The potential importance of agricultural
landscapes in carnivore conservation.
Lucas Rutina and Kefentse Mogwera
Okavango Research Institute, University of Botswana
Introduction
• Carnivores declining worldwide
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–
–
–
Habitat Fragmentation
Loss of wild prey
Human wildlife conflict
Competetion
• Size of Protected Areas not adequate to cover
home ranges of large carnivores
• Agricultural landscape importance
Historical background
• Prey on domestic animals when wild prey is
scarce
• Niche overlap and resource partitioning have
been suggested as one of the ecological
strategies promoting co-occurrence among large
carnivores.
• Most studies done in natural systems
• Objective – niche breadth and overlap of three
large species in agricultural landscapes
4
• The study was conducted in cattleposts around
Chobe National Park, Makgadikgadi national
Park and Moremi Game Reserve in Northern
Botswana (Figure 1).
• Chobe had high biomass of preferred wild prey
of the three carnivores, followed by Okavango
and least was Makgadikgadi. Carnivore
predation data on livestock data was obtained
from Department of Wildlife and National Parks
investigation diary forms.
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• Livestock preyed upon were divided into seven
groups as cattle-large, cattle-medium, cattle-small,
horse-large, horse-small, donkey-large, donkey-small
and shoats (goats and sheep) based on their weights.
• We calculated niche overlap for type of livestock
preyed upon and location of predation (at cattleposts
level) as measures of competition.
• We further multiplied the two niche overlaps (diet
and location) to get a two dimensional niche overlap
as a measure of co- occurrence among the species
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Dietary niche breadth
80%
50.00%
Okavango
70%
chobe
45.00%
40.00%
60%
35.00%
30.00%
50%
40%
30%
25.00%
PA
PA
20.00%
AGRIC
AGRIC
15.00%
10.00%
20%
5.00%
0.00%
10%
LEO
LIO
0%
LEOLIO
LEOWD
LIOWD
50.00%
45.00%
40.00%
35.00%
30.00%
25.00%
20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
MAKGADIKGADI
PA
AGRIC
LEO
LIO
WD
7
WD
Range breadth and overlap
120.0%
60
100.0%
50
80.0%
40
Chobe
30
Okavango
60.0%
MAKGADIKGADI
Okavango
CHOBE
Makgadikgadi
20
40.0%
10
20.0%
0
0.0%
leo
lio
wd
LEOLIO
LEOWD
8
LIOWD
Dietary niche overlap
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
PA
30%
AGRIC
20%
10%
0%
LEOLIO
LEOWD
50.00%
45.00%
40.00%
35.00%
30.00%
25.00%
20.00%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
LIOWD
PA
AGRIC
LEOLIO
Okavango
LEOWD
Chobe
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
PA
10.00%
AGRIC
0.00%
LEOLIO
LEOWD
LIOWD
MAKGADIKGADI
9
LIOWD
Multi Niche overlap
120.0%
multi
100.0%
80.0%
OKAVANGO
60.0%
CHOBE
MAKGADIKGADI
40.0%
20.0%
0.0%
LEOLIO
LEOWD
LIOWD
10
Conclusions
11
THANK YOU
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