Salmonsdam -it all, I love this place!

So I've posted a bit about Rooi Els, the village where I'll be living and following baboons in a residential setting. Some of you might be asking, where is the love for our reserve ranging baboons? We had a few little delays here and there trying to get all our permissions in order at Salmonsdam Nature Reserve but we finally got everything worked out and things are picking up!

Salmonsdam is a small-ish sized reserve, only like ~850 hectares. It is almost completely surrounded by farmland. There is at least one troop of baboons here, possibly two. I would guess their range is mostly restricted to the reserve, aside from some mountain connectivity to the east.

Hey, thanks Google Earth!

Before we had permission to go off trail here, we spent about 2 weeks just getting to know the reserve. Basically, we hiked around all the trails, looked and listened for baboons, and mapped a trail (with my handy dandy Garmin eTrex!).

Nick, dutifully manning the meter tape.

"Garmin, Garmin, in my hand: Give me waypoints for this land!"

Overlooking one of the ravines in Salmonsdam Nature Reserve

Mapping trails can be a little tedious. But we didn't know the reserve very well and this can really help to get a sense of where you are, what kinds of vegetation and terrain are around you, and whether or not the baboons are actually using any of these areas!

"Leopard's Cave".... Let's hope we don't make any new friends here!

Seedlings germinating out of baboon poop.

When we got the go ahead to go off trail, we decided to do a few vegetation plots so that we can better describe the reserve in our future grant writing efforts. Fynbos is incredibly diverse but there are a few main families of plants that are the most common: Proteaceae, Ericaceae, and Restionaceae (honorable mentions: Asteraceae and Iridaceae). We have a reasonable ability to identify these groups and, fortunately, we had help one day from the nature conservator who works at this reserve.

Nick and Grant talking fynbos

A really furry protea

Pink ericas

After our day with Grant, we began doing vegetation plots. I won't go into too much detail, but basically this involves randomly selecting points within the reserve to set up a plot. Within the plot we count the number of some plants and estimate the coverage/composition of all the plants. Sometimes the plots end up in really convenient locations and they are fairly easy to access.  Other times, they end up in the middle of a ravine or on a steep slope and we have to use one of our alternative points instead.

Trying to figure out where the Garmin thinks we should go

Writing down info

We hear the baboons on most days and see them fairly frequently too. After a few more plots this week, we'll spend some time being human creepers and finally following the baboons around.

The baboons, chilling. Like they do sometimes.

These guys weren't terribly pleased with our proximity (around 100-150 meters away).

On one occasion, I was able to take a little video. There was quite a bit of commotion, we think there may be two groups and they were having a fit because the other group was too close to their territory. This happened on the same ridge you see in one of the photos above. P.S. Sorry for all the sniffles, I was battling a winter cold.

This has been a very different "field" experience for us both. Setting up a field site (picking a location, meeting with all the people you have to meet, getting all the permissions, finding a place to live, setting up logistics, etc) is VERY time consuming. Previously, we've both worked at established field locations so you can more or less just drop yourself into the fold and start taking data. While we've been working like crazy here and we've been doing all the things we need to be doing, we won't be walking away with a lot of data- mostly just stuff to help make our grant applications strong, which is the main goal of pilot research, after all.