Africa Wild

It must be stated that while aat is the better man and a gentleman, AW members contribute greatly to his project, and our organisation will not accept false criticism or innuendo, as it affects all of us. Media is working on this.

One may ask as to why AW often gives early warning of actions. The reason is that the poor people on the ground actually working at SANParks are often the victim of spurious decisions taken by power-crazed decisions by higher-ups, so it is a courtesy to them to prepare.

Richprins wrote:The SANParks Tusker Project has also been active for many years. Names other than those used in the project only create great confusion.

Really? This project has been going for many more years than the SP one?


Sadly the owner of that website did not have permission to name tuskers. He has no authority at all. What if we all decided to give a tusker a name there would be chaos!! SANParks have a tusker team and only they have the authority to name. I know the owner of Tuskers of Africa and though he is a very nice man and may be very hard working he should not be naming tuskers in Kruger.

The owner sort of had permission, as nobody else was doing it? WTF? There was no chaos at all. And do SANParks own the elephants...didn't know that, I thought all people owned the elephants, and SP were custodians on our behalf? NOW there is chaos, 7 years later!

right RP

and the price he received was official ... from SanP

Some people have short memories

Nan, Mel and I remember very well that year

and lot of people voted

Yes! but obviously Val does not remember

I'm also not entirely sure how this now correlates with the KTP leopard-naming project...same sort of thing?

Richprins wrote:I'm also not entirely sure how this now correlates with the KTP leopard-naming project...same sort of thing?

no, it seems better wih a South African (Mat. S.) why I dont' know... in relation with M+G. Mills
but we are all interesting in this project... after the Mills return to England (or elsewhere)

hope this project will stay for a long time

Ja, nana, agreed totally, but why the difference in principle?

It isn't because of citizenship, if so that is terrible!

I like to say a few words about all this and I will stick to the facts:

- I created my website about the tuskers for a few reasons. The main ones are: to document the tuskers and the promising ones. Why? To follow them over the years , how they devellop from younger promising ones till they go to the holy grazelands.
- I gave and give them names to give them an identity on the website to recognize and ID them. This all together with all the tusker friends over the years and many / most of them are still there to support. I never mentioned anything about official names and being authorized yes/no. This has all nothing to do with my website.
- I do NOT need any rights or permissions to name tuskers for MY website.
- I got permission by Dr Ian Whyte and by Johan Marais (both recognized authorities) to have their photos on my site.
- SP recognized me with an Award for all the work done for the Tuskers where the Tusker forum subject was very very populair (most views etc...)
- SP did NOT do anything for many years to name any tusker (last time was 2010)
- After presenting "their" new names I found several errors / mistakes ... posted my comments about that and what happened... they changed some text and photos. (SP, thanks for saying thank you and the compliments for taking me serious)
- Looking at the tuskers they named it feels like naming the tuskers I already have on my site for many many years.
- These tuskers were NOT monitored by SP at all till just some years ago. At the time I had contact with SP , tuskers like NHLOWA, MANDZEMBA, KALEKA, NGODZI and others were not at all recognized by them.

Some people do say things not based on facts but just to say something. So people who do not like my tusker site please stay away of it and do your own thing. Probably it's better for them to organize their tusker part on their website better then it is today.

It's funny to see that a photo sent by someone I know is still on their site related to one of the tuskers including a text directed to me:
"Hi Aat
Was lucky enough to see XXXXX again north of the S100
What I would do for a bit of sunlight Took some nice pics will mail as soon as I get home
I saw some nice potential tuskers this trip , but once you are fortunate enough to see the real thing you find the others are only pretenders and have some way to go to become real tuskers"

(I changed the name of the tusker to XXXX so they can search to find where)

And nothing can change these facts