We have two different species of Hyaena resident on Venetia, Brown and the more familiar Spotted varieties. Both have a tendency to mark their territories through the use of middens where they leave their droppings, along the routes they walk. These are very effective message boards where individuals can pick up useful information about who else is busy in the area. These middens or latrines are potentially very useful to us for our census as we are trying to look for a link between the rates of visitation and scat deposition, and population density of the animals in question. Further to this, by collecting samples of fresh scats, we can conduct DNA analysis to get a clear picture of exactly how many Hyaenas are active in the area.
Due to their immensely strong jaws that are capable of crushing bone, and their stomachs of steel, Hyaenas are able to eat pretty much any part of a carcass. In my experience, all that I have seen Brown Hyaenas to leave is horns and teeth, except when they are eating from a warthog carcass when they leave the whole skull. Presumably this bone is just too tough. This high bone content in their diet means that much of their scat is composed of Calcium, meaning that they dry white. These piles of white droppings stand out in the bush and are relatively easy to find. We have just completed taking GPS co-ordinates for all the latrines along our spoor transect routes, and have found that they are spaced quite evenly at roughly 2km apart. Fresh samples are identified as being so by their pale green colour, which dries to white with time.

By looking at the DNA the animals have left behind, and analysing their use of the latrines, we are effectively able to gain valuable information without disturbing the animals themselves at all. We can learn a huge amount without ever even seeing a Hyaena. This is an important point in our critical comparison of census techniques, as the less intrusive we can be, the better.

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The Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Conservation Leadership Group has a number of students who they train up as future conservationists, and we have created an internship opportunity on the project to help offer valuable practical experience. Azwafarwi is our first field assistant in this position and he is studying towards his Nature Conservation Diploma through UNISA. He has completed his theoretical work and is here on Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve to kill two birds with one stone, by providing me with much needed assistance, while gaining essential field experience in wildlife research.

Azwafarwi is a major asset on the spoor counts we are doing, and was quite happy to get stuck in with smelly pieces of rotten meat that we place in front of the camera-traps to slow the target animals just long enough for our cameras to take a photo. Carnivore research may sound glamorous, but more often than not it involves the by-products of predation: carcasses and droppings! The first time they have to deal with either of these hands on is usually a good indicator of the mettle of a new assistant, and Azwafarwi passed this test with flying colours.

One of the great pleasures in working with Azwarfarwi is the fact that he is constantly asking questions and suggesting new ideas for research, and sounding me out about things he may go on to do. His main interests are insects and frogs, rather than the large carnivores, but I have a feeling the world of conservation will not have seen the last of Azwafarwi when he finishes his placement here later this year!

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This photo is of a cheetah scent marking tree. It is one of the cheetahs under the tree. I wanted to point out the type of vegetation these cheetahs are living in too.

Here you can see how high game fences force animals to walk along the fences, therefore making it likely that spoor density is higher here.

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A new litter of lions has been born on the reserve! We are not sure yet which of a pair of sisters has had the cubs, as they were both mated a few months ago. One sister, Tsotsi, was mated by a known male on the reserve, and the other, Picannin, by a strange male that was passing through. We are keeping our fingers crossed for it being the new male, so that we have some new blood on the reserve.

The lion population is important for the project as we are using it as a benchmark for testing the various census techniques. The lion population is well studied and we know exactly how many there are, so we can test the accuracy of each technique against a known figure. The populations of the other species are currently unknown, and we are just starting to get our first estimates now.
Interestingly, both the spoor counts, and the home range sizes of our 3 radio-collared Black-Backed Jackals, both suggest a figure of approximately 2.5 times the lion population, or between 64-68 Jackals on the reserve. The results are preliminary, but they are encouraging, both because they come out so close and because it is close to the estimate we would expect. For the species we detect less often on the spoor counts, such as Leopard and Cheetah, it may be that we first need to accumulate bigger data sets, or perhaps that other methods may be more appropriate for these elusive felids.

Many thanks to Theresa for the kind donation. We appreciate it and every bit helps towards furthering our work here

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Rather exciting news on the Cheetah front! I saw tracks of two adult Cheetahs a couple of days ago and now, in the same area, someone was lucky enough to see two male Cheetahs, very relaxed, going about their business and scent marking a tree. Cheetahs have particular trees in their ranges that they scent mark to let other Cheetahs know of their whereabouts, and this will provide an ideal place for us to set traps when we try to fit radio-collars to a few. It is an exact location where we know the Cheetahs go! On top of this, it is an ideal training opportunity for Snoopy and Barclay as I can take them out into the field and let them search, knowing that they will come across what we are looking for. It gets even better; knowing that Cheetahs use this area, I can set up camera-traps in the hope that we will get some photographs of these elusive felids. I will keep you posted.

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Spoor counts are the order of the day at the moment on the project. By driving along sandy roads and recording what footprints we see, we can get an estimation of the amount of activity of each species in the area. People have found in other areas that the level of this activity directly relates to the numbers of animals in the area, so we are giving it a try here.

 

We have to be out early for the spoor counts while the sun is still very low so that it casts a shadow on the prints and makes them easier to see. I sit on a specially made seat bolted onto the bull bar of the vehicle, while Azwafarwi drives. We have to drive slowly to make sure I can see as much as possible on the road. Interestingly, we have been seeing more activity from cheetahs recently, and Wendy was even lucky enough to see one earlier in the week. Unlike the open plains where much video footage for television documentaries is filmed, we are working in an area with dense vegetation in places, which makes the animals much harder to see, so we get very excited by some of our sightings! We know they are there, and we see signs of them, but often we miss the actual animal. The lions often sleep on the roads and they are much less wary of humans than the leopards and cheetahs, so we see them the most.

 

We will be catching cheetahs soon to fit GPS collars onto them so that we can track their moves, and hopefully follow them to find out what they are up to here, so hopefully they will become a little more accustomed to our presence. Watch this space to find out how we get on with our trapping efforts.

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There is a beautiful wilderness area in southern Africa where three countries and two rivers meet. It is becoming the new Limpopo-Shashe Trans Frontier Conservation Area (TFCA) one of Africa’s most important Peace Parks. This blog is about conservation in this spectacular corner of Africa.

South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana meet at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, which is important for large carnivore conservation including cheetahs, lions, hyenas, wild dogs, and leopards because it is one of the few areas of Africa where large predators still roam freely across land outside of formally protected areas.

The aim of the Limpopo Valley Carnivore project is twofold. Firstly we plan to test a number of different carnivore census techniques against each other to determine the most efficient way to census a variety of carnivore species, and secondly to actually census the predator populations and get an idea of population sizes in the area of the proposed TFCA. By collecting benchmark data with repeatable techniques, we will be able to track the progress of these populations in the years to come, and determine the benefit of the TFCA, and identify any urgent conservation needs.

Camera traps allow us to ‘capture’ records of rare and secretive carnivores

The South African side of the Conservation Area is made up of Mapungubwe National Park, a number of private reserves, including De Beers Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve where my initial work is based, and privately owned game and stock farms. The potential for conflict with humans is therefore highly variable across the area, and the study hopes to examine the effects this has on the population structure of the carnivore guild as a whole.

The Lion King gave hyenas a bad reputation, these carnivores may be critical to balanced ecosystem functioning

We are testing a number of different methods: from camera-traps to driving long transects and counting spoor, and even training dogs specifically to sniff out cheetah droppings so that we can take DNA samples. It may be the less glamorous side of carnivore conservation, but it is important work that will have important results that are widely applicable. Our team on the ground is headed by me, Rox, and I am ably assisted by Wendy; she is a volunteer at the Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve where I am currently based, and is a huge help with her endless enthusiasm.

Last week Aswifarwi, my new assistant from the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s  Conservation Leadership Group came up to Venetia to join me. I will keep you posted on his progress over the next few months.

An introduction to the project wouldn’t be complete without meeting Snoopy and Barclay, my canine assistants. Snoopy is a two year old Weimaraner cross who began life with me on a previous project I worked on, sniffing out cheetah kills in dense cover before the hyaenas could come in and clean them up and thereby remove my data! My husband jokes that he is a nose with a dog attached behind it. He is taking to his new task very well and will hopefully be ready to work on the cheetah scat rather than prey carcasses very soon. At only five months old, Barclay is the baby of the team. He is a German Shorthaired Pointer, very kindly donated to the project by Jaegersteig GSPs in Pretoria. He is currently still getting his basic training in obedience and how to behave in the bush, but is showing plenty of potential so far. He has a love of tortoises and sniffs them out all over the place and often comes back to me carrying or dragging one with him. All we need is to transfer that enthusiasm onto cheetah scats!”

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