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On a world map, Macquarie Island is a speck in the Southern Ocean, but for ecologists it is a beacon, illuminating a future for grand-scale environmental recovery projects.Melissa Houghton first set foot on the 34km-long green streak as a dog handler in late 2011. Rabbits, cats, rats and mice had been introduced by sealers in…
ArtenVielfaltOn a world map, Macquarie Island is a speck in the Southern Ocean, but for ecologists it is a beacon, illuminating a future for grand-scale environmental recovery projects.
Melissa Houghton first set foot on the 34km-long green streak as a dog handler in late 2011. Rabbits, cats, rats and mice had been introduced by sealers in the 1800s and were wreaking havoc on the world heritage site. At their peak, there were approximately 300,000 European rabbits and an untold number of black rats and house mice.
During their trip, Houghton and a labrador named Wags found what would prove to be the last vertebrate pests left on the island: an adult rabbit and her young. In 2014, Macquarie was declared pest free, the largest island to successfully eliminate rabbits to date.
Ten years after Wags sniffed out the last rabbit, the island has sprung back to life, and Houghton has stuck around to witness the change. She gave up dog handling, became a scientist and completed her PhD as part of the research team monitoring the island’s resurgence.
“Seeing it rebound, knowing it’s got a long way to go, and that we don’t know what else is going to happen, it’s so exciting,” Houghton says.
Houghton remembers being “blown away” by her first views of Macquarie Island after a three-day voyage south from Tasmania in 2011. Its beaches were crowded with hulking elephant seals and raucous colonies of endemic royal penguins. But Keith Springer, who was leading the Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project, warned her that beyond the beaches the once biodiverse and unique island was so damaged that it was “nothing but a pretty paddock”.
Melissa Houghton and her labrador Wags among the island’s penguins. Photograph: Melissa Houghton
Attempts to rid the island of pests had already been under way for some years. The last feral cat was shot in 2000, poison drops were used in 2010 to kill the rats and mice, with rabbits also being targeted. But after the accidental poisoning of native birds, calicivirus (a rabbit haemorrhagic disease) was released in February 2011 to further reduce rabbit numbers.
Houghton and Wags were one of several teams sent to scour the island for surviving pests. “There are massive steep coast cliffs all the way round the island. There might be a few hundred rabbits, but it just seemed impossible [to find them],” she says.
Trudging through the landscape, Houghton saw the damage the pests had wreaked. Before the sealers, the largest creatures eating the island’s vegetation were insects. So for rabbits it was an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Melissa and Wags with the last adult rabbit on Macquarie Island in November 2011. Photograph: Courtesy of Melissa Houghton
The island had been dominated by giant tussock grass and swaying forests of megaherbs, such as Macquarie Island cabbage, which can grow taller than a human. This, says Houghton, is “like celery, very delicious, so the rabbits just absolutely loved it and smashed it”, stripping the landscape and destabilising slopes where grey-headed albatross nested. “You’d have slime and lichen and landslips where albatrosses were trying to raise chicks and survive.”
Houghton was only able to see some plants in small fenced-off areas. These included two endemic orchids and a tiny herb called Huperzia australiana. “I couldn’t even envision what the island was meant to look like,” she says.
Birds such as blue and grey petrels, which had been hunted off the island by cats, were returning by 2011, says Dr Justine Shaw of the Queensland University of Technology and Houghton’s PHD supervisor. Shaw recently coordinated a 10-year project to assess the island’s response to pest eradication.
But life was still dangerous for the returning petrels. They nest in burrows, and rabbits had eaten the vegetation that hid and protected them, making the birds vulnerable to attack from skuas, a native predatory bird.
This one action, the eradication, has saved entire communities and species
Dr Justine Shaw, conservationist
Gradually, life for the island’s birds is improving. Antarctic prions and white-headed petrels, which also nest in burrows, had managed to cling on in some sites while pests were on the island. Their numbers are now increasing. “It’s fantastic and so exciting,” Shaw says.
As birds return to breed, they also poo. This adds nutrients to the soil, which in turn helps the plants to grow back stronger. Tall plants then help burrowing birds hide from predatory skuas. “It’s this wonderful feedback loop,” Shaw says.
Today, the “pretty paddock” that Houghton first experienced has been transformed. “The tussock is over your head, and you’re dodging all these penguin tunnels,” she says. The orchids and tiny herb that had been protected by fencing have started turning up all over the place.
Houghton’s PhD research has also tracked the response of invertebrates such as spiders, flightless flies and springtails. “It’s amazing that somewhere so isolated can have so much diversity of insects – there’s a lot of endemic species,” she says. Removing mice, rats and rabbits might not seem like a way to improve life for invertebrates, but many of them rely on the plants the rabbits were gobbling up. Also, “when mice are on an island they target juicy larvae, caterpillars, moths and spiders and beetles,” says Houghton. The change is palpable. “You go into a hut now and there’s cobwebs everywhere.”
One of Macquarie Island’s native predatory birds, a skua, at Cape Star. Photograph: Melissa Houghton
Typically after an eradication scientists tend to assess how one charismatic species has responded to the pests’ removal. But Shaw is interested in how the island is responding as a whole ecosystem. “It’s not like someone turns the lights on and it’s back to normal. It’s actually quite a staggered response,” she says.
When Shaw talks about the legacy of the eradication she looks to the future. Understanding the intricacies of how Macquarie Island is recovering has informed island pest eradications on New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic Antipodes Islands, South Georgia and more. In July 2022 a project was announced to eradicate predators including possums, rats, feral cats and hedgehogs from New Zealand’s Rakiura/Stewart Island, an inhabited island.
Island eradication is not cheap – the Macquarie project cost Aus$24.5m (£14m) and would have been more if not for in-kind support from research facilities already on the island. But isolated islands are hubs for biodiversity, with each one often having its own unique array of flora and fauna.
“This one management action, the eradication, has saved entire communities and species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world,” Shaw says.
Houghton is grateful to have witnessed the island’s resurgence. “It’s one of the few instances where humans can permanently reverse some damage we’ve caused,” she says.
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This Swedish-produced documentary about China’s Hanyuan valley is nominally another dispatch from the eco-apocalypse file, so the final harmonious impression it leaves behind suggests it hasn’t done its job properly. Located in Sichuan province, the valley is a place where bees are on the verge of extinction, the consequences of which we see in the…
ArtenVielfaltThis Swedish-produced documentary about China’s Hanyuan valley is nominally another dispatch from the eco-apocalypse file, so the final harmonious impression it leaves behind suggests it hasn’t done its job properly.
Located in Sichuan province, the valley is a place where bees are on the verge of extinction, the consequences of which we see in the opening sequence of fruit farmer Cao and his wife hand-pollinating flowers on their trees.
They are one of three families in this agricultural triptych: there is also maize-cropper Ye, who is thinking of branching out into fruit in order to pay for a new house, and beekeeper Zhang, who leaves her grandparents to look after her young daughter so she and her husband can take refuge in the far-flung part of the valley where insects still thrive. As Cao testifies, the problem is modern pesticides, which caused fruit harvests to fail shortly after they started being used in the mid-1960s.
Is there a growing awareness of the problem? Do bee friendly chemicals exist? Is the frankly frightening amount of cigarette smoking in the fields here what is actually driving away the insects?
The incurious Earth: Muted doesn’t seem interested in prising open the wider context; it rests wholly on extended sequences of the farmers at work unsheathing corn cobs or collecting pollen, with halting commentary superimposed.
The film touches on the issues: Cao alludes to informing the Chinese authorities about pesticides’ harmful effects, while Ye’s father is adamant they can be safely used without harming the bees. But there is no real inquiry.
What is apparent are the economic pressures that are driving the farmers en masse into the arms of the agro-industrial complex. Everyone here, team pesticide or not, is looking to improve their prospects to ensure a better life for the next generation.
But instead of pushing the film into defining what the ecological cost of this may be, the film-makers – torn between a proper investigative exposé and a less judgmental bucolic portrait – placidly position this as just part of the timeless cycle of rural struggle. It might be soothing to watch, but that seems like the wrong take away.
This article by Phil Hoad was first published by The Guardian on 1 August 2022. Lead Image: A bucolic portrait … Earth: Muted.
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For decades ecologists have been warning about the homogenisation of diversity – species becoming more alike – in the living world. Now, researchers at the University of Sheffield have published research predicting that bird species with striking and extreme traits are likely to go extinct first. “The global extinction crisis doesn’t just mean that we’re…
ArtenVielfaltFor decades ecologists have been warning about the homogenisation of diversity – species becoming more alike – in the living world. Now, researchers at the University of Sheffield have published research predicting that bird species with striking and extreme traits are likely to go extinct first. “The global extinction crisis doesn’t just mean that we’re losing species,” says the study’s leader, Dr Emma Hughes. “It means that we are losing unique traits and evolutionary history.”
This shows that human activity is not just drastically reducing numbers of species, it is probably disproportionately destroying the most unique, unusual and distinctive creatures on Earth.
What would it mean to no longer share a planet with the toucan, and its bodacious bill four times the size of its head, even if you never see one in real life? Or the elegant Bengal florican, which looks like a walking treble clef. Or the iridescent hummingbird? Or the bird of paradise, with its rococo coiled plumes?
A puffin at Bagh Mhiughlaigh (Mingulay bay). Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Many of the potential impacts are unpredictable, but bleak. As Hughes says, we are losing species that could “confer unique benefits to humanity that are currently unknown”. And we already know the knock-on effects of species loss can be catastrophic. The decline of vultures in India and the loss of their scavenging, carrion-eating niche has already had negative consequences for human populations, including the spread of disease.
This will not just affect faraway places with higher numbers of unusual species. “The extinction crisis will lead to a loss of morphological diversity in the UK too,” Hughes says. Unfortunately, the Atlantic puffin, one of Britain’s most-loved birds, and other unique seabirds such as the black-legged kittiwake and Leach’s storm petrel, are vulnerable.
Losing any species is tragic, but we’re also facing a decline in the species that inspire the most awe in humans. In short, we can expect the world to become “really simple and brown and boring”, Dr Eliot Miller, of the Cornell lab of ornithology, told the New York Times. More sparrows; fewer puffins.
A male peacock spider. Photograph: BIOSPHOTO/Alamy
If you were captured by an alien and asked to make the case for why the Earth shouldn’t be blown apart, what would you say? As much as I love little brown jobs, I would think about the species so beautiful and unusual you can barely believe they are real.
I would tell them about the mandrill with its bright blue and pink face and rump. I would tell them about the hornbills that look as if they’re balancing a banana on their head. I’d mention the atlas moth that’s as big as a human hand. The peacock jumping spider, the Christmas-tree worm, the elf owl. I would tell them about the curlew, with its extraordinary curved beak; the kingfisher that bolts down the river like a turquoise meteor; the flamboyant antlers of a stag. I would tell them about mountain gorillas and blue whales and golden eagles. Baobabs, frogs and diatoms. Toucans! We have toucans!
It wouldn’t be difficult to argue, for the exuberant diversity of life on Earth is its signature and wonder.
Wonder isn’t just nice, or a luxury. Scientists have shown that experiencing awe has a measurable effect on human health. A study from the University of Toronto found that awe was the one positive emotion that could predict lower levels of unhealthy inflammation. Awe can also affect how we treat other people. People are more ethical, kind and generous after feeling awe, and despite our unprecedented estrangement from the non-human, we still get most of our experiences of awe from the living world.
All this focus on human emotions sounds awfully anthropocentric and a minor issue but humans are naturally curious – and curiosity thrives on variety and diversity. While denialism in the face of climate breakdown and extinction seems hard to budge, could this new deepening of what the biodiversity crisis means – a less interesting world – be a warning that cuts through?
A pair of kingfishers at Knepp, Sussex. Photograph: James West
This latest research illustrates what the often hard-to-imagine biodiversity crisis looks like: a less resplendent, less vibrant world. It is heartbreaking, yes, but galvanising, and an opportunity for focus and pressure on those in power. The vast majority of us don’t want to live in a world bereft of toucans and puffins. Or a boring world, or a dying world. So would politicians care to mention how they square the myopic focus on “growth” with a burnt-out, used-up Earth that is clearly telling us to stop?
If we wipe out the species with the most unique traits, and continue to destroy the rich diversity of the Earth, we will all be impoverished in ways we can’t yet comprehend. Even if we never see a toucan in the wild, we are still their kin. Their wildness is still, in some way, part of us. We are still animals among animals.
A voracious appetite for frogs’ legs among the French and Belgians is driving species in Indonesia, Turkey and Albania to the brink of extinction, according to a report. Europe imports as many as 200 million mostly wild frogs every year, contributing to a serious depletion of native species abroad. Scientists estimate that the Anatolian water…
ArtenVielfaltA voracious appetite for frogs’ legs among the French and Belgians is driving species in Indonesia, Turkey and Albania to the brink of extinction, according to a report.
Europe imports as many as 200 million mostly wild frogs every year, contributing to a serious depletion of native species abroad.
Scientists estimate that the Anatolian water frog could be extinct in Turkey by 2032, because of over-exploitation while other species such as the Albanian water frog are now threatened.
Export quotas for Indonesia’s Javan frog have also been withdrawn in a move that conservationists suspect may be as a result of population depletion.
Dr Sandra Altherr, the co-founder of the conservation charity Pro Wildlife, which co-authored the report said: “In Indonesia, as now also in Turkey and Albania, large frog species are dwindling in the wild, one after the other, causing a fatal domino effect for species conservation.”
“If the plundering for the European market continues, it’s highly likely that we will see more serious declines of wild frog populations and, potentially, extinctions in the next decade.”
Charlotte Nithart, the president of the French NGO Robin des Bois, which co-wrote the paper, said: “Frogs play a central role in the ecosystem as insect killers – and where frogs disappear, the use of toxic pesticides is increasing. Hence, the frogs’ legs trade has direct consequences not only for the frogs themselves, but for biodiversity and ecosystem health as a whole.”
Amphibians are the most threatened group among vertebrates, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the EU’s habitats directive prevents native wild frogs from being caught in member countries.
The 27-country bloc does not restrict imports, however, and every year about 4,070 tonnes of frogs netted abroad are served up on European plates.
The craving for frog meat appears highest in Belgium, which takes 70% of the imports, but Pro Wildlife says most of these are then sent on to France, which directly imports 16.7%. The Netherlands takes in 6.4%.
The IUCN will publish a conservation status report for amphibians later this year, but Jennifer Luedtke, who manages the union’s red list assessments said that at least 1,200 amphibian species – 17% of the total – are traded on the international market.
“It causes drastic population declines in the countries where these frogs originate from, as well as the unintentional spreading of lethal pathogens to amphibians,” she said.
“A shift in public consciousness needs to take place in Europe [to realise] that the burden of these declines in amphibian populations is being placed on poorer countries because of demand in wealthier ones.”
Luedtke, who also coordinates the IUCN’s amphibian specialist group, said: “We need to talk about sustainable use and if that’s even possible.”
Indonesia provides an estimated 74% of frogs imported to the EU, followed by Vietnam with 21%, Turkey 4% and Albania 0.7%, the report says.
Over-exploitation in non-EU countries has led the IUCN to give vulnerable and near-threatened classifications to species such as the giant spiny frog in China and Cambodia’s Asian grass frog.
In Africa, fewer than 250 mature Togo slippery frogs are thought to survive, and the giant African bullfrog may already be extinct in Swaziland.
Pro Wildlife and Robin de Bois say that they want EU counties to restrict imports, ensure the traceability of frogs’ legs products, provide better information to consumers and develop listing proposals for endangered species in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
Altherr also called for an end to cruel practices such as the cutting of frogs legs with axes or scissors without anaesthetic.
EU insiders suggested it was unfortunate that the Pro Wildlife report had been published after a 17 June deadline for the submission of listing proposals to the next Cites conference of the parties, which will take place in Panama in November.
A European Commission official said: “The EU is ready to consider support for any listing proposals coming from [Cites] range states, for which there is scientific evidence demonstrating that there is a risk that international trade threatens the survival of the species.”
This article by Arthur Neslen was first published by The GUardian on 23 June 2022. Lead Image: Europe imports up to 200 million mostly wild frogs every year. The giant African bullfrog (pictured) may already be extinct in Swaziland. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy.
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Elephant conservation in southern Africa has been remarkably successful over the last century. The region’s elephant populations collapsed in the late 1880s through over-hunting, but their numbers have since increased more than 20-fold; from less than a few thousand to 250,000 – 300,000 today. The overall biomass of elephants in southern Africa is now higher…
ArtenVielfaltElephant conservation in southern Africa has been remarkably successful over the last century. The region’s elephant populations collapsed in the late 1880s through over-hunting, but their numbers have since increased more than 20-fold; from less than a few thousand to 250,000 – 300,000 today.
The overall biomass of elephants in southern Africa is now higher than that of any other large mammal in the region. Human populations have also increased 20-fold over the last century resulting in a rapid expansion of human settlement and agriculture.
Human and elephant population growth has led to compressed and fragmented elephant ranges, increasing human-elephant conflict and an escalating elephant overpopulation problem.
Elephants are large generalist herbivores and the currently high elephant densities in protected areas may well be unprecedented in evolutionary and historical terms because the major predator of elephants, Homo sapiens, has been removed from these ecosystems.
This study, commissioned by the WWF Africa and Madagascar Programme, examined and reviewed management issues and options relating to the elephant overpopulation problem in southern Africa. The study covered six countries – Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
These countries were visited to obtain information on current numbers, distribution and trends in elephant populations, legal and policy frameworks governing the conservation and management of elephant, elephant management issues and problems, and the views of a wide range of stakeholders on elephant management issues and options.
Botswana, with approximately 150,000 elephants, carries the largest elephant population in the world, followed by Zimbabwe with ~ 100,000 elephants. Half of the Zimbabwe elephant population lives in 22,000 km2 in the north western region of the country, which is contiguous with Botswana. The combined population of about 250,000 elephant spills over into the Caprivi Strip in Namibia, into southwestern Zambia and southeastern Angola. This population is growing at about 5% per annum.
The remaining four countries in the region each carry populations of between 15,000 and 20,000 elephants. These populations are also growing at rates of between 3% and 7% per annum. There is no clear evidence that population growth rates are declining. If current population growth rates are maintained, together with a hands-off approach to management, the population could increase to >500,000 elephant in southern Africa by 2020.
Both Zimbabwe and South Africa attempted to contain the eruption of elephant populations in protected areas from the mid-1960s through to the mid 1980s and South Africa continued culling until 1994. The Kruger National Park population was held below 8,000 elephant until 1995 when culling ceased – the population has since nearly doubled. In the mid-1980s Zimbabwe attempted to hold its elephant population at about 45,000 but culling effectively stopped in the late 1980s and the
population has doubled since then.
Although the Botswana 1991 elephant management plan stipulated that its elephant population would be held at 55,000 no action was taken and the number is now approaching 150,000. The Mozambican and Zambian populations both experienced heavy poaching during the 1970s and 1980s but are now beginning to recover.
The main Namibian population in Etosha National Park and the northwest grew slowly, largely as a result of ongoing mortality from anthrax. A recent influx of elephants from Botswana has, however, resulted in a rapid increase in elephants in the north east of the country and in the Caprivi Strip.
All of the countries in the region reported an increasing number of incidents of human-elephant conflict.
Elephant management options can be divided into passive and active methods. Passive methods include (a) taking no action, (b) enlarging the range available to elephants, (c) fencing to contain or exclude elephants, (d) the use of repellents, and (e) manipulating water supplies. These methods are non-lethal and therefore favoured by many on ethical grounds. Active methods include (a) contraception, (b) translocation, (c) driving/disturbance, and (d) culling and cropping. The advantages and disadvantages of the various methods were examined. While attitudes and beliefs
regarding the use of these alternative methods are polarized, most of the stakeholders consulted believed that active methods, including culling, would be required sooner or later to contain elephant population growth in their countries.
Taking no action is likely to result in the present southern African population exceeding 500,000 elephants by 20201. An optimistic estimate of the area available for range expansion in the region indicates that this option might encompass a potential 392,000 km2 and be able to accommodate up to about 75,000 elephant or 1/3rd of the expected increase over the next 12-15 years. Significant range expansion, if it is to occur, will have to include large areas of the communal lands of the region that are already settled by people. Elephant densities in excess of 0.2 elephant per
km2 are unlikely to be welcomed, let alone tolerated, in these Communal Lands. Such densities would in any event have to go hand in hand with realistic incentives to communal farmers to harbour elephants on their land. These benefits could be generated if farmers and rural communities were able to derive the full range of benefits from elephants, including, for example, trophy hunting and the sale
of elephant products from animals harvested. Range expansion will thus require shifts in national, regional and international policy regarding the conservation and management of elephants outside of protected areas, as well policy changes relating to the sale of ivory and other elephant products. Such a strategy may also serve to assist in containing the ongoing elephant population eruption in the region (see below, under culling operations).
Fencing is used effectively to contain elephants within protected areas in South Africa and in some parts of Zimbabwe. Its use to exclude elephants from fields of crops or from particular areas in communal lands has been less successful, mainly because of the high maintenance costs involved.
Repellents, such as chilli peppers planted around fields and chilli-oil smeared on fencing have met with some success in reducing crop-raiding by elephants in some areas but do not provide a longterm solution to the problem of increasing elephant numbers.
Manipulating water supplies has only recently been used to manage elephant impacts on habitats in Kruger National Park where a large number of artificial water points have recently been closed. Clearly the technique can only be used where elephant distribution depends on artificial water supplies and where these can controlled.
Contraception as a means of slowing elephant population growth is being
developed in South Africa and two experimental immuno-contraception trials on small, enclosed, populations have been conducted. Some experiments are underway to investigate the possibility of sterilizing males. The results to date of immuno-contraception trials indicate that it is feasible, at least for small populations, and few side effects on elephant welfare and behaviour have been detected. Its main application is likely to be in containing population growth in the many small, largely unviable populations in South Africa. Its potential use in Kruger National Park and Addo Elephant National Park is still being debated. The method is expensive and is not seen as a useful approach by stakeholders elsewhere in the region; many of those consulted considered it “unnatural”, if not morally wrong, to spend vast sums containing the productive growth of elephants that could be harvested to alleviate poverty.
Translocation of elephants into newly created protected areas has been successful in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Its use in alleviating overpopulation problems in large elephant populations would, however, be financially and logistically prohibitive, and areas that can accept large numbers of elephant no longer exist in the region. Driving and disturbance have been used in the region but their applicability is very limited.
Carefully targeted and professionally conducted culling operations are seen by a majority of those consulted as being the only viable option for effectively reducing elephant populations in the region. Many of those who opposed large scale government culling operations felt that cropping elephant to meet the needs of the rural poor was acceptable. The potential for containing a continuing elephant population eruption through peripheral harvesting and the creation of “source-sink” conditions in the region has not been seriously explored. Part of the strategy for managing elephant in Hwange National Park during the 1980s was to reduce the population to a level where a peripheral off-take of about 600 elephants per year in surrounding forest and communal lands could stabilize the population,
and thus forestall further large-scale culling operations in the park.
Management capacity
The capacity to implement a wide range of elephant management options is high in South Africa but low elsewhere in the region. Operational budgets per unit area provide a reliable indicator of resource management capacity. In South Africa these are higher than US$1,400 per km2, in Namibia they are approximately US $80 per km2, while in Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe they are US$10 or less
per km2 . The discrepancies in trained manpower are equally great. In South Africa there are about 33 researchers per 10,000 km2 of protected area but in the rest of the region it is about 3 per 10,000 km2. Similar considerations apply to trained field staff engaged in protection of the resource.
National and regional policies
National policies and legal frameworks within the region all make provision for the conservation and sustainable use of elephant and for controlling the numbers of elephants where they may have adverse impacts on habitats and other components of biodiversity. The harvesting of elephants and sale of their products is also supported by local laws in all of countries visited. That elephants can be hunted and harvested to provide benefits to local communities is also fully supported by national and regional
wildlife conservation and management policies. However, after the African elephant was listed on CITES Appendix I in 1989, decisions regarding elephant management in southern Africa were strongly influenced by the international community; the resulting dearth of markets for ivory and hides greatly reduced funds available for elephant management particularly in Zimbabwe. This situation has not changed. A central issue is, “Whose value systems should prevail in decisions regarding the management of elephants in southern Africa?”
Human-Elephant conflict and the economic value of elephant
Conflict between humans and elephants were reported to be a major and escalating problem in all countries in southern Africa except South Africa where there are nevertheless problems on the boundary of Kruger National Park. Elephant and human populations have increased twenty-fold in southern African countries over the last century. In Zimbabwe, for example, the human population increased from c. 500,000 in 1900 to 12 million in 2000 while the elephant population increased from c. 4,000 to >90,000 during the same period. Most protected areas in the region are surrounded by traditional communal farming lands. The farmers are mostly subsistence farmers for whom cropping forms a vital component of household food security.
Elephants damage crops, water installations for livestock, and not infrequently kill people in rural areas. The problems are particularly acute on the boundaries of unfenced protected areas, which situation is common in southern Africa. Human-elephant conflicts also occur further afield where elephant live in traditional farming areas. In Botswana 60% of its large elephant population lives outside protected areas during the rainy season, the period of greatest threat to the fields of subsistence farmers. Some 80% of the potential elephant range in southern Africa is outside protected areas. In Zimbabwe nearly 10,000 elephants reside in Communal Lands. The root cause of the increasing conflict is exponential growth of both human and elephant populations. Moving people to make way for elephants is not an option. Attempts to mitigate crop and other damage caused by elephants have had a limited impact. Creating appropriate incentives and ways for rural subsistence farmers to live with elephants is an option that deserves to be more fully and realistically explored.
More specifically there is, firstly, the need to devolve decision making about the conservation and management of elephants to those communities that live with elephants, and secondly, the there is need to increase the benefits derived from elephants (both live and dead) to local communities.
Elephants have the potential to generate major financial returns to communal farmers, to protected areas, and to other land under wildlife use, and by so doing to contribute to maintaining and extending wild areas in the region. Current estimates show that harvesting 5,000 elephant a year could generate US$ 40 million, a sum sufficient to finance the protected areas in the region at more than $200 per
km2. At present, protected areas in Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe are operating on a fraction of this sum and at about $10 per km2. The returns to communal farmers are potentially much higher than those from subsistence cropping and could create incentives to sustainably manage elephants on their land.
The current laissez faire approach to managing elephant overpopulations in the region has enormous opportunity costs that require full and critical scrutiny and analysis.
Elephant impacts on biodiversity
Elephants can and do greatly modify woodlands and habitat structure. However, the nature of the impact of increasing elephant densities on biodiversity remains a matter of controversy both academically and amongst other stakeholders. The central question of trophic cascades following the removal of a top predator (i.e. humans) has not been given adequate attention in current research on elephant-ecosystem dynamics in protected areas. Recent archaeological evidence on the role of
hominids in proboscidean extinctions indicates that in evolutionary and historical terms hominids have been a keystone predator of elephants and so will have shaped elephant habitat interactions.
The decision to conserve biodiversity is, in the first instance, a value judgment on the part of individuals and society. Confusion and controversy arise when the elements of biodiversity that are to be conserved are not precisely defined. This is an area that requires careful attention by conservation agencies in the framing of policy guidelines, management plans and the manner in which science is used to guide their decisions.
Solutions and priorities
The stated objectives of southern African conservation agencies are to conserve biodiversity and to ensure the sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of present and future generations of their people. The major elephant conservation and management problems and issues identified and discussed in this report are, in essence, the following:
1. Elephant populations in southern Africa are growing exponentially and running out of space. (Too many elephants)
2. Elephants are spilling over into farming areas and eating people’s crops, as well as killing several people each year. (Human-elephant conflict)
3. Because their ability to disperse is constrained, elephants are changing habitats within protected areas, but there is little agreement on whether such changes are “natural” or “unnatural,” or good or bad for conservation or biodiversity in general. (Scientific controversy)
4. The world is divided into those who disapprove of killing elephant or interfering in what they consider to be natural processes and those who do not. (Differing value systems)
The elephant management issue is not a simple single-species conservation issue – it is embedded in a complex social-ecological system with important cross-scale effects and drivers. The ethical and value systems of major players with an interest in elephant conservation emerge as the overriding driver of resource management decisions and these are operating at an inter-continental scale. For this reason the overriding priority is to establish what the peoples of southern Africa think about the
conservation and consumptive use of elephants.
Our first and major recommendation is to commission a professionally conducted opinion survey of values and attitudes of a full range of southern African ethnic groups and socio-economic classes to elephant conservation, sustainable use, and related issues.
Once that information becomes available, southern African and other decision makers will have a firmer basis on which to consider the alternative options for managing the current overpopulation problem. They should then also be well placed to answer the following two central questions:
• Should rural communities and land owners in Africa have the right to use elephants and their products sustainably to better their lives and in so doing maintain wild land in the face of pressures from expanding agriculture or other land uses?
• Should national parks and protected area agencies have the right to maximize economic returns from elephants if such an approach helps to better conserve a full range of biodiversity within the protected areas for which they are responsible?
Our second major recommendation also concerns information that is required for informed policy and resource management decisions, namely, to conduct a thorough financial and economic analysis of:
More directly, at national and local levels, the following are further important priorities for action and donor support:
A key finding of this study is that much better information is needed on the values and opinions of those conserving, managing and living with elephants, as well as on the social, economic, landuse and policy related dimensions of the elephant problem, to enable informed, equitable and sustainable decisions to be reached. The scientific debate about elephant impacts on biodiversity, currently a major preoccupation, is likely to continue indefinitely.
This article by David Cumming and Brian Jones was first published by WWF – SARPO Occasional Paper Number 11 in May 2005. Lead Image: Wildlife authorities in Zimbabwe said there had been a rise in complaints from rural communities where crops are raided and lives lost to animals GETTY IMAGES.
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Rogue Rubin’s brave, secret labor behind the camera offers us a unique look into the world of trophy hunting, where wealthy people—mainly men, mostly Americans and Europeans, some sporting Hemingway beards—pay to kill while on safari. A liberal vegetarian from Melbourne named Rubin plays Joni Kiser, a pro-hunting enthusiast and aspiring photographer, in the movie…
ArtenVielfaltRogue Rubin’s brave, secret labor behind the camera offers us a unique look into the world of trophy hunting, where wealthy people—mainly men, mostly Americans and Europeans, some sporting Hemingway beards—pay to kill while on safari.
A liberal vegetarian from Melbourne named Rubin plays Joni Kiser, a pro-hunting enthusiast and aspiring photographer, in the movie “The Hunt for Justice.” She initially makes bogus social media accounts under a fictitious identity.
Then Rubin poses as an intern working for a large game hunter in Africa to go undercover. Bob, an American on safari with his college-age daughter, kills a wild lion during a particularly dreadful hunt.
He wields a powerful rifle, just like all hunters, thus the battle is far from fair. What’s unsettling is the story Bob invents to defend the killing: in his mind, the lion is a “problem cat” who must be saved by defending the locals. “Do they need the support of an American dad?” snarks Rubin. Bob poses for pictures with his catch before heading to the taxidermist.
Rubin’s criticism on a few occasions is a little overdone, and she makes a few broad generalizations about Africa. However, after the 1994 release of The Lion King by Disney, half of Africa’s lion population has vanished. Lions are considered to be susceptible to extinction.
The largest concern isn’t trophy hunting; rather, it’s habitat destruction brought on by human encroachment, bushmeat trade, and farmers murdering lions to protect livestock. Rubin examines the controversy surrounding trophy hunting, revealing that not all conservationists are against it.
The clearest example of this is a footage of talk show presenter Jimmy Kimmel discussing the 2015 killing of one of Zimbabwe’s most beloved lions by a Minnesota dentist. In reality, her film is an exposé of the brains and mentalities of trophy hunters. Are you that desperate for an erection that you need to slaughter things?
This article by Cath Clarke was first published by The Guardian on 26 July 2022. Lead Image: Going Rogue … Lion Spy. Photograph: Joni Rubin.
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In late March and early April this year, researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands teamed up with fishers, conservationists and scientists in Guinea-Bissau to catch, study, sample and release more than 50 sharks and rays off the coast of the West African country. The team, which included experts from the Guinea-Bissau-based Institute…
ArtenVielfaltIn late March and early April this year, researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands teamed up with fishers, conservationists and scientists in Guinea-Bissau to catch, study, sample and release more than 50 sharks and rays off the coast of the West African country.
The team, which included experts from the Guinea-Bissau-based Institute of Biodiversity and Protected Areas (IBAP), took blood and other tissue samples from the animals for DNA analyses, determined their sex and maturity, and looked for signs they recently gave birth. In all, the animals belonged to 10 different species, including the smalltooth stingray (Dasyatis rudis), scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewini), tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) and bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas).
The team conducted the research in the Bijagós Archipelago, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that covers 88 islands spread across 12,950 square kilometers (5,000 square miles). The region has struggled with fisheries management for decades: illegal fishing is pervasive among foreign-owned industrial vessels, according to a 2018 paper, and small-scale fishing continues to operate within marine protected areas.
“As taking the animal from the water is stressful, we want to make the effort as quick as possible, but at the same time make sure that we can learn as much from the animal as possible,” team leader Guido Leurs, from the University of Groningen, said in an email.
One species received special treatment: the critically endangered blackchin guitarfish (Glaucostegus cemiculus), one of the most threatened ray species in West Africa. The team attached satellite transmitters to two blackchin guitarfish to track their movements, marking the first time this species has been tracked with this method.
Currently, no one knows where local blackchin guitarfish migrate to outside the archipelago, leaving questions about what could be impacting their survival unanswered. Leurs said he hopes this research will provide answers, giving Guinea-Bissauan policymakers more information to protect the species.
“In nine months from deployment (275 days to be exact) we will hopefully find out where these animals have been!” Leurs added.
The team is saving one satellite tracker to place on a scalloped hammerhead during their next expedition.
Nearly one-third (32.6%) of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction due to overfishing, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology late last year. This is an increase from the first global assessment of chondrichthyes (sharks, rays and chimeras) conducted in 2014, which found roughly a quarter (24%) of species were threatened. In the tropics, the threat is disproportionately high.
Sharks and rays play an important cultural and spiritual role for the people of the Bijagós, inspiring dances, costumes and even buildings. While industrial and artisanal coastal fisheries target them within and outside the marine protected areas of the archipelago, Leurs said that because of their cultural significance, Bijagós fishers generally do not, nor do they want to catch them accidentally as bycatch. Leurs said the fishers on his team hope the research results will help them learn how to reduce rates of bycatch.
Igualdino Titi, a fisherman who has worked with Leurs’s team for four years, helped catch the two guitarfish. In his honor, they named one of the fish “Titi,” after his family name.
“I can still see his face when we told him,” Leurs said. “It was just such a moment of pride for him.”
Banner image: The first critically endangered blackchin guitarfish being released with a satellite transmitter. This adult female is named Aissa after IBAP conservationist Aissa Regalla, who works for improved protection of natural areas in Guinea-Bissau. Researchers can now follow this guitarfish and another of its kind to learn about the migration of the little-studied species within the region, with an eye to better protecting it. Image by Maarten Zwarts/University of Groningen.
Intchama, J. F., Belhabib, D., & Tomás Jumpe, R. J. (2018). Assessing Guinea Bissau’s legal and illegal unreported and unregulated fisheries and the surveillance efforts to tackle them. Frontiers in Marine Science, 5. doi:10.3389/fmars.2018.00079
Dulvy, N. K., Fowler, S. L., Musick, J. A., Cavanagh, R. D., Kyne, P. M., Harrison, L. R., … White, W. T. (2014). Extinction risk and conservation of the world’s sharks and rays. eLife, 3. doi:10.7554/elife.00590
Dulvy, N. K., Pacoureau, N., Rigby, C. L., Pollom, R. A., Jabado, R. W., Ebert, D. A., … Simpfendorfer, C. A. (2021). Overfishing drives over one-third of all sharks and rays toward a global extinction crisis. Current Biology, 31(22), 5118-5119. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2021.11.008
This article by Mike DiGirolamo was first published by Mongabay.com on 22 July 2022. Lead Image: The first critically endangered blackchin guitarfish being released with a satellite transmitter. This adult female is named Aissa after IBAP conservationist Aissa Regalla, who works for improved protection of natural areas in Guinea-Bissau. Researchers can now follow this guitarfish and another of its kind to learn about the migration of the little-studied species within the region, with an eye to better protecting it. Image by Maarten Zwarts/University of Groningen.
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Plants and animals that do not have enough data to be properly assessed appear to be at twice the risk of extinction as those that have been evaluated, meaning more species may face being wiped off the planet than previously thought, a study has warned.Researchers looked at the extinction risk of species assessed on the…
ArtenVielfaltPlants and animals that do not have enough data to be properly assessed appear to be at twice the risk of extinction as those that have been evaluated, meaning more species may face being wiped off the planet than previously thought, a study has warned.
Researchers looked at the extinction risk of species assessed on the red list of endangered species and found that 56% of species in the data deficient (DD) category were threatened, compared with 28% of those that had been assessed.
A species is considered DD if there is not enough data on their distribution or population, and these species are “generally ignored” in studies analysing biodiversity impacts, researchers wrote in the paper, published in Communications Biology. The red list, which is created by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is used by governments to work out which species should be prioritised for conservation action.
The IUCN assesses more than 140,000 species based on criteria such as population size, trends and threats. There are 20,000 DD species on the red list and policymakers often consider them as being of least concern, but this study showed that a much higher proportion of these species are threatened. Researchers said that 85% of DD amphibians were at risk, as well as more than half of mammals, reptiles and insects.
Species might be DD because there are very few of them, sightings are rare or they could be cryptic species, making it difficult to estimate their population. To overcome these problems, researchers created an algorithm that predicted the probabilities of species being at risk of extinction based on key factors they did know, such as the global distribution of those species, climatic conditions, land use changes, pesticide use and threats from invasive species. Researchers ran the algorithm on DD species if their geographical distribution was known, which i twas for about 38% of them.
Some DD species with very high probabilities of being at risk included the Sierra Miahuatlan spikethumb frog, which has a 95% chance of being threatened with extinction, as does the Sholai night frog, and a Mexican fish called the Ajijic silverside.
A female furcifer timoni, a chameleon species found in Madagascar. The region is one of three with the greatest number of at-risk data deficient species. Photograph: Jorn Kohler/WWF/PA
Previous studies have looked at the extinction risk of DD species, but this is the most far-reaching, looking at 21 taxonomic groups – still “a tiny fraction of what exists in the world”, according to lead researcher Jan Borgelt of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Borgelt said: “Overall what is more striking is that across almost all land and coastal areas of the world, the average extinction risk would be higher if we took into account data deficient species.” If DD species were included, 33% of species on the red list would be threatened, as opposed to 28%, the algorithm predicted.
Central Africa, southern Asia and Madagascar are the regions with the greatest number of at-risk DD species, although researchers did not look at why this might be the case. As many as half of DD marine species living in coastal areas are at risk of extinction.
Prof Jane Hill from the University of York, who is also a trustee of the British Ecological Society, and was not involved in the research, said: “The study is important because the approach they use [machine learning methods] could be applied to many more species.”
About 18,000 invertebrates have been assessed for extinction on the red list, but 27% are DD. The rate of extinction in insects is eight times faster than that of birds, mammals and reptiles, according to analysis published last year, with known declines likely to be the “tip of the iceberg”. Research has shown that vertebrates get nearly 500 times more funding for each species than invertebrates, which are perceived as being less “charismatic”.
Hill said: “It has long been recognised that the IUCN red listing approach is focused on just a small proportion of all species on Earth, and that it needs to be more representative. So even though this study provides more information on DD species, we still know very little about most species on Earth.”
One example where the algorithm could be used is with the newly recognised Rice’s whale, which scientists thought could be a species for almost a decade, although it took years to get official recognition. Now there are only about 50 of them left, in the area affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, where there is a large amount of boat traffic and oil and gas extraction. There is no local outcry because no one knows it exists, says marine researcher Dr Chris Parsons from the University of Exeter, who believes the DD category should be given an “assume threatened” status. He said: “If immediate precautionary measures were put in years ago when they first suspected a new species, it could have forced research to be immediately conducted and set in motion emergency measures that might have stopped it from becoming critically endangered.”
A beaked whale off Mexico’s western coast. The data on beaked whales is so poor it has not been possible to assess how at risk they truly are. Photograph: Simon Ager/Sea Shepherd/Reuters
Of 23 beaked whale species on the red list, seven are DD. They spend a lot of time below water (their dives can last three hours) and are hard to see in the wild, yet they are at risk from a number of threats including human-created noise pollution in the ocean which could be causing mass strandings. The data on beaked whales is so poor that the algorithm could not assess how at risk they are.
Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in south-east Asia were considered DD for a long time so there was no funding and little interest in studying them. They are now considered “near threatened” and have become the official mascot of Hong Kong, as well as being listed under the US Endangered Species Act, which is helping international conservation efforts.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features
Leading conservationists claim that ancient big trees, endangered birds, wildlife, and ecosystems are being sacrificed for an Albanean government-approved ring road south of Perth. For a portion of the $1.25 billion Bunbury outer ring road, habitat for the severely endangered western ringtail possum and the rare black cockatoos will be permitted to be removed. An…
ArtenVielfaltLeading conservationists claim that ancient big trees, endangered birds, wildlife, and ecosystems are being sacrificed for an Albanean government-approved ring road south of Perth.
For a portion of the $1.25 billion Bunbury outer ring road, habitat for the severely endangered western ringtail possum and the rare black cockatoos will be permitted to be removed.
An representative from the department speaking on behalf of Tanya Plibersek, the new federal environment minister, approved the road plan made by the government of Western Australia at the end of June.
The five-yearly state of the environment report, which indicated that Australia’s natural heritage was in poor and deteriorating condition and that land clearing played a key role, was brought up by conservationists as they noted that it arrived after Plibersek had received and read it.
When the report was released last Tuesday, Plibersek observed that between 2000 and 2017, habitat for threatened species on the continent has been removed of more than 7.7 million hectares. The study, she claimed, was “awful,” and “too much clearing has already taken place.”
The Gelorup environmental corridor, which is home to highly endangered western ringtail possums, black cockatoos, and tiny black-stripe minnow fish, is traversed by 10 km of the proposed ring road’s dual-carriageway outside of Bunbury.
In a letter to Plibersek, a group of locals and conservationists, including Carmen Lawrence, the former leader of the WA Labor Party, expressed concern that the state’s main road agency would not be able to comply with the environmental requirements placed on the project, including providing offsets for the affected species and ecosystems.
The Friends of Gelorup Corridor organization urged the minister to halt the project and look at a road’s lower-impact route in a second letter that was delivered on Monday.
Bob Brown, an environmentalist and former Greens leader, who is one of those fighting against the development, stated, “It’s inexplicable.” “These ancient trees, woods, and unique and endangered species are being sacrificed for no advantage.”
According to Brown, the road had been marked for nearly 25 years and a different route had been suggested that would cross cleared land.
“The extinction crisis about which we were then forewarned has arrived. The lack of any green police on the job and all that is wrong with environmental decision-making are present here, he claimed.
“We appreciate it would be extraordinary to overturn an approval, but there is new material available today that she may use to call for a second independent review of the decision,” said Dr. Sue Chapman, a urologist and vice-president of Friends of Gelorup Corridor.
Because so much of the region around it had been removed for farming, industry, and housing, according to Chapman, the environmental corridor was essential for the survival of the impacted species. A total of 1,088 trees and over 70 hectares of possum and cockatoo habitat may be removed.
She said that heatwaves posed a threat to the highly endangered possum species as well, with reports of numerous animals falling from trees last December due to harsh weather. She predicted that “this will drive these possums in the south-west to extinction.”
The Banksia and Tuart forests, two biological zones classed as vulnerable nationally, are included in the corridor. Under the approval, clearing is permitted on four hectares of Tuart woodland and 24 hectares of Banksia woodland.
A woody pear estimated to be 175 years old, two moodjar trees, and a holly-leaf banksia estimated to be 200 years old are among the four trees that the organization is concerned about.
The group said in its most recent letter to Plibersek that construction barriers had already been put up, preventing a scientific assessment of 152 GPS-marked tree hollows.
The majority of the Banksia and Tuart woodlands and forests were historically cleared by the state government, according to Dr. Joe Fontaine, a forest ecologist at Murdoch University.
We cannot clear any more land, he declared, citing the state of the environment report. “On what planet is it okay to do this when these biological communities are recognized by the federal government as threatened?”
Work cannot begin unless the minister has authorized plans from the principal road agency of the Western Australian government to control the impact on threatened species, ecosystems, and woods.
While the situation is a terrible disaster, Brown insisted that there is still time to repair it. There are excellent possibilities, including a different path.
A necessity to set aside areas as compensation for the regions being cleared, he claimed, would not be effective. Offsets, he claimed, were a “scam”. Put the ring road over the paddock next door if you want to safeguard those species.
Plibersek’s office was questioned by Guardian Australia. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water was contacted on their behalf.
The government said in a statement that the route was approved with requirements to mitigate consequences, such as the need to create management plans. It said that until those plans were completed, no work harming the threatened species and woods may begin.
In order to make up for the effects on black cockatoos, western ringtail possums, banksia woodlands, and Tuart woodlands and forests, the government also mandates Main Roads WA to give environmental offsets, according to the statement.
Alternative routes for the southern portion of the ring road have been looked into, but, according to a statement from Main Roads WA, “there wasn’t a feasible alignment with reduced environmental impacts.”
This month, environmental management plans that outlined how the project could satisfy the minister’s requirements were finished and delivered to Plibersek’s office. Soon to begin work was anticipated.
These plans “include numerous complex circumstances, including baseline and ongoing fauna surveys, a study of the behavior of the western ringtail possum, predator control, clearing controls and staging, and animal crossings.”
Western ringtail possum surveys are still being conducted to “help us better understand the movements of western ringtail possums in and out of the survey area,” and clearing will be meticulously supervised with “professional fauna spotters on site to ensure that no possum is hurt.”
“We are currently examining the condition of each of the indicated trees and chances to safely keep them inside the road corridor,” the statement continued.
This article by Graham Readfearn was first published by The Guardian on 26 July 2022. Lead Image: The ring road proposal includes 10km of dual-carriageway outside Bunbury that cuts through the Gelorup environmental corridor, which is home to critically endangered western ringtail possums, black cockatoos and tiny black-stripe minnow fish. Photograph: Terri Sharp.
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Four species of critically endangered vulture have returned to a park in southern Malawi from which they disappeared more than 20 years ago, and their comeback is credited to the reintroduction of cheetahs, lions and the carcasses the cats left behind, conservationists say. In 2017, seven cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) were reintroduced to Liwonde National Park…
ArtenVielfaltFour species of critically endangered vulture have returned to a park in southern Malawi from which they disappeared more than 20 years ago, and their comeback is credited to the reintroduction of cheetahs, lions and the carcasses the cats left behind, conservationists say.
In 2017, seven cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) were reintroduced to Liwonde National Park under a project run by African Parks and the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), two conservation groups working in partnership with Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW).
Within days, and with the cheetahs still in their acclimatization pen or boma, the vultures showed up.
“We made a bit of a carcass pile not far from the boma,” recalls Olivia Sievert, head of biodiversity research at the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust, a conservation NGO that monitors carnivores in the park.
She and other members of her team set up a camera trap near the carcass pile. They expected to capture images of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), a species they were monitoring. But they were in for a surprise.
“We started getting vultures on camera traps,” says Sievert. “By the second week of the cheetahs being in the boma the vultures were in the trees around the boma, which was very exciting to see.”
The cheetah reintroduction project has been successful. The population within the 548,000-hectare (1.3 million-acre) park reached 42 at the last count, according to a recent paper in Oryx authored by Sievert. A second generation of cheetahs are now breeding and raising cubs.
Lions were introduced months after the cheetahs, helping to boost the availability of food for the vultures.
Vultures – and cheetahs and lions – disappeared from Liwonde and a number of other protected areas in Malawi in the wake of a poaching crisis in the 1990s and early 2000s.
One effect of the vulture extirpation meant that animals that died from natural causes weren’t picked clean by the birds, whose ability to rapidly consume carcasses and the potentially fatal human and livestock diseases they harbor is legendary.
Other birds of prey – bateleur and tawny and fish eagles, marabou storks and ospreys that would usually be pushed aside by the vultures – became more active as scavengers, Sievert says.
But they weren’t nearly as efficient.
“We had a lot more carcasses just rotting away, especially in the dry season when we start losing a lot of animals in the open floodplains,” she explains.
Older animals were simply keeling over from old age, something that wouldn’t happen if cheetahs and lions were around to pick them off earlier.
Surprisingly bushpigs (Potamochoerus porcus) were recorded doing most of the scavenging in Liwonde. The animals are better-known for eating grass and roots.
“We definitely saw an increase in some of the scavengers that you don’t normally see scavenging in parks that have proper full ecosystems,” Sievert says.
The return of the vultures was, therefore, hugely welcome. The first two species to arrive back in Liwonde in 2017 were critically endangered white-backed (Gyps africanus) and hooded vultures (Necrosyrtes monachus). They included one bird that had been tagged in the nest in the Imfolozi Game Reserve, in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province, around 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) to the south.
Three other species have now been recorded in Liwonde: critically endangered white-headed (Trigonoceps occipitalis), endangered lappet-faced (Torgos tracheliotus), and even a number of critically endangered Ruppell’s vultures (Gyps rueppelli), a species normally associated with East Africa and the Sahel.
To top it all, last year park managers found three white-backed vulture nests built in the crowns of tall borassus palms (Borassus aethiopum). These were the first active breeding records of vultures in Liwonde for more than two decades.
“It really is encouraging to see. It’s one of the good news stories that we are eager to share with people,” says Andre Botha, the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Vultures for Africa program manager.
Effective management of the park by African Parks via its public-private partnership with the DNPW, also played a key role in the vultures’ return, he says.
It has created a safe space for the cheetahs, the lions and the vultures to flourish.
Good news about Africa’s vultures is normally hard to come by. Indiscriminate or deliberate poisoning, collisions with electricity cables, and habitat loss have driven down their numbers.
A 2015 study, still considered the standard text on this decline, found populations of seven species of African vulture had dropped by 80% or more over three generations.
Poison is very often “the tool of choice” to hunt and kill animals across Africa, explains Botha, who is also co-chair of the IUCN’s Vulture Specialist Group.
It is used with devastating effect against predators like lions or hyenas or jackals as revenge for attacks on farmers’ livestock, or for other purposes like poaching elephants for their ivory. Vultures are very often the intentional or unintentional victims.
Memories are still fresh of the deliberate poisoning of more than 2,000 hooded vultures in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau in 2020, reportedly for belief-based use of the birds’ body parts.
Some vultures tracked by the EWT in Southern and East Africa, however, are fitted with mortality sensors. If a bird with a satellite tag dies, Botha and his team can alert people on the ground – through training provided by the EWT – to respond more quickly to possible poisoning incidents.
“The impact of the poisoning should be reduced,” he says.
One person who can testify to the devastating effect of poisoning in Liwonde in the past is Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa, an ecologist at the Malawi University of Science and Technology, who is not involved with the cheetah reintroduction project.
Back in 2006, Mzumara-Gawa came upon dozens of Lilian’s lovebirds (Agapornis lilianae) – a near-threatened species of tiny green parrot – lying dead from poison laid by poachers beside a water hole in the park.
Poisoning had already taken its toll on the park’s vultures and Mzumara-Gawa, a regular visitor to Liwonde, had grown used to never seeing them circling in its skies.
“I do think it’s very encouraging to have vultures come back to Liwonde,” she tells Mongabay. “It’s much better than the situation before where we just had animals rotting away because there were very few scavengers to take care of the animals that had died.”
Deforestation is another threat to the lovebirds that Mzumara-Gawa now works to research and protect, and the vultures she and others are welcoming back.
The demand for charcoal has denuded much of Malawi’s landscape outside of protected areas. Controversially, Malawi’s largest illegal logging case took place in 2017 within one key national park, Lengwe, to the south-west of Liwonde. More than 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres) of the 88,700-hectare (219,000-acre) park were lost, according to the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust.
“With the recovery of the vultures we need to protect the large trees that they like to nest in, and ensure that they’re available for them to continue to nest,” says Mzumara-Gawa.
Lengwe and the Majete Wildlife Reserve, also in the south-west, are critical to Liwonde’s new vulture population. Data gathered from tagging white-backed vultures in Liwonde last year, and published recently, revealed that the birds were moving between all three protected areas to feed.
Other vultures tagged in Liwonde have been found in protected areas beyond Malawi’s borders. Botha says one of the tagged birds has been recorded in the Niassa Special Reserve, in northern Mozambique; others as far south as Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique.
For Malawi’s small breeding population of vultures, protected areas like Liwonde, Lengwe and Majete, where a second population of cheetahs has now been established, are safe havens. So are those in neighboring countries.
“All these areas are vitally important for vultures and for the prey that they feed on,” says Botha. “Healthy carnivore populations are an integral part of that.”
Sievert, O., Fattebert, J., Marnewick, K., & Leslie, A. Assessing the success of the first cheetah reintroduction in Malawi. Oryx, 1-9.
Sievert, O., Reid, C., & Botha, A. (2020). First confirmed records of Rüppell’s Vultures (Gyps rueppelli) in Malawi. Vulture News, 78, 31-36.
Sievert, O., Adendorff, J., Kadewere, S., Reid, C., & Botha, A. (2022). Recent records of vulture nests in Malawi’s Southern Region. Vulture News, 81(1), 1-6.
Ogada, D., Shaw, P., Beyers, R. L., Buij, R., Murn, C., Thiollay, J. M., … & Sinclair, A. R. (2016). Another continental vulture crisis: Africa’s vultures collapsing toward extinction. Conservation Letters, 9(2), 89-97.
This article by Ryan Truscott was first published by Mongabay.com on 25 July 2022. Lead Image: White-backed vulture (Gyps africanus) adult landing composite, Etosha National Park, Namibia. Image courtesy of Charles J. Sharp.
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