Home range and landscape use by a marabou stork and the breeding success of Africa's most southerly breeding colony

Abstract

The marabou stork (Leptoptilos crumenifer) is a common to abundant African scavenging bird, widely distributed from Senegal to Somalia at the northern extremity, to as far south as eastern South Africa (Anderson, 2005;Brown et al., 1982). In southern Africa, the species is considered near-threatened because of the peripheral small breeding population (Monadjem, 2005). The breeding biology of marabou storks has been well-studied in East Africa (e.g. Kahl, 1966;Korssi & Alam, 2013;Pomeroy, 1977;Pomeroy & Kibuule, 2017), but less so in southern Africa. An isolated breeding colony is established in Hlane National Park, Eswatini, where a minimum of 15 pairs were breeding at the turn of the millennium (Monadjem, 2005;Monadjem et al., 2012).Scavenging birds such as the marabou stork fulfil critical functional roles in the environment, removing decomposing waste and carcasses, suppressing disease outbreaks across trophic levels, which may be additionally detrimental to human health (DeVault, 2016). In recent years, East African marabou storks have become increasingly commensal with humans, adapting to urban environments and the waste generated by them (Pomeroy & Kibuule, 2017;Ssemmanda & Pomeroy, 2009). As such, urban populations have greatly increased (Ssemmanda & Pomeroy, 2009). There is little evidence for this trend in southern Africa; however, fecundity and survival in the southern-most populations are susceptible to climatic conditions (Monadjem et al., 2012).