesting was that the figure for National parks was 200 while for South Africa was 1400.

I'd have to assume that the Roan at Vaalbos never survived or were moved to another location previous to the de-commissining. How would one find out?

Gosh :-) We've kept the site live but "hidden"-not wanting to lost that info but also waiting on the info about the new park (the code was supposed to hide it from search engines too )....Give me a few days and I'll see what I can find out for you about the Roan :-)

Dianne