Landscape Suitability in Botswana for the Conservation of Its Six Large African Carnivores

Abstract

Wide-ranging large carnivores often range beyond the boundaries of protected areas into human-dominated areas. Mapping out potentially suitable habitats on a country-wide scale and identifying areas with potentially high levels of threats to large carnivore survival is necessary to develop national conservation action plans. We used a novel approach to map and identify these areas in Botswana for its large carnivore guild consisting of lion (Panthera leo), leopard (Panthera pardus), spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta), brown hyaena (Hyaena brunnea), cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) and African wild dog (Lycaon pictus). The habitat suitability for large carnivores depends primarily on prey availability, interspecific competition, and conflict with humans. Prey availability is most likely the strongest natural determinant. We used the distribution of biomass of typical wild ungulate species occurring in Botswana which is preyed upon by the six large carnivores to evaluate the potential suitability of the different management zones in the country to sustain large carnivore populations. In areas where a high biomass of large prey species occurred, we assumed interspecific competition between dominant and subordinated competitors to be high. This reduced the suitability of these areas for conservation of subordinate competitors, and vice versa. We used the percentage of prey biomass of the total prey and livestock biomass to identify areas with potentially high levels of conflict in agricultural areas. High to medium biomass of large prey was mostly confined to conservation zones, while small prey biomass was more evenly spread across large parts of the country. This necessitates different conservation strategies for carnivores with a preference for large prey, and those that can persist in the agricultural areas. To ensure connectivity between populations inside Botswana and also with its neighbours, a number of critical areas for priority management actions exist in the agricultural zones.

Dynamic Patterns of Trees Species in Miombo Forest and Management Perspectives for Sustainable Production—Case Study in Huambo Province, Angola

“…Forest zoning consists of separating the land base into different management zones to address specific objectives; for example, conservation zones, intensive production zones, or even unmanaged zones (Figure 7). The categorization of open and closed miombo has been discussed in many published works and most do not describe the characteristics of these miombo categories [3,43,[116][117][118]. In addition, the distribution of land management zone regimes and specific tree species growing in each zone have not been described [98].…”

A Critical Review of Lion Research in South Africa: The Impact of Researcher Perspective, Research Mode, and Power Structures on Outcome Bias and Implementation Gaps

“…The lion being an apex predator, it can have profound effects on ecosystem functioning and structure (Tambling et al, 2013). Literature shows that research activities focus on scrutinizing the lion both in single species studies (Creel et al, 2016;Henschel et al, 2016;Lindsey et al, 2016), and in relation with other predators (Cozzi et al, 2012;Vanak et al, 2013;Swanson et al, 2014), herbivores (Valeix et al, 2009;Meena et al, 2014;Martin and Owen-Smith, 2016) and relevant conservation management practices (de Pinho et al, 2014;Winterbach et al, 2014;Snyman et al, 2015). Therefore, the African lion proves to be a rich academic, applied, and socially relevant species as a focus for a bibliometric assessment such as conducted here.…”

Mapping Vegetation Morphology Types in Southern Africa Savanna Using MODIS Time-Series Metrics: A Case Study of Central Kalahari, Botswana

“…Botswana, as with other southern Africa countries, is characterized by geographically extensive semi-arid savanna systems and contains some of the largest remaining wildlife habitats, as well as large populations of livestock that serve as the basis of economic activity [3,4]. Over the last few decades Botswana government's economic policy has aggressively pursued a strategy of expanding privatized ranch-style livestock production that has led to the creation of large scale fenced leasehold livestock ranches in the central Kalahari, each supplied with groundwater via a borehole [5].…”

“…The majority of the wildlife population in the central Kalahari is now restricted to two protected areas, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Khutse Game Reserve, that are surrounded by leased farms with considerable livestock or game populations [5,7]. This situation has resulted in increased human-wildlife conflict due to growing incidences where predators leave the fenced protected areas to prey on livestock [8] and are eventually killed by farmers who are also compensated by the government for their killed livestock [4,6]. Similar human-wildlife conflicts have been reported in other countries throughout southern Africa [6].…”