This week, Bats Without Borders Webinar is featuring Dr Nikita Finger. She will be talking about Habitat correlates of pulse parameters in the highly specialized acoustic system of Chiroptera. You can join her at 15-16hrs (CAT) on Wednesday 24 February.
Nikita currently works at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town. She researches Zoology and Evolutionary Biology. Her most recent publication is ‘The behaviour and vocalisations of captive Geoffroy’s horseshoe bats, Rhinolophus clivosus (Chiroptera: Rhinolophidae)‘ which you can read online at Research Gate.
To join her Webinar, pre-register at www.batswithoutborders.org. You can also catch and watch again all previous Winged Wednesdays Webinars on their Webinar page on their website.
This week, the Zambian Government announced it will be boosting the protection for Kafue National Park by working with African Parks. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed which will implement a Priority Support Plan that will increase technical and financial support for the park worth US$3 million over 12 months.
The Honorable, Hon. Ronald K. Chitotela, Minister of Tourism and Arts said that the MoU will help Zambia to realise the potential of Kafue National Park – “It is essential that we invest in the protection of our wildlife and enhance the infrastructure for tourism. Having worked together for 18 years, we believe that African Parks is a partner who can help us to actualize the park’s potential in contributing to the economy and the wellbeing of our people.”
The Priority Support Plan will be a collaboration between the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) and African Parks. Its short-term objectives include improving infrastructure, supporting the DNPW’s law enforcement and conducting conservation baseline studies. They will work alongside key stakeholders, including local communities, tourism operators and other conservation organisations.
“We are delighted to conclude this MoU with African Parks which will allow us to access support required to protect this iconic national park and its rich biodiversity for all Zambians” said the Director of the DNPW, Dr Chuma Simukonda. “The sheer scale of Kafue National Park and its associated challenges require enormous resources to manage it successfully”.
African Parks’ CEO Peter Fearnhead said they “look forward to supporting the Zambian Government’s vision to conserve this extremely precious resource and to optimise its long-term social, economic and ecological benefits”.
Kafue National Park is situated within in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), which straddles the boundaries of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Priority Support Plan for Kafue is being funded through the Dutch Postcode Lottery’s dreamfund grant, which was awarded to World Wide Fund for Nature, African Parks and the Peace Parks Foundation to assist KAZA partner states with various integrated initiatives.
Although not at well known as other parks, Kafue is Zambia’s largest National Park, covers 22,400 km2, with a diverse range of habitats and a network of water channels dominated by the Kafue River and Lake Itezhi-Tezhi, which provide fresh water across the region.
The park has a wide range of wildlife, including lions, leopards, African wild dog, cheetah and elephants, and with 21 different species of antelope, has the highest diversity of antelope on the continent. It is also designated by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area, with a vast number of resident and migratory bird species, with almost 500 species recorded within the park.
African Parks
African Parks have been working in Zambia since 2003 and currently partner with the DNPW in both the Liuwa Plain National Park and the Bangweulu Wetlands. You can find out more about African Parks at www.africanparks.org
A newly discovered ‘nano-chameleon’ could be the world’s smallest reptile. It is so small it can sit on your fingertip. Called Brookesia nana, or ‘nano-chameleon’, it is a blotchy brown lizard that usually does not grow more than an inch in body length.
Two of these tiny reptiles were discovered by a German-Madagascan expedition team in Madagascar. The male Brookesia nana has a body of only 13.5mm, making it the smallest of the approximately 11,500 known reptile species, according to the Bavarian State collection of Zoology in Munich. Its total length, from head to tail is just 22mm. The female is bigger, being around 29mm, possible so that she is able to have egg carrying capacity. So whilst the males might be the smallest reptiles in the world, the females aren’t.
Brookesia nana are different from other larger chameleon species, as they have dull colouration and lack the capacity for major colour changes.
Only two Brookesia nana have so far been found, in a single location.
“The new chameleon is only known from a degraded montane rainforest in northern Madagascar and might be threatened by extinction.”
Glaw et. al. in Scientific Report Journal
It is thought that they prefer to live on the forest floor, making them susceptible to extinction due to anthropogenic pressure. The lower level natural forest, close to their habitat, has already been eradicated due to deforestation, slash and burn agriculture and cattle farming. Recently, the area called ‘Sorata massif’ has received official protection, being part of the protected ‘Resérve de Ressources Naturelles du Corridor Marojejy-Anjanaharibe Sud-Tsaratanàna partie Nord’ (also known as COMATSA Nord19). It is hoped that this new reserve will help to conserve the remaining forest habitats and the researchers suggest that all Brookesia nana species are put on the Critically Endangered IUCN Red List.
Last year over 330 elephants were found dead in the Seronga district of Botswana’s Okavango Delta. These mysterious deaths raised huge concerns all around the world, with rumours of poisoning, poaching and anthrax as being causes. After months of sampling, testing and analysis by laboratories in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the USA, it was announced that the elephants had died from drinking contaminated water from waterholes which contained cyanobacterial toxins, caused by a bloom of cyanobacteria. These are a naturally occurring bacteria, with blooms forming in waterholes under certain climatic conditions.
A new study has just been published into the elephant deaths, exploring the broader ecological implications. It agrees that human poisoning and poaching are unlikely causes, especially as other animals were not affected and all the elephant carcases were found intact, with their tusks.
“Most of the elephant carcasses were found within an area administratively known as NG11, along the Panhandle region of the Delta – a region where human-wildlife conflict is rife. Neither NG11 nor neighbouring NG12 have protected status and are designated for subsistence agriculture. These regions neighbour the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area”.
Whilst most of the region is under IUCN status, the Seronga area administrative blocks (NG11, NG12 and part of NG13) have no protected status. They are cut off from the surrounding habitat by the deep waters of the Okavango River and Delta and border and veterinary fences.
Maps that illustrate administrative and natural boundaries in Ngamiland, northern Botswana from the 2020 elephant die-off in Botswana report
The restriction of freshwater supplies had forced elephants to use waterholes that had possibly been naturally polluted by algae blooms, although they suggest there is not enough evidence to confirm this as the main cause, especially as no other animal species were involved, so they suggest contagious disease could be a possible cause.
The area in which the elephants were found is enclosed by fences and a deep channel of water, which confines their movements and dispersal. This is a contributing factor into the local elephant population having a relatively high population growth rate, even though poaching had increased in the years 2014 to 2018.
These deaths only represented about 2% of the area’s elephant population. It is thought that this elephant population are under stress due to human-wildlife conflict in the region. Their confinement, along with a relatively high density of animals, could lead to them being more susceptible to natural diseases and/or toxins due to anthropogenic restrictions.
Confinement and relatively high densities probably explain why the die-off occurred in only one area. Their findings suggest that a re-alignment or removal of fences, that restrict elephant movements and limits year-round access to freshwater, should be part of the longer term conservation plan for the area.
Bats Without Borders excitedly announced that their #Winged Webinars will be starting again this week. Their first webinar speaker of the year will be Professor Danilo Russo who will be talking about The pros and cons of using bats as bioindicators on Wednesday 10 February, between 15-16 hrs. For anyone new wanting to join in, then pre-register by the end of today (Tuesday 9th February) and you will be sent the zoom joining instructions.
Bats without Borders is dedicated to protecting bat populations across southern Africa. Given our current global bat conservation challenges, their aim for their webinars is to connect people across Africa and beyond to share current research methods/findings and to strengthen bat research and conservation capacity. They welcome your ideas on speakers and topics, training needs and feedback on all their talks.
You can pre-register by filling in the form on their Webinars page on their website. Places are limited to 100 participants per webinar, with instructions on how to participate being sent out to everyone who has registered. The first 100 people to login on the day will be admitted, so don’t be late! Their webinars are recorded, so if you miss one, then you can watch it again later on their website.
