African wild ungulates compete with or facilitate cattle depending on season

Savanna ecosystems are vital for both economic and biodiversity values. In savannas worldwide, management decisions are based on the concept that wildlife and livestock compete for grassland resources[1-4], yet there are virtually no experimental data to support this assumption[1]. Specifically, the critical assessment of whether or not wild ungulates alter livestock performance (e.g., weight gain, reproduction or survival) has rarely been carried out, although diminished performance is an essential prerequisite for inferring competition[1]. Here we use a large-scale experiment in a semi-arid savanna in Kenya to show that wild ungulates do depress cattle performance (weight gain) during the dry season, indicating a competitive effect, but enhance cattle performance during the wet season, signifying facilitation. This is the first experimental demonstration of either competitive or facilitative effects of an assemblage of native ungulates on domestic livestock in a savanna ecosystem, and a unique demonstration of a rainfall-dependent shift in competition-facilitation balance within any herbivore guild. These results are critical for better understanding and management of wildlife-livestock coexistence in savanna ecosystems globally, and especially in the African savanna biome which crucially hosts the last remnants of an intact large herbivore fauna

Cost burden for accessing paediatric emergency services at a tertiary health facility

Background: The economic burden of seeking paediatric emergency care could be high and this could also negate the philosophy of equity, social justice, universal access and social health protection for all. This study assessed the cost, payment modalities and economic impacts for accessing paediatric emergency services in a tertiary hospital in Nigeria.Methods: Cross sectional survey with pre-tested structured questionnaires administered by trained interviewers to158 parents of children discharged from a tertiary hospital emergency unit over a 2-month period. Verifiable information on various financial expenditures during emergency episode as well as respondents' perceptions and background socioeconomic status were collected. Proxy estimates for economic impacts were calculated based on single need per household for emergency care. Descriptive analysis of the data was done using SPSS version20.Result: Majority (45.6%) of the 158 children were aged 1 - 5years, girls (52.5%) and were diagnosed with single morbidity (86. 7%). Primary diagnoses were bronchopneumonia 21.5%, diarrhoea disease 20.9% and malaria 14.6%. The major contributors to cost of healthcare were the cost of admission and drugs. Payment at the point of access to healthcare was almost universal (98. 7%). Study shows that41.8% and 52.5% of households spent more than 40% of their monthly non-food and 50% of their monthly non-subsistent earnings on the index paediatric emergency.Conclusion: The cost of accessing paediatric emergencies could put a high proportion of uninsured households at risk of being impoverished. Findings provide further imperative for the intensification of efforts at scaling up of the social insurance scheme to cover all household as a means of assuring social health protection for all.Keywords: Cost; Paediatric Emergencies; UPTH; Children; Rivers State; Nigeri

Elephants Mitigate the Effects of Cattle on Wildlife and Other Ecosystem Traits: Experimental Evidence

On rangelands worldwide, cattle interact with many ecosystem components, most obviously with soils, plants, and other large herbivores. Since 1995, we have been manipulating the presence of cattle, mesoherbivores, and megaherbivores (elephants and giraffes) in a series of eighteen 4-ha (10-acre) plots at the Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment. We have demonstrated a wide array of cattle effects on this savanna rangeland, including their reduction of grass cover, wildlife use, and soil nitrogen and phosphorus pools, but their increase of primary productivity and termite abundance. Strikingly, we demonstrate that the presence of mega-herbivores (elephants, mainly) reduces the sizes of these cattle. We provide further experimental evidence that this may be because the elephants are reducing the most desirable (N-rich) forage, causing cattle to slow their extraction of (low-N) grasses, while simultaneously reducing tree cover

Temporal variability in large grazer space use in an experimental landscape

Citation: Raynor, E. J., Joern, A., Skibbe, A., Sowers, M., Briggs, J. M., Laws, A. N., & Goodin, D. (2017). Temporal variability in large grazer space use in an experimental landscape. Ecosphere, 8(1), 18. doi:10.1002/ecs2.1674Land use, climate change, and their interaction each have great potential to affect grazing systems. With anticipated more frequent and extensive future drought, a more complete understanding of the mechanisms that determine large grazer landscape-level distribution under varying climatic conditions is integral to ecosystem management. Using an experimental setting with contrasting fire treatments, we describe the inter-annual variability of the effect of landscape topography and disturbance from prescribed spring fire on large grazer space use in years of variable resource availability. Using GPS telemetry, we investigated space use of plains bison (Bison bison bison) as they moved among watersheds managed with variable experimental burn treatments (1-, 2-, 4-, and 20-year burn intervals) during a seven-year period spanning years of average-to-above average forage production and severe drought. At the landscape scale, bison more strongly favored high-elevation and recently burned watersheds with watersheds burned for the first time in 2 or 4 yr consistently showing higher use relative to annually burned watersheds. In particular, watersheds burned for the first time in 4 yr were avoided to lesser extent than other more frequently burned watersheds during the dormant season. This management type also maintained coupling between bison space use and post-fire regrowth across post-drought growing season months, whereas watersheds with more frequent fire-return intervals attracted bison in only the first month post-fire. Hence, fire frequency played a role in maintaining the coupling of grazer and post-fire regrowth, the fire-grazer interaction, in response to drought-induced reduction in fuel loads. Moreover, bison avoided upland habitat in poor forage production years, when forage regrowth is less likely to occur in upland than in lowland habitats. Such quantified responses of bison to landscape features can aid future conservation management efforts and planning to sustain fire-grazer interactions and resulting spatial heterogeneity in grassland ecosystems

Wild and domestic savanna herbivores increase smaller vertebrate diversity, but less than additively

Cattle and other livestock graze more than a quarter of the world's terrestrial area and are widely regarded to be drivers of global biodiversity declines. Studies often compare the effects of livestock presence/absence but, to our knowledge, no studies have tested for interactive effects between large wild herbivores and livestock at varying stocking rates on small-bodied wild vertebrates. We investigated the effects of cattle stocking rates (none/moderate/high) on the diversity of wildlife 0.05–1,000 kg using camera traps at a long-term exclosure experiment within a semi-arid savanna ecosystem in central Kenya. In addition, by selectively excluding wild ‘mesoherbivores’ (50–1,000 kg) and ‘megaherbivores’ (>1,000 kg; elephant and giraffe), we tested whether the presence of these two wild herbivore guilds (collectively, ‘larger wild herbivores’) mediates the effect of cattle stocking rate on habitat use and diversity of ‘smaller wildlife’ (mammals ranging between 10 and 70 cm shoulder height and birds). Our results show that cattle enhance alpha diversity of smaller wildlife (with or without larger wild herbivore presence) and of all wildlife 0.05–1,000 kg (with or without megaherbivore presence), by altering vegetation structure. However, for smaller wildlife, this effect is less pronounced in the presence of larger wild herbivores, which also shorten grass. In the absence of cattle, mesoherbivore-accessible sites showed higher alpha diversity of smaller wildlife than sites excluding mesoherbivores. Smaller wildlife habitat use was increased by high cattle stocking rates and wild mesoherbivores more in the presence of the other. Synthesis and applications. Our findings imply that grazing, whether by livestock or wildlife, can enhance local savanna wildlife diversity. The biodiversity benefits of localised increases in herbivory are likely to be due to shortened grass and associated visibility improvements (for predator avoidance/foraging). This suggests that land managers can increase local biodiversity by shortening grass, with wild or domestic herbivores (or both), at least in patches within a taller grass matrix

Maintenance of Brucellosis in Yellowstone Bison: Linking Seasonal Food Resources, Host-Pathogen Interaction, and Life-History Trade-Offs

The seasonal availability of food resources is an important factor shaping the life-history strategies of organisms. During times of nutritional restriction, physiological trade-offs can induce periods of immune suppression, thereby increasing susceptibility to infectious disease. Our goal was to provide a conceptual framework describing how the endemic level bovine brucellosis (Brucella abortus) may be maintained in Yellowstone bison based on the seasonality of food resources and the life-history strategies of the host and pathogen. Our analysis was based on active B. abortus infection (measured via bacterial culture), nutritional indicators (measured as metabolites and hormones in plasma), and carcass measurements of 402 slaughtered bison. Data from Yellowstone bison were used to investigate (1) whether seasonal changes in diet quality affect nutritional condition and coincide with the reproductive needs of female bison; (2) whether active B. abortus infection and infection intensities vary with host nutrition and nutritional condition; and (3) the evidence for seasonal changes in immune responses, which may offer protection against B. abortus, in relation to nutritional condition. Female bison experienced a decline in nutritional condition during winter as reproductive demands of late gestation increased while forage quality and availability declined. Active B. abortus infection was negatively associated with bison age and nutritional condition, with the intensity of infection negatively associated with indicators of nutrition (e.g., dietary protein and energy) and body weight. Data suggest that protective cell-mediated immune responses may be reduced during the B. abortus transmission period, which coincides with nutritional insufficiencies and elevated reproductive demands during spring. Our results illustrate how seasonal food restriction can drive physiological trade-offs that suppress immune function and create infection and transmission opportunities for pathogens

Conservation lessons from large-mammal manipulations in East African savannas: the KLEE, UHURU, and GLADE experiments

African savannas support an iconic fauna, but they are undergoing large-scale population declines and extinctions of large (>5 kg) mammals. Long-term, controlled, replicated experiments that explore the consequences of this defaunation (and its replacement with livestock) are rare. The Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia County, Kenya, hosts three such experiments, spanning two adjacent ecosystems and environmental gradients within them: the Kenya Long-Term Exclosure Experiment (KLEE; since 1995), the Glade Legacies and Defaunation Experiment (GLADE; since 1999), and the Ungulate Herbivory Under Rainfall Uncertainty experiment (UHURU; since 2008). Common themes unifying these experiments are (1) evidence of profound effects of large mammalian herbivores on herbaceous and woody plant communities; (2) competition and compensation across herbivore guilds, including rodents; and (3) trophic cascades and other indirect effects. We synthesize findings from the past two decades to highlight generalities and idiosyncrasies among these experiments, and highlight six lessons that we believe are pertinent for conservation. The removal of large mammalian herbivores has dramatic effects on the ecology of these ecosystems; their ability to rebound from these changes (after possible refaunation) remains unexplored

Vegetation, Wildlife, and Livestock Responses to Planned Grazing Management in an African Pastoral Landscape

Rangelands are vital for wildlife conservation and socio-economic well-being, but many face widespread degradation due in part to poor grazing management practices. Planned grazing management, typically involving time-controlled rotational livestock grazing, is widely touted as a tool for promoting sustainable rangelands. However, real-world assessments of its efficacy have been lacking in communal pastoral landscapes globally, and especially in Africa. We performed landscape-scale assessment of the effects of planned grazing on selected vegetation, wildlife and cattle attributes across wide-ranging communally managed pastoral rangelands in northern Kenya. We found that planned grazing enhanced vegetation condition through a 17% increase in normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), 45- 234% increases in herbaceous vegetation foliar cover, species richness and diversity, and a 70% reduction in plant basal gap. In addition, planned grazing increased the presence (44%) and species richness (53%) of wild ungulates, and improved cattle weight gain (> 71%) during dry periods when cattle were in relatively poor condition. These changes occurred relatively rapidly (within 5 years) and despite grazing incursion incidents and higher livestock stocking rates in planned grazing areas. These results demonstrate, for the first time in Africa, the positive effects of planned grazing implementation in communal pastoral rangelands. These improvements can have broad implications for biodiversity conservation and pastoral livelihoods