Kruger Park Times | Ecology and Conservation Items from Print Editions

News on the ecological and conservation front from around the world. The image refers to the print edition in which the original item can be found.

Limpopo Province proudly home to SA’s two biggest trees The Glencoe tree is 17m high in comparison to the Sagole’s 22m, although their crown diameters are 37m and 38m respectively. Both trees are on their way to becoming prominent tourist attractions in the Limpopo Province. The Limpopo provincial government is drawing up plans to create a picnic

North African elephants poached The elephant bodies were found at five separate sites, and half the animals appeared to have been killed just days before the WCS survey was carried out in the first week of August. Most of the carcasses had their tusks removed. They were found near the Zakouma National Park, where elephant

Scientific paper describes moving tale of elephant death Fireside tales and anecdotal evidence of how elephants show concern for other distressed or dying elephants have been backed up by a paper recently published in a special ‘Sentience in Animals’ issue of the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science. The paper is written by Save the Elephants founder

Off-road driving, lions and harmonicas – a 1928 visit to Kruger From the day Kruger’s gates opened to the public, people have fallen in love with the park, but there can be few people who can boast that their association with Kruger dates all the way back to 1928. Lawrie Locke is one such person, and at the age of 95 his voice

Adaptive Management To Underpin Elephant Management In SA The thirteen scientists at the second Elephant Science Round Table have reached agreement on a set of guidelines that should help government draw up a policy for managing elephants in South Africa. They have proposed that a 20-year

High-powered conference discusses women and the environment Be careful how you treat women, as God will count the tears. Women come from the rib of man – not from the feet to be walked upon, and not from the head to be superior to; but from the rib, under the arm to be protected, and close to heart to be loved.” This was what Ms Hussan (minister – Zanzibar) had to say in her address to the Women and the Environment Conference held in White River

Game farming to be regulated like livestock farming The department of agriculture recently published two policy documents that seek to regulate game farming in South Africa, subjecting it to “similar control measures as livestock farming”. In the documents, the department announced its intention of producing norms and standards that govern" the provisioning of artificial water supply systems, fencing considerations,

Integrating conservation and business in Africa One of the world’s largest gold mining companies has teamed up with the world’s largest conservation network in a partnership called the ‘Leadership for Conservation in Africa’ (LCA) initiative. The plan is to bring together a core group of African conservation leaders and businessmen to establish long-term business and development frameworks, but to promote sustainable biodiversity and conservation issues.

Next stage in creation of hunting laws expected soon Some of these comments also link into the list of protected species that was published alongside the draft norms, as some animals considered to be common damage- causing animals are listed as protected species. The list of protected species was compiled in a previous public participation process, and was published “for information purposes only” along with the hunting regulations.

African lion inventory to be updated The situation in west and central Africa is in strong contrast – here lions have virtually disappeared from non-protected areas, and lion numbers are thought to be declining within protected areas. These lion populations are also genetically isolated from the rest of Africa’s lions. The whole region is thought to contain only 1,800 lions. This September van der Merwe and Bauer are again teaming up

Company donates R5000 for wild dog research Syngenta held a two day conference, attended by about 120 agents of whom most are based on the highveld in Gauteng. The conference was held at Mopani Rest Camp last week. Several sales and promotional strategies came under the spotlight. The company donated R5000 to Kruger for research on wild dogs in Kruger

Second elephant science round table scheduled The second round table is likely to discuss the development of an integrated research programme that will be able to guide the management of elephants in the short, medium and long term. This may involve running trials Second elephant science round table scheduled of the different management options available (eg culling, contraception, conservation corridors)

Scientists and game reserve managers meetThe meeting was a continuation of a series of informal networking sessions that have been taking place for over a decade under the auspices of Locores – the Lowveld Coordinated Research Forum. Dr Mike Peel from the Agricultural Research Council’s Range and Forage Institute, which has played a pivotal role in Locores over the years, looked back over the issues that the forum has discussed since 1991.

MPs Learn About Kruger’s Water Resource Issues Together with the executive mayor of the Mopani District Municipality, Tim Maake, the members of parliament were hosted at Shingwedzi by Dr Thomas Gyedu- Ababio, Kruger’s aquatic biodiversity conservation manager. To further the parliamentary committee’s understanding of the situation in Kruger’s rivers, the top echelons of Kruger’s conservation

Elephant Roundtable expert discusses culling The elephant management issue in South Africa will once again assume centre stage when the department of environmental affairs reconvenes its second Elephant Science Roundtable this August. With so much debate ongoing over the controversial issue of culling elephants, Prof Norman Owen-Smith, one of the scientific experts on the roundtable, has written an article

Biofuels : Friend or Foe? Now imagine thousands of acres of landcovered in a plant that sucks up far more of the country’s precious water than indigenous vegetation, a plant that no animal can or will eat and four seeds of which can kill a child, a plant that has little economic potential and requires millions of Rand to remove to prevent its spread to new areas, coupled with impoverished rural communities who no longer have any

The West African black rhino subspecies has tentatively been declared as extinct At a recent meeting of the AfRSG in Swaziland, it was estimated that other rhino subspecies are faring better, and there are now believed to be 14,540 southern white rhino in Africa along with 3,725 southern black rhino. At one stage there were less than 50 southern white rhino left in the