Research -

Researchers recording morphological data from captured leopards

Research

Our ongoing research projects are aimed at understanding predator ecology and establishing the best methods for wildlife friendly farming.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Investigating the landscape ecology & management of leopard (Panthera pardus) in protected & unprotected habitats
A comparative analysis of the effectiveness, the ecological & economic viability of non-lethal management of depredation on livestock farms

Pictures: Investigating the best management practices for protecting livestock: (left) this livestock guardian dog lives with it's flock 24 hours a day, (center) map indicating the potential habitat corridors for leopards where research is being carried out, (right) a pie diagram showing results from studies in the Karoo by Landmark Foundation on the indiscriminate nature of lethal controls.

RESEARCH RESULTS: LEOPARDS IN THE CAPE
The research has a broad focus, investigating the landscape ecology and management of leopards within and outside of protected areas of the Eastern and Western Cape. The study area makes up a massive area of 4,5 million hectares, stretching from Addo in the east to Gordon’s Bay in the west.

Leopards have been collard in the Greater Addo Elephant National Park, Baviaanskloof, Garden Route, the Langkloof, The Langeberg, the Overberg, Hex River Valley and De Hoop since 2007 allowing us a great deal of insight into best understanding their spatial requirements (their territories and social dynamics), habitat selection and avoidances, genetic vigor, population densities, hunting activity and management. This is particularly important in areas outside of protected land. To date 22 leopards have been monitored and their movement and biology studied within different landscapes. An average adult females weigh 22 kg, and males 42 kg, half that of their counter parts in the northern areas of South Africa. Some of these leopards have demonstrated successful regional translocations - 7 leopards have successfully been translocated from areas where their lives were imperiled to the Addo Elephant National Park.

The Baviaanskloof leopards occupy inhospitable mountainous areas, as these are the areas which have offered them the most protection from people over time. This current habitat range probably reflects only a remnant of its former range in the region. Here they require large ranges in order to ensure their energetic requirements / food supply is enough to survive. Here, leopards sometimes move as far as 18 km in a day when hunting. On average the males here use 250 km² (25 000ha) while females use 120 km². One male utilizes as much as 60 000ha and hosts three females within his range – sadly, this cat was shot by a local farmer 29th November 2010. This leopard had been monitored by the project for three years.

Their large spatial requirements restrict their numbers in an area as they are density dependent. They are territorial and males allow as much as 10% range overlap with another male (as long as they don’t interfere with their females) while females have very strict boundaries not allowing any overlap with other females.

In the Garden Route forests, prey is more frequently available and the leopards thus utilize smaller ranges. Males are using 100 km² and females half of that - allowing two females to one male on average. A major problem for leopards in the forest, however, is the loss of habitat. In 1996, 2200km² of forest was available to leopards in the Garden Route, in 2009 merely 800km² was available which has disastrous effects on not only the leopard population but biodiversity in general. Research into their diet indicates that bushbuck and vlei rats are important components of the diet of these forest leopards.

With the use of GPS collars, camera traps and DNA analysis the population densities in the respective areas of focus can finally be identified. In the greater Baviaanskloof area (3500 km²/ 350 000 ha) there are merely 30 – 35 territorial leopards remaining, while in the fragmented patches of indigenous forest in the Garden Route (of 800 km²/ 80 000 ha) only 20 – 25 leopards remain. This indicates that the species desperately needs conservation priority and management in the region, and that its conservation status in the region is critically endangered.

Pictures:The foundation does camera trap surveys (left) for leopards and the GPS tracking of individuals (center). We promote the use of non-lethal livestock protection like this "Dead Stop collar" (right).

For these reasons the foundation investigates where the corridors between potentially isolated populations occur and promotes and facilitates the use of non-lethal controls in these areas. We recently collared a male leopard in an important corridor which can link potentially isolated leopard populations of the Baviaanskloof and the Garden Route forests. This is an essential part of the puzzle. His movements are interesting as his range varies from protected mountainous terrain, indigenous forests, invasive wattle forests, pine plantations and agriculture. He will provide us with a lot of information on how leopards are affected within different land use areas.

Our research is ongoing and aims to best understand these elusive creatures in order to best manage them and the essential ecological processes they provide.

Ms Jeannine McManus is the research and field manager. She is currently doing her PhD with the University of the Witwatersrand.

BACKGROUND

Leopards are considered to be vulnerable in the Southern African region, facing the risk of extinction in the medium term (NEMBA, 2007). Locally in the Cape it is probably more correctly described as critically endangered. Loss of habitat, human-caused mortality, and isolation of small populations are major concerns in the conservation of large carnivores (Clark et al., 1996; Singleton & Lehmkuhl, 2001). The loss of habitat and connectivity between populations, compounded by continuing persecution of leopards cause population numbers to decline within many parts of their range (Rabinowitz & Winter, 2006).

Carnivore populations are critically important to maintaining healthy ecosystems (Terborgh et al., 1999; Terborgh et al., 2002). As top predators, the presence of large carnivores in an area has many important ecological consequences, such as the regulation of prey numbers, population control of mesopredators through competition, and maintenance of a functional balance of biodiversity in the local community (Krebs et al., 1995; Terborgh et al., 1999; Logan & Sweanor, 2001).

Predator conservation has to date operated primarily within the boundaries of existing protected areas, but there are several limitations in relying solely upon this approach: only around 5% of the world’s land area is formally protected (Gittleman et al., 2001; Mills et al., 2001; CIA, 2003). Furthermore, parks and reserves are unlikely to be large enough to successfully contain viable populations of large carnivores, which often range over exceptionally large areas (Woodroffe et al., 1997; Woodroffe, 2001; Marker, 2002).

The effective conservation of such species hinges on their protection over vast areas, and the management of conservation-compatible and carnivore/human conflict reduction strategies on human-dominated land outside the existing protected area network will be crucial (Nowell & Jackson, 1996).

This strategy, if successful, would create ‘corridors’ of available habitat and enable linkages between protected areas, with important implications for gene flow, dispersal and long-term persistence of previously fragmented large carnivore populations (Simberloff & Mehlman, 1992; Beier, 1993)

Cite as: McManus, J.S. (2009) Spatial ecology and activity patterns of leopard (Panthera pardus) in the Baviaanskloof and Greater Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape. M.Sc. Thesis. Rhodes University, South Africa.
References

RESEARCH RESULTS: LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT

Research indicates that the use of protective livestock collars, livestock guarding dogs or Alpacas improve production on commercial farms by between 56 – 93%. These are the remarkable results measured over the first three years of non-lethal predator controls on 11 commercial farms (16 000 livestock units) in the Eastern Cape including the Graaff Reinet, Baviaanskloof, Jansenville, Cockscomb, Glenconner areas where predators vary from leopard to jackal and caracal. These results show that these methods are not only biodiversity friendly, but also very importantly economically viable management options. What is particularly noteworthy is that the production benefit, never mind the ecological and ethical gains, are across the board.

A retrospective analysis of farmers switching from indiscriminate lethal controls to non-lethal controls showed remarkable improvements in the percentage of livestock losses annually.

KAROO SECTION

Based on the research carried out in the Landmark Foundation mentioned above and the success of other projects, a scientifically rigorous control experiment and analysis is being undertaken in the Karoo of the production, ecological and financial efficacy of current lethal controls and new non lethal management methods. This includes Anatolian Shepherd dogs, Lesotho Guarding dogs, alpacas, Dead Stop and King Collars and sound aversion collars. General overall farm management will also be taken into account. The large scale of the study will ensure that results obtained are accurate, repeatable and representative of the region.

By the end of the study we hope to add information to developing ethically and ecologically acceptable farm management strategies that results in improved weaning ratios at the same time promoting biodiversity and ethical production in the Karoo region.

Our Karoo Project: SHEPHERDING BACK OUR BIODIVERSITY
Mainstreaming Biodiversity Conservation on Agriculturally Productive Landscapes

Objective: The objective of this programme is to mainstream biodiversity conservation on livestock farms through a return to human shepherding (and new innovative husbandry tools). The development of a wildlife-friendly produce brand, leading to direct payment for ecosystem services, as a tool in conservation and local economic development (LED) will be an integral part of this project. Hereby landscapes will be certified to incorporate biodiversity management standards in its management.

Biodiversity focus: This will be achieved through a focus on the conservation and restoration of the top trophic levels in these ecosystems, as a means to ensuring the entire trophic pyramid is effectively conserved. The conservation will entail all biodiversity patterns and processes.

Context: Commercial agriculture has inextricably changed over the last 50 years in South Africa (and elsewhere). This, together with the preceding two centuries of degradation of biodiversity patterns and processes across the region in Southern Africa, has had a dire impact on our wildlife. Today commercial agriculture, especially in rangeland agriculture, has moved to an extensive system of agriculture as economies of scale, and political and legal imperatives have forced farmers to reduce labour costs and risks, and acquire more and more extensive rangelands. This has had significant impact for both conservation and social and economic realities for the marginalized and often migratory labour in the rural areas, not least on the economies of the farming enterprises.

This agricultural impact is evident in all of the Southern African biomes. Agriculture has been the land use with the greatest impact on habitat change. This programme will focus on this key strategic sector to mainstream biodiversity in productive landscapes. Its great potential lies in its ability for replication and up-scaling across the Southern African region, and beyond.

The focus of this project is to develop a range of husbandry interventions built on a platform of job creation, skills development (and retention), local economic development and economic empowerment strategy that supports biodiversity conservation AND rural livelihoods. The basis of this will be to reintroduce and redevelop shepherding as a profession (and its related and new mitigation tools), which builds on these shepherding skills currently being lost on farms. Furthermore this programme will support this LED efforts through the integrated development of a value-adding wildlife friendly brand (Fair Game) of agricultural produce that will economically support this new paradigm and provide a financial incentive for its sustainable implementation.

Livestock farming: The agricultural landscapes of South Africa are at the heartland of an age-old conflict between livestock farmer and predation occurring on their rangelands. The traditional lethal and indiscriminate controls have caused a disaster for biodiversity across these landscapes and the impact have affected many species and the resultant trophic cascades affected by this impact. The impact on the biodiversity of these land use practices has largely gone unrecorded. This programme wishes to address this and to find and promote both ecological and ethically acceptable land management practices.

Livestock farming is the most prominent land use on a spatial level in South Africa. At the same time, agricultural bodies claim a nationwide impact on livestock farming of R1.5 billion (Van Niekerk et al, 2009) due to predation. While this may be a disputed figure as it is based on highly questionable opinion surveys and not on empirical data, it does demonstrate the priority of the issue. There is paucity and even an absence of quantitative research on the methods available to deal with this matter and its impact. The urgency to conduct this work and analysis cannot be more apparent as the absence of this information and evaluated options for farmers is in part the cause for the continued decimation of faunal diversity occurring on livestock farms in this country through the continued adherence and escalation of the use of these methods.

Finding solutions: The threat is to biodiversity in general through the traditional and widely used methods of damage-causing animal controls. The impact of these practices on floral diversity is not understood, but as with wolf research in Yellowstone, conservationists are only just beginning to understand the impact of predator control on the entire trophic pyramid. This threat to biodiversity provides an opportunity to try, in a prospective, control trial to evaluate the efficacy and impact of the various control methods (lethal and non-lethal) in terms of its impact on biodiversity, livestock production and financial return to landowners. These answers would help authorities, conservationists and agriculturalists to make related and informed decisions on land management, and principally mainstream biodiversity concerns into decision making and policies.

It is through shepherding that appropriate husbandry management and support of a range on ecologically acceptable and ethical predator management options can be implemented that secures biodiversity patterns and processes on livestock farms.

Learning lessons: This programme will have an inbuilt monitoring and evaluation and extension service that will ensure its outreach functions and information dissemination. Researchers will write up the outcomes of this work as a means to educate and disseminate its lessons learnt. These projects will address this through a proper scientific evaluation of all methods of management of predation and damage-causing animals on livestock farms, both lethal (where livestock farmers prefer this method), and non-lethal methods where farmers wish to test these on their farms.

This project is an exercise in demonstration, extension services and land stewardship at its core, and across the agricultural landscape it is an imperative if we hope to effective conserve biodiversity across the landscape.

A way forward: The conservation of the natural food pyramid and all the related trophic levels on livestock farms is the focus of this initiative. This project has identified the need to conserve both the patterns and processes of predation as an essential component in effective landscape conservation initiatives of the entire range of biodiversity patterns and processes.

This programme seeks to “mainstream” biodiversity actions by creating employment, skills development and biodiversity-friendly value adding produce branding that in a practical way results in the payment of ecosystem services and economic development opportunities. Besides, it is a political imperative in South Africa to create jobs. Shepherding is such a method, and value-adding through Fair Game and opportunity for the payment of ecosystem services through such an initiative.

PUBLICATIONS, MANUALS, POSTERS

The Spatial Ecology and Activity Patterns of Leopards (Panthera pardus) in the Baviaanskloof and Greater Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa - MSc Rhodes University, Jeannine McManus, 2009. (Please click here to download the thesis).

The Biology and Conservation of Wild Felids; Oxford University Press, 2010
Download pg 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Farmers Manual FREE ('Predators on Livestock Farms - a practical farmers' manual for non-lethal, holistic, ecologically acceptable and ethical management by Landmark Foundation)
The Trapping Truth (Poster)

Survey camera footage

RESEARCH AREAS

Current

Baviaanskloof Mega Reserve
Cockscomb mountains
Swartberg Mountains
Garden Route
Langeberg
Hex River
Overberg
De Hoop
Great Karoo

Past

Addo

Leopard research area indicated by the yellow line. Our study area which includes protected land and the privately owned land adjacent to these areas.

See Area Map in Google

CAMERAS 4 ACTION - SPONSORSHIP

Help the field work team get more cameras on the ground to do essential research by sponsoring a survey camera trap.

See full details

SWARTBERG LEOPARD PROJECT

Together with Hope Foundation Landmark has started work on the southern side of the Swartberg Mountains. This is an essential area to help us understnd what corridors are available for the leopards to use.