The Kruger Experience: Ecology And Management Of Savanna Heterogeneity
536
The Kruger Experience: Ecology And Management Of Savanna Heterogeneity
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Overview
Kruger National Park in South Africa has one of the most extensive sets of records of any protected area in the world, and throughout its history has supported connections between science and management. In recognition of that long-standing tradition comes The Kruger Experience, the first book to synthesize/summarize a century of ecological research and management in two million hectares of African savanna.
The Kruger Experience places the scientific and management experience in Kruger within the framework of modern ecological theory and its practical applications. The book uses a cross-cutting theme of ecological heterogeneity -- the idea that ecological systems function across a full hierarchy of physical and biological components, processes, and scales, in a dynamic space-time mosaic. Contributors, who include many esteemed ecologists who have worked in Kruger in recent years, examine a range of topics covering broad taxonomic groupings and ecological processes. The book's four sections explore:
- the historical context of research and management in Kruger, the theme of heterogeneity, and the current philosophy in Kruger for linking science with management
- the template of natural components and processes, as influenced by management, that determine the present state of the Kruger ecosystem
- how species interact within the ecosystem to generate further heterogeneity across space and time
- humans as key components of savanna ecosystems
In addition to the editors, contributors include William J. Bond, Jane Lubchenco, David Mabunda, Michael G.L. ("Gus") Mills, Robert J. Naiman, Norman Owen-Smith, Steward T.A. Pickett, Stuart L. Pimm, and Rober J. Scholes.
The book is an invaluable new resource for scientists and managers involved with large, conserved ecosystems as well as for conservation practitioners and others with interests in adaptive management, the societal context of conservation, links between research and management in parks, and parks/academic partnerships.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781597262996 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Island Press |
| Publication date: | 04/10/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 536 |
| File size: | 39 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Kevin Rogers is director of the Centre for Water in the Environment and professor of ecology in the School of Animal Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Harry Biggs is programme manager for systems ecology research at Kruger National Park in South Africa.
Read an Excerpt
The Kruger Experience
Ecology and Management of Savanna Heterogeneity
By Johan T. du Toit, Kevin H. Rogers, Harry C. Biggs
ISLAND PRESS
Copyright © 2003 Island PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59726-299-6
CHAPTER 1
The Kruger National Park: A Century of Management and Research
DAVID MABUNDA, DANIE J. PIENAAR, AND JOHAN VERHOEF
In this chapter we provide a brief historical overview of people and events that made Kruger the world-renowned park it is today. It has been said that those who do not honor their past do not deserve their future, but an in-depth analysis of some 40,000 years of history is not possible in one chapter. However, we did feel it necessary to include some early history because it shows how long humans have interacted with this ecosystem. The different eras were chosen to show when human impacts on the system, political power, and management or research philosophy changed. These changes were seldom abrupt and usually had a developing period or overlapped and sometimes coincided with increased technology or the influence of certain people (Figure 1.1).
The Hunter-Gatherer Period
Archaeologists also use the phrase "Stone Age" for this period because of the stone tools that were used during this period. Deacon and Deacon (1999) dated the divisions of the Stone Age in relation to the present as follows: Earlier Stone Age, 2.5 million–250,000 years before present (BP); Middle Stone Age, 250,000–22,000 years BP; Late Stone Age, 22,000–2,000 years BP; and Iron Age, 2,000 years BP to the colonial period.
The Earlier and Middle Stone Age people and the San (or Bushman) of the Later Stone Age period lived in this area for many thousands of years and are thought to have had little impact on the natural processes and populations. The San, the last remaining group of the Stone Age (Deacon and Deacon 1999), were hunters and gatherers and possibly scavenged from the prey of carnivores. They led a nomadic life in small groups, wandering through the area following migrating game herds (Plug 1982). They used the bow and arrow and microlithic tools and left a rich heritage of their rock paintings of animals and humans in numerous shelters in rocky outcrops in Kruger as well as deposits of ash, bone, small stone tools, and ostrich eggshell beads. They would have witnessed the arrival of a different cultural group who herded cattle, sheep, and goats, planted crops, and worked metal about 2,000 years ago.
Humans affect the environment in two ways: through physical presence in high numbers and in an intangible social manner through decision-making, induced conflict, religion, and so forth. The hunter-gatherer peoples surely possessed these characteristics, but population densities were so low that it is generally accepted that early humans did not shape the environment in a permanent way; rather, the environment at that time shaped them. Low-density occupation and low-intensity resource use of the Stone Age hunter-gatherers probably would have constituted a low-impact period in Kruger's history.
Farmers, Metalworkers, and Traders: The Iron Age (AD 200–1836)
Archaeological research has demonstrated that Iron Age communities had settled in southern Africa by at least AD 200 (Hall 1987), and by about AD 400 the first Bantu-speaking people started settling in the present-day Kruger area along the Letaba River. They possessed metalworking skills, traded, and had a residential lifestyle based on pastoralism. In the next 1,000 years additional groups settled along the Luvuvhu, Letaba, Olifants, Sabie, and Crocodile rivers. Population numbers are thought to have peaked around 15,000 during this period, resulting in localized homogenization of the ecosystem. They constructed villages, collected wood for fire and building material, cleared bush for grazing areas, prepared lands for agriculture, and stayed in an area until resources were depleted (Plug 1982). They hunted in formidable groups, often using fire and game pits to capture bigger animals. Hunting was still a major survival strategy because irregular and erratic rainfall and indigenous diseases limited herding and cropping (Plug 1989). Climatic fluctuations probably led to fluctuating densities of human settlements, with associated periods of higher and lower impact on the environment. Although it was probably a popular hunting locale, the Kruger area is considered to have been marginal or transitional in terms of cultural-historical occupation and farming, with a noticeable influence of human and livestock diseases such as nagana and malaria.
By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was active trade in ivory, skins, slaves, and gold between Mapungubwe along the Limpopo River and Arab traders who used the Sofala port in Mozambique (Huffman 1996). From Thu-lamela, a fifteenth-century site in the northern Kruger, these activities were continued until approximately 1650 (Kusel 1992). However, trade continued from other centers thereafter, and of significance are the references to ivory trade: Ferreira (2002), for instance, reports that ivory export via Inhambane amounted to 26,000 kg in 1768.
When Francois de Cuiper, the first recorded European to set foot in the lowveld, undertook his expedition from Delagoa Bay in 1725 to an area just north of the Crocodile River in the present-day Kruger, he found many black settlements. A hundred years later the situation looked very different, probably as a result of warfare and disease associated with climatic change. The period between 1800 and 1835 was a time of upheaval and changes in black political power south of the Limpopo River. This was a state of continuous war known as the Difaqane or Mfecane. This was also the time when Shaka, ruler of the Zulu nation, conquered many other black tribes and dispersed others toward Swaziland, the South African lowveld, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.
The Colonial Period: Pioneers and Hunters (1836–1902)
In 1652 Europeans colonized the cape and introduced both a strong market economy and firearms, starting the overexploitation of wildlife (Carruthers 1995). Religion also played a role as Christianity excluded beliefs in the intrinsic power and value of nature, as believed by hunter-gatherers, and commanded its followers to tame and civilize nature in the service of humankind.
Early in the nineteenth century white people started exploring the area north of the Vaal River, and Louis Trichardt was the first white Voortrekker to trek through the present-day Kruger to Delagoa Bay (Maputo) in Mozambique in 1836. During this journey they lost all their cattle to nagana, carried by the dreaded tsetse fly, and most of the party succumbed to malaria. They recorded only a few small black settlements with hardly any cattle in the lowveld.
More white Voortrekkers trekked out of the Cape Colony and settled in the Transvaal to escape British rule, and political power was wrested from the resident African groups. Rural white Afrikaners and black Africans used wildlife as a resource and depended on produce from the environment for their existence. This was in stark contrast to the increasing number of British sportsmen who killed game for pleasure and trophies and documented their adventures (Cumming 1850; Harris 1838; Selous 1881). British tradition determined that sportsmen were gentlemen, and these upper classes scorned those who hunted commercially or for their own consumption. The rural Afrikaners found it difficult to believe that people would kill animals solely for amusement and waste the byproducts (Anderson 1888).
The period 1836–1902, including the Anglo-Boer War, was characterized by uncontrolled hunting for meat, skins, and ivory. This decimated the game populations in the lowveld (the low-lying area in which Kruger is situated), and campaigns began for the conservation of wild animals. As far back as 1858 laws to regulate hunting were proclaimed by the South African Republic. They were not successful in stopping or even slowing down the slaughter. The rinderpest epizootic that erupted in 1896 decimated both wildlife and domestic stock, and the government suspended all hunting restrictions to aid impoverished rural communities (Carruthers 1995).
After years of campaigning by various people for the creation of a game reserve between the Sabie and Crocodile rivers (Carruthers 1995), and with the looming Anglo-Boer War, President Paul Kruger eventually signed the proclamation creating the Sabi Game Reserve in 1898. The war was fought from 1899 to 1902 over political rights for foreigners and the gold riches in the Transvaal (Pakenham 1991). The British scorched-earth war policy of burning farms and homesteads and establishing concentration camps, in which many more Afrikaner and African women and children died than men on the battlefields, created much animosity against them (Pretorius 2001).
Game Preservation Era (1902–1925)
After the Anglo-Boer War, formal protection of game in the lowveld started in 1902 with the appointment of James Stevenson-Hamilton as warden of the Sabi Game Reserve (Figure 1.2). Stevenson-Hamilton was a Scottish professional soldier who had risen to the rank of major during the war. The instructions that Stevenson-Hamilton received with his appointment were vague and amounted to stopping hunting activities in the area and turning it into a game sanctuary. The British colonial administrators had a long history of European game preservation that centered around the creation of game sanctuaries to be used as exclusive hunting grounds by sportsmen and gentlemen (Carruthers 1995).
From 1902 to 1926 the emphasis was on the protection and rebuilding of these game populations. Stevenson-Hamilton was a good choice to lay the foundations of the new game reserve in that he was intelligent, a good leader, articulate, observant, and an efficient administrator (Carruthers 2001). In 1903 the area between the Sabie River and the Olifants River was added to the Sabi Game Reserve, and the Shingwitsi Game Reserve (an area between the Letaba and Luvuvhu rivers) was proclaimed.
At proclamation, these reserves housed low game numbers as a result of excessive hunting and the ravages of the 1896 rinderpest epidemic. Elephant and white rhino were locally extinct. Stevenson-Hamilton worked persistently to achieve his goals and appointed white game rangers assisted by black game scouts to patrol the area, arrest poachers, and enforce the law. He was opposed by farmers, hunters, and land companies (Carruthers 2001). This was a difficult task because the area was huge and there were no roads or infrastructure. For instance, Major A. A. Fraser and 10 game scouts had to control the whole of the Shingwitsi Reserve, an area of about 800,000 ha.
Management actions included predator control and veld (range) burning to enhance the distribution of game, and Stevenson-Hamilton started keeping rainfall records. He also moved out the many isolated black families who lived in and were not employed by the reserve, earning him the unflattering nickname Skukuza ("he who sweeps clean") (Carruthers 1995). This policy of creating parks and moving indigenous people out of the area was followed in many other parts of the world (Burnham 2000), causing animosity from neighboring rural communities.
Stevenson-Hamilton became increasingly concerned about the lack of adequate protection provided by the provincial ordinances for the game reserves as pressures by commercial farmers and mining houses grew to deproclaim parts for commercial interests (Carruthers 1995). With help from some influential people he started lobbying to have the reserves proclaimed national parks. After much lobbying behind the scenes, this eventually happened after the Nationalist party came into power in 1924 and passed the National Parks Act (1926), when the Sabi and Singwitsi reserves were amalgamated and named the Kruger National Park (Carruthers 1995; Pienaar 1990).
Creating a National Park (1926–1946)
The new legislation provided for a Board of Trustees to be appointed, and the era of exclusive power of the warden was over. This also meant that the public obtained access, and the first three tourist cars entered in 1927. The state undertook to pay for management and maintenance of the new national park, but development had to be financed from tourist income. This necessitated the construction of roads and tourist accommodation facilities.
After initially using the South African Railways to manage tourism, in 1931 the board appointed outside contractors to provide catering and trade to tourists because of the lack of internal funds. These concessions continued until 1955, when the board again took them over after continuous complaints by the public concerning poor service. Initial accommodations were rustic, and Stevenson-Hamilton was determined to provide visitors with a wilderness experience. He fiercely resisted any upgrading of accommodation, being concerned that it would overcivilize the park (Carruthers 1995).
The stabilization of water resources to distribute game more evenly and counter the perceived desiccation of the lowveld was started in 1933 when the first six boreholes were sunk, signaling the start of more permanent form of management intervention. In 1938 after a foot-and-mouth epidemic among domestic stock in the region, the state veterinarians ordered the destruction of all cloven-hoofed domestic stock that were kept for milk and food in and around the park. This action was incomprehensible to the local people and unforgivable, also leaving Stevenson-Hamilton with a lasting mistrust of scientists (Joubert 1986).
Although Stevenson-Hamilton did not collect systematic scientific data or compile species checklists, he was a keen observer and wrote many scientific and popular publications, journals, reports, and books about Kruger and its animals (e.g., South African Eden [1937] and Wild Life in South Africa [1947]). Stevenson-Hamilton retired in 1946 at age 79, after 44 years of building Kruger years into an internationally known and respected conservation area. The early history of Kruger and Stevenson-Hamilton's life up to this point has been comprehensively documented by Carruthers (1995 and 2001) and Pienaar (1990).
The Era of Management by Intervention (1946–1990)
It was during this period that discrete management and research functions emerged, and that specialist service divisions dealing, for instance, with technical and tourism services, developed.
Management
Colonel J. A. B. Sandenberg took over from Stevenson-Hamilton as warden in 1946. He outlawed controlled burning of grass and reintroduced carnivore control in parts of the park. Kruger was in a dry cycle, and in late 1950 the Letaba River stopped flowing for the first time in history (Chapter 21, this volume). Managers were concerned about game leaving the unfenced park in search of water and about localized overgrazing. More water-points were added evenly through the park (Chapter 8, this volume) to offset these problems and to attract game for tourists (Joubert 1986).
In 1955 tourist numbers exceeded 100,000 for the first time, marking the end of a quiet and romantic era. Kruger was becoming an institution run increasingly on business principles. Warden L. Steyn retired in 1961, the last self-trained warden-conservationist. He was replaced by Dolf Brynard, head of the Research Section, and park management was seen as having a firmer scientific base.
To cope with the proposed extensive development of road networks and tourist facilities, a Technical Services department was established in 1958. It completed fencing of the park boundaries for veterinary and disease control purposes, demanded by the National Department of Agriculture: the southern boundary along the Crocodile River in 1959, the western boundary in 1961, the eastern boundary in 1976, and the short northern boundary in 1980. The fence curbed the spread of diseases to domestic stock in the adjoining areas, kept dangerous animals from marauding outside, and facilitated boundary patrolling for poaching control.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Kruger Experience by Johan T. du Toit, Kevin H. Rogers, Harry C. Biggs. Copyright © 2003 Island Press. Excerpted by permission of ISLAND PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
PrefaceForeword
Part I. The Historical and Conceptual Framework
Chapter 1. The Kruger National Park: A Century of Management and Research
Chapter 2. Biotic and Abiotic Variability as Key Determinants of Savanna Heterogeneity at Multiple Spatiotemporal Scales
Chapter 3. Adopting a Heterogeneity Paradigm: Implications for Management of Protected Savannas
Chapter 4. An Adaptive System to Link Science, Monitoring, and Management in Practice
PART II. A Template for Savanna Heterogeneity
Chapter 5. The Abiotic Template and Its Associated Vegetation Pattern
Chapter 6. Biogeochemistry: The Cycling of Elements
Chapter 7. Fire as a Driver of Ecosystem Variability
Chapter 8. Surface Water Availability: Implications for Heterogeneity and Ecosystem Processes
Chapter 9. River Heterogeneity: Ecosystem Structure, Function, and Management
PART III. Interactions between Biotic Components
Chapter 10. Interactions between Species and Ecosystem Characteristics
Chapter 11. Vegetation Dynamics in the Kruger Ecosystem
Chapter 12. Insects and Savanna Heterogeneity
Chapter 13. Birds: Responders and Contributors to Savanna Heterogeneity
Chapter 14. Large Herbivores and Savanna Heterogeneity
Chapter 15. Rainfall Influences on Ungulate Population Dynamics
Chapter 16. Kruger's Elephant Population: Its Size and Consequences for Ecosystem Heterogeneity
Chapter 17. Wildlife Diseases and Veterinary Controls: A Savanna Ecosystem Perspective
Chapter 18. Large Carnivores and Savanna Heterogeneity
PART IV. Humans and Savannas
Chapter 19. Anthropogenic Influences at the Ecosystem Level
Chapter 20. Beyond the Fence: People and the Lowveld Landscape
Chapter 21. Heterogeneity and Management of the Lowveld Rivers
Chapter 22. Integration of Science: Successes, Challenges, and the Future
Chapter 23. Reflections on the Kruger Experience and Reaching Forward
Index