Re: SANParks' Culling Policy
Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2020 9:06 pm
Totally unacceptable...
Go wild for Wildlife and help to keep our Conservation Areas pure, natural and green.
https://africawild-forum.com/
All the parks have a herbivore management programme and claim to monitor the herbivore numbers and the veld conditions.
The purpose of this programme is to manage herbivore dynamics as a key driver of ecosystem integrity at various temporal and spatial scales.
Herbivore management focuses on the process of herbivory carried out by the large herbivores present in a park.
The effect that large herbivores have on ecosystems originates from their intensity of landscape use. This associates with where food, water and comfort, such as shade in hot days, may be located. In addition, herbivores orientate themselves on a landscape at places where danger from, for instance, predation is limiting. Several of these drivers are missing at MONP – the park is surrounded by fences and even have internal fences; there are many localities where additional water is provided in places where water is not naturally abundant throughout the year; and the large carnivore guild is largely absent. SANParks seeks to maintain, restore or mimic ecological processes such as herbivory that ensure the resilience of the Savanna-Nama-Karoo ecotone.
Since the onset of MONP, the species-specific number of individuals of large herbivore species largely varied over time primarily because of several occasions where SANParks removed individuals of several species as part of ecological management and for generating revenue.
Decision-making for the management of herbivory is based on multiple-layers of information in an attempt to mimic the outcome of ecological processes that is not fully functional due to size and landscape constraints at MONP. These layers provide the basis for recommendations on an annual basis. The approach requires regular annual surveys of large herbivores. The landscape units are used to make decisions regarding
vegetation monitoring. Vegetation monitoring plots were established, where plant species composition and density of plant species are recorded. The wheel point method is used to collect the data, and this data is used to make informed decisions on the off takes of grazers and mixed feeders found on MONP. For browsers and mixed feeders, the woody plant species composition, vegetation structure and available biomass are determined using the belt transect method as well as other associated programmes. All of the above needs to be used to assess the veld condition of each of the landscape units and to give recommendations on herbivore numbers that need to be taken off or species that need to be reintroduced.
The number of herbivores to be removed or introduced is based on a joint decision-making process between scientists, veterinarians and park management, which involves an evaluation of several herbivore population models (against trends in annual aerial survey results), satellite imagery that provides a spatial and temporal indication of vegetation quality (measured as “greenness”), vegetation surveys that incorporate the compositional and structural components of vegetation condition, and climate forecasts provided by the South African Weather Service.
The Ostrich we buy in the SuperMarketand Restaurants come from the Oudsthoorn District where the Biggest Ostrich farming in the World has taken Place for a Century..The Ostrich Abbatoir is my Customer..Dont believe they come from SANParks where Cheetah and Lion keep their numbers in Check and Caracal decimate Chick herds in familiesKlipspringer wrote: ↑Mon Jul 27, 2020 9:04 pm Keep in mind: The ostrich you come across and take a photo of, might be the one you are served for dinner in a restaurant then one day - that's effective sustainable use of the animals, first they attract the tourist dollars and then they are sold for food.