Commissioner returns after trip to South Africa
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Washington County Commissioner Kevin Ritter has had to miss the commission's past two Thursday morning meetings, but he can explain. Really.
Ritter and his wife, Khadine, have returned home from an animal conservation project in South Africa, where they worked on the Thithombo Game Reserve and the Tembe Elephant Park and Reserve near the Mozambique border to monitor the general health of the animals.
"It wasn't a vacation," Ritter said. "It was a project sanctioned by the South African government, and we were accompanied constantly by the park ecologist for the reserves. We traveled by helicopter a lot of the time."
They used darts to sedate the animals, then checked their health status, including things like their blood and the condition of their teeth. Most of the time they were working with lions and African buffalos, he said.
"The animals were enormous."
The dart sedation was quite limited, he added. The animals were up moments later.
Ritter said that at one point they were flown up to the Mozambique border to meet with the guards who were going after poachers, and that was an interesting experience. They were a little more lenient on the ones who were simply trying to feed their families, he said. The ones who were doing it for commercial profit were a different story.
The Ritters' trip was Oct. 3-14. Now that they're home, the thing he probably appreciates right off is the amount of convenience local people enjoy in their daily lives, he said.