more scenes from Mlawula Nature Reserve

This is Vuyo Dlamini, a game warden at Mlawula Nature Reserve. He is a nice young man, having been trained, like most of Swaziland's park rangers, at a special program in Kruger. He lives in the park, and was able to point out a giraffe to us way down in the valley from this high vantage point.

You have noticed that Vuyo carries a gun. This is because most of Swaziland's park animals still suffer from poaching. The day before this photo was taken, Vayo and another warden came across a poacher who had killed three animals in a snare. They were able to arrest the poacher without incident, but, clearly, the rangers lives are in danger too. Sometimes poachers carry guns too.

The thing about poaching is -- many Swazi people are in need of food. Some park wardens, as I have been told, those in the Big Parks system (not the SNTC system) shoot to kill poachers. Perhaps some poachers just take the abundant small game, such as blesbok. But they do it in a protected area -- who is right?
This is one of the SNTC's "bakkies" (trucks), which are needed to travel from headquarters, to the various parks. Many of these trucks are donated to the SNTC. As you can imagine they are very expensive, and gas is about TWICE the cost of gas in the United States. Being underfunded places the SNTC in a constantly difficult battle. What projects to fund, and what to leave behind for a year, 5 years or more. In the National Park Service in the United States this work is called "backlog maintenance" and our parks suffer from millions of dollars of backlog work.