Thesis (M. Sc.(Wildlife Management))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Summaries in English and Afrikaans.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Marburg.

M.Sc. / The establishment of conservancies and collaborative nature reserves is often promoted without understanding the impact that such initiatives have on the environment, the wildlife and landowners. This tack of knowledge has resulted in the landowners' non-awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of establishing such entities and often leads to disillusionment. A conservancy is established by informal agreement between various landowners to enhance the conservation status of a specific area without affecting the owners' individual rights. A collaborative nature reserve is established as a result of a format agreement between landowners to manage and administer their collective land as a single unit. The agreement typically addresses issues such as the management systems, the methods to be utilised for income generation, the distribution of surpluses amongst landowners and the rights and privileges applicable to the landowners. The scope of this study has been limited to the establishment of conservancies and collaborative nature reserves between game ranchers and existing game ranches. A literature study was undertaken to determine the advantages and disadvantages of establishing collaborative nature reserves, including a comparative analysis of large versus small conservation areas. Practical research was done to determine the implications, advantages, disadvantages and landowners' perceptions pertaining to the establishment of collaborative nature reserves. The practical research was done by personal observation methods as well as the use of questionnaires. An existing and successful collaborative nature reserve was studied intensively to meet these objectives. This reserve includes the land of twelve individual landowners and also forms part of a greater conservancy. The establishment of collaborative nature reserves can solve the problems created by separate game ranches, especially that of the compartmentalisation of grazing areas for game. Careful pre-planning can surmount the negative aspects of establishing collaborative !lature reserves and the advantages can be maximally utilised.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1959. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-267).

Determining carnivore diets and how they may change over time is important if the management of large carnivores is successful in an enclosed reserve. Carnivore diets are known to shift over time in response to a variety of factors. These factors include prey availability and climatic conditions (rainfall patterns). The re-introduction of lions (Panthera leo) and spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta) to Addo Elephant National Park (AENP), South Africa provided the opportunity to study diet trends of lions and spotted hyaena in an enclosed system. The study focused on the diets and overlap of lions and spotted hyaena and how their prey selection changed since their re-introduction in 2003 to 2010. The database included scats collected over a seven year period. A total of 195 spotted hyaena scats and 217 lion scats were analysed using scat analysis. Prey items estimated from scat samples were coupled with prey availabilities to determine preferred prey items. Additionally, from determined carnivore diets, lions and spotted hyaena diet overlap was estimated over time. Lions preferred prey items which included zebra (Equus quagga) and eland (Tragelaphus oryx) during the early portion of the study. Over time preference shifted to include buffalo (Syncerus caffer), bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus) and grey duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia). Spotted hyaena preferred zebra and eland in the earlier part of the study, then over time, shifting their selection to grey duiker, buffalo, red hartebeest (Alcephalus busephalus) and bushbuck. Lions and spotted hyaena had a similar diet which increased in overlap during the study (67 percentage - 91 percentage). Our findings suggest that lions and spotted hyaena had a degree of diet specialization; both carnivores avoided and preferred certain prey items relative to their abundance. Their preference excluded the most abundant prey items, thus causing a decline in abundance of rarer species over time. Lions and spotted hyaena did not respond by shifting their diets to consume abundant prey items when their preferred prey items declined in availability. However, this study may be a snap-shot of carnivore’s diet trends. Thus further monitoring of the large carnivore diets should be researched in order to determine which factors drive their prey selection. Additionally, lions and spotted hyaena diet overlap increased overtime. The high diet overlap may be a result from spotted hyaena scavenging off lion kills, thus spotted hyaena diets may be facilitated by lion kills. Finally our data suggests that re-introduced large carnivores in AENP are likely to change the composition of the overall mammal community, potentially eliminating rare but preferred prey species in an enclosed reserve.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, May 2014. / Conservation has led to African elephants (Loxodonta africana) being reintroduced to small game reserves. However, only a few studies have been done on how elephants react to their new environment after a translocation. Dinokeng Game Reserve introduced a herd of 10 elephants (Loxodonta Africana) in October 2011. Using Global Positioning System collar locations of one female elephant, I aimed to determine whether an elephant’s exploration resulted in an expansion of its home range as the elephant settled in its new environment. Secondly, I aimed to determine how the use of resources and conditions in an elephant’s environment changed from release to the end of the study period. To achieve my first objective, I calculated the elephant’s daily distance movement distances and home ranges over 16-day and seasonal periods. I used logistic regression to assess the habitat selection of the elephant over the study period. The results of the research demonstrated that the elephant slowly explored its new environment, which resulted in an expansion of its home range over time. However, it took almost two years before the elephant displayed signs of settling in its home range. The elephant used habitats further away from buildings, closer to fence boundaries and water sources, with low elevation and high greenness at the start of the study. Over time, the elephant’s habitat selection was no longer constrained by buildings and it demonstrated stronger evidence of using habitats with lower elevation towards the end of the study period. The findings suggest that elephants do not necessarily explore extensively before finding an area to remain in, and it may take longer than a year for them to settle. Furthermore, human settlements seem to limit elephant’s habitat selection a translocation, but this influence decreases as the elephant settles in its new environment.

M.Tech. / The landscape of South Africa has changed dramatically since early colonisation. Even so, it appears that the conventions employed in portraying landscapes have not; colonial landscape imagery that helped promote European immigration to this country during the Nineteenth Century remains remarkably similar to conventions employed in contemporary landscape representation used to market game reserves. In this dissertation, it is argued that colonial landscape imagery facilitates and supports a view of nature as an „authentic‟ wilderness available for expropriation. It is proposed that wildlife reserves, both in their intent and realisation, present a simulacrum of wilderness, also available for the consumer and promoted by advertising imagery. It is further argued that it remains the imperative commodification of nature which informs the pictorial conventions adopted in both cases. Thus, the myths inherent in both colonial representations of landscape and the utopian vision proffered in game reserve marketing are challenged. This research project employs discourse analysis that is framed in a qualitative, interpretative paradigm. Colonial imagery is examined in terms of post-colonialist critique of imperial landscape representation, while a post-modern approach is used to investigate contemporary imagery. This research project demonstrates that landscape imagery used to promote a „natural‟ wildlife site, is persistently presented according to prescribed canon as a functioning system regardless of its actual condition. Futhermore, the research project leads to an alternative view of nature, presented in my practical work, that is cognisant of the problems experienced in reality.

Enclosed game reserves are at risk of local vegetation over-utilization and homogenization by elephant. Understanding how the elephant spatial distribution is coupled to their seasonal resources use can aid future management given the threat of climate change. A comparison of home ranges and core area sizes across seasons and years was made between an elephant herd outside in an open system, compared to the elephant inside Limpopo Lipadi Game and Wilderness Reserve (LLGWR). Location data, obtained by GPS-GSM technology, was used to determine seasonal home ranges and core areas by local convex hull (LoCoH) methods and to generate seasonal General Estimating Equations (GEE). Remote sensing data was used to determine habitat variables. The home ranges of the elephant herd outside as expected, was twice as large during summers and a third larger during winters than the elephant herd inside the fenced reserve. The influence of seasonal rainfall on home range size was reflected at home range scale for the outside herd and for the core area scale for the herd inside the reserve. Increased rainfall overcomes the ‗magnet effect‘ of artificial waterholes on elephant distribution in the landscape only in the open system. Inside the reserve, contrary to expectation the winter home ranges were non-significantly larger than summer home ranges due to space limitation induced by fencing and permanent artificial waterhole density. Resource use was evaluated by using GEE models at a scale larger than established home ranges and therefore would reflect as home range determinants. The study confirms that elephant do not use resources randomly. A scale in resource selection of elephant cows exists, with distance to drainage lines at small scale preferred during winter, with aspect, slope, elevation, and NDVI at larger scales. Fencing furthermore, affects the scale at which selection occurs by limiting resource availability, especially during resource restrictive periods and limits range expansion during resource abundant periods. Elephant cows prefer gentle terrain, close to permanent water [<1.77km (SD inside the reserve, and <2.33km ( outside the reserve], moderately high NDVI, riparian vegetation during late winter and early summer if available. Generally, during lower rainfall periods lower elevations are preferred along the elevation gradient, and during higher rainfall periods, higher elevations. The elephant herd outside the reserve, furthermore prefer aspects in the landscape during hot summers that are cooling and cool winter aspects that are warming to facilitate energy saving and thermoregulation. Key words: Elephant home range, core areas, fencing, seasonal, artificial waterholes, open system, NDVI, elevation gradient, distance to water, seasonal GEE modelling.

Centre of African Ecology Animal, Plants and the Environmental Sciences University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. / Arid African savannas experience seasonal, variable rainfall, resulting in unpredictable patterns in vegetation distribution. Understanding the spatio-temporal variability in primary productivity and the resulting behavioural responses of native herbivores is essential for the analysis of the vulnerability of savanna ecosystems to climatic and human-induced threats. The Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), Botswana, is open to free-ranging wildlife to its south and west. The mostly homogeneous dune landscape is interspersed with valley and pan systems, which deviate considerably from dune regions in their soil and vegetation structures. I assessed the phenology of green vegetation across the pan-valley and dune habitats of the northern CKGR, using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) imagery, and related variations in greenness to the ecology of gemsbok (Oryx gazella), a herbivore species that is highly adapted to arid conditions. Eight female gemsbok were collared in the northern CKGR, and their patterns of habitat selection and responses to three greenness measures (NDVI, ΔNDVI and Relative Greenness) were assessed using logistic regression models. Gemsbok 12-hour displacement distances for each herd were compared seasonally to assess whether gemsbok in the northern CKGR differ in their movement strategies depending on the prevailing environmental conditions at that point in time and space. The northern CKGR experiences high inter-annual variability in NDVI greenness and phenology. Pan-valley and dune habitats did not have significantly different rates of green-up or green season durations, but dune habitats had higher NDVI levels. Patches with the highest greenness levels showed little spatial persistence from year to year. Gemsbok did not select for higher NDVI or ΔNDVI, but they selected for categories of relative greenness that were higher than the lowest relative greenness level. Gemsbok selected pan-valleys over dunes during the green season, but were not selective during the brown season, probably as a result of the loss of green grasses in pan-valley habitats during this period. Finally, gemsbok had no specific general trend in seasonal displacement distances. Gemsbok in the CKGR are likely to be opportunistic feeders, and herds probably made varying behavioural decisions based on their immediate environmental conditions.

In 1926 the Kruger National Park in South Africa became the first national park in Africa to accept visitors. Since that date there has been a propaganda campaign to convince people outside of the administration of the importance of the national park project and the value of the wildlife inside the parks. As a large tract of land in a land-hungry region of the country, the Kruger Park required both political and public support to ensure its survival. This attempt to communicate with the public is the subject of my thesis. The idea of the national park, and the natural world that it contained, altered dramatically since 1926. At times the message was tightly managed, and at others that control was loosened. As various interests intervened and encroached, new discourses developed and struggled for influence. Contained within the messages around the park and its wildlife were ulterior strands and ideologies that impacted in various ways on the idea of the national park. Nationalism, race, gender, class and status all became constituent parts of a heterogeneous construction. My thesis interrogates those strands within the discourse on the Kruger National Park. In 1967 the Manyeleti game reserve, on the western borders of the Kruger Park, became the first segregated game reserve for the exclusive use of black South Africans. Through this parallel project African visitors, who had been generally ignored in the Kruger Park setting, became the focus of propaganda efforts intended for a black audience. Race, gender, and class merged with the environmental messages in this unique setting to create new directions in conservationist rhetoric. My thesis sets these diverse messages communicated at Manyeleti alongside those transmitted through and about the Kruger Park.