The Conservation Costs of Game Ranching

The devolution of user rights of wildlife in southern Africa has led to a widespread land-use shift from livestock farming to game ranching. The economic advantages of game ranching over livestock farming are significant, but so too are the risks associated with breeding financially valuable game where free-ranging wildlife pose a credible threat. Here, we assessed whether the conservation potential of game ranching, and a decentralized approach to conservation more generally, may be undermined by an increase in human-wildlife conflict. We demonstrate that game rancher tolerance towards free-ranging wildlife has significantly decreased as the game ranching industry has evolved. Our findings reveal a conflict of interest between wealth and wildlife conservation resulting from local decision-making in the absence of adequate centralized governance and evidence-based best practice. As a fundamental pillar of devolution-based natural resource management, game ranching proves an important mechanism for economic growth, albeit at a significant cost to conservation

Notes on some smaller carnivores from the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park.

Notes on relative densities, habitat choice, food and foraging, social organisation and anti-predatory behaviour of certain small and medium-sized carnivores are presented. Possible mechanisms of niche separation and the evolution of different anti-predatory behaviours are discussed. -Author

Prey use by black-backed jackals along a desert coast

Differences in prey taken by black-backed jackals Canis mesomelas at three widely separated sites on the Namib Desert coast in Namibia, and at one site in South Africa, were investigated through faecal analysis. Nine prey categories were used. Birds showed the highest frequency of occurrence, and highest relative frequency of occurrence in all samples from Namibia except for the Skeleton Coast summer sample, wherein seal remains were most common. In the sample from the South African Namib, insects had the highest frequency, and relative frequency occurrence, with birds the second most represented category. Birds were also the main prey component in all samples, except for the Skeleton Coast summer sample, wherein seals predominated. Highest diversity of prey, and evenness of representation of prey categories, occurred in the South African and Skeleton Coast summer samples, wherein seals predominated. Most prey items, and in every sample the dominant prey category, were of marine origin.Articl

Range size of southern Kalahari leopards

Based upon radio-tracking, and using kernel analysis techniques, the mean range size of three adult male leopards Panthera pardus was 2182.37 ± 491.628 km2, that of five adult females 488.70 ± 292.893 km2, and that of a single subadult male 1323.80 km2. These ranges are considerably larger than for leopards elsewhere, and may reflect the aridity and prey-poor nature of the southern Kalahari: The subadult male dispersed over a linear distance of 112.6 km from its presumably natal area to where it established a new range.Articl