During the recent July holidays I experienced chaos at sightings like I have never seen in Kruger with the number of people at the sighting, people ignoring the general etiquette and rules at a sighting, people out their cars, etc, etc.
The fact that the old “magnet” sighting boards south of Satara haven’t been maintained many, including me, are making use the live sighting update sites, BBM groups, etc, which is inevitable due to the available technology.
The problem that I have encountered with this is that as more people become aware of electronic sighting updates, the more they are utilized and the more chaotic sightings are becoming.
For example:
I was in the Lower Sabie car park on the 12th and spotted a group people checking their phones and shouting at other family members to hurry up, so I checked the updates and spotted that a lion kill had been reported on the S82 just outside Lower Sabie, so as we were already in the car, I turned and ducked off in that direction.
About a km down the dirt the same group from the car park came past me doing about 70km/h in 2 separate cars.
The sighting was a joke because the lions were so far in the bush that one could only make out a shape every few minutes, but this didn’t deter people as OSV’s and the update gang arrived in force, so I chose to escape and duck back to Lower Sabie camp for the kids to use the loo, etc.
Just before the tar another update came though about a zebra kill on the S29, so we chose to head in that direction and the same thing happened with cars coming past me at speed on the S29.
Well I never made it to the kill, because my temper went after being stuck in a traffic jam for half an hour, so we left and headed back to Lower Sabie.
The pics below are from this “zebra” kill and check out the Sanparks vehicle also parked off with the driver out the car along with the rest of the gang. It took a private tour company operator to get people, including the Sanparks dude, back in their cars.
Do we all sit where we can get signal and then rush off when a sighting is posted???
I have many examples of this from our last trip, so I would like to understand where this is all going, because the technology is there and all are going to use it, so what does this mean for Kruger and the wildlife.
More importantly how is going to be controlled before it's a runaway train.
