Relocation of Wildlife from Malawi to South Africa

Contributed by Koenie van der Walt

On a spring afternoon in 1986 Ina Hayward, the receptionist at Safair at the time, phoned me to tell me there was a man at reception who wanted to speak to me about chartering a Hercules aircraft. To put the normal procedure into context at the time, I have to mention the following:

We often had enquiries from various people to charter Hercules, most of them never materialising and being far-fetched to put it mildly. the norm was that meeting appointments were normally pre-arranged via telephone for a certain date. So needless to say, I was rather apprehensive when Ina said there was someone at reception who wanted to speak to me.

I asked Ina on the internal telephone line to ask the person for what reason he wanted to charter the Hercules and I could hear the person’s voice in the background telling Ina he wanted to capture certain antelope in Malawi to relocate them to the Kruger National Park.

Being a very enthusiastic nature lover, my interest immediately peaked and I was now ready to meet this person, so I went to reception and met Dr Johan Kriek, a veterinarian, his wife Daleen, and their two young sons, Johann and Jaques.

We proceeded to my office where Johan explained he had obtained a contract from the National Parks Board (now SanParks) as well as the Malawian Government to capture Lichtenstein Hartebeest, Roan Antelope and Sable Antelope in Malawi. The three species would be released in the north of the Kruger National Park, which would be the ideal habitat, particularly for the Lichtenstein Hartebeest which had long been extinct in South Africa.

Within a few minutes of our discussion I was as excited and enthusiastic as Dr Johan Kriek, a lanky vet who dind’t know the meaning of the word “impossible”! This was the start of a lifelong friendship to this day between the two of us!

Johan needed to charter a Herc to carry a helicopter plus a wide variety of equipment, goods, and some personnel from Johannesburg to Muzzy. The Herc would drop them at Muzzy where he would set up his operation and approximately three months later, the airlift operation would commence flying the antelope from Muzzy to the Kruger National Park.

True to Johan’s promise, some three months later a Herc departed with the Safair empty “cattle pens”, and a group of volunteers, from Johannesburg to Mzuzu via Lilongwe. Captain John Pillans, a keen nature lover himself, was in command. The volunteers assisted during the flights to keep the heads of the sedated antelope in the correct position so as to avoid any suffocation.

A tremendous amount of planning went into this operation with so many different people contributing to make it a huge success. Special permission was obtained from all the relevant authorities and two Herc flights were done to carry the Lichtenstein Hartebeest, Roan and Sable Antelope from Mzuzu directly to the airstrip at Punda Maria in the north of the Kruger National Park.

In 1991 the Hercs again featured very prominently when Safair did a second airlift operation for Dr Johan Kriek to relocate 95 Roan Antelope and 65 Sable Antelope. This time we flew the antelope from Lilongwe to Pietersburg (Polokwane) for Johan Kriek’s own project with these species.