Okavango Carnivore Conservation

Category: Uncategorized | Date: May 21 2008 | By: okavangocarnivores

Firstly, I’ll like to introduce myself. I am a citizen of Botswana. I come from a rural area in southern Botswana characterized by dry and temperate climate and  very low  annual rainfall. My  name  is Tshepo ‘Dungi’ Kgokilwe, but I prefer being called just Dungi. My career interests have been always directed toward wildlife conservation. It has not been easy because of the fact that I was born and raised in a pastoral farming family. Being exposed to illegal activities such  as  wildlife poaching and smuggling,  I was compelled to keep my interests a secret for a very long time. Regardless, I pursued my interests and completed my Bachelor’s degree in Zoology and Wildlife Management. In 2006, I joined Botswana Predator Conservation Program (BPCP) (www.bpctrust.org), a field based research project in the Okavango area, northern Botswana. The Okavango is the most wildlife rich  area in Botswana because  mixture of wet and dry flood plains and  various woodland  habitat types. The project focuses on general ecology of large carnivores (lion, leopard, cheetah, spotted hyaena and African wild dog), with emphasis on their management through applied field research.

I currently  stay 1000km  away from the rest of my family, with  the hope to fulfill my career  interest to become a  field researcher and wildlife biologist and to acquire  skills so that I can be actively involved in wildlife conservation and management in my  country. Monitoring populations of these species is a great experience and provides information needed to help manage them. My focus is now on developing an indirect census method that can be used to estimate large carnivore density in various habitats found in northern Botswana. This will enable us to determine their population distribution and trends. We have proposed a technique that uses animal tracks to index carnivore abundance, the Large Carnivore Spoor Count (LCSC) specifically calibrated to our habitats. My hope and ambition is to complete a Master’s degree with a university offering conservation biology courses.

 What we do

We live in a remote camp in tents only about two hours from the nearest town where we can buy fuel and food. Our everyday activities involve radio-tracking and following large carnivores to collect observations. We have the several (still working) radio collars on study animals in all five species in our study area: three hyaenas in three clans, three leopards, four cheetahs, six lions in three prides and a couple collars each on four packs of wild dogs. The main objective of monitoring these species is to collect information  about thier reproductive and ranging behavior as well as individual life histories. In general,  field work has not been easy in this region basically because of the thick vegetation, lack of roads, and difficult weather conditions.

 Tracking a lioness-Tragedy!!

Let me share with you  recent experience when I was tracking a radio-collared  lioness which currently has four -4 month old cubs. It was about 5 p.m .Everything went very well and I got quite close without being able to see her. I decided to go around the thick bush to have a visual of her and the vehicle went into a huge hole. The back wheel was completely suspended in the air and the vehicle was just about to tilt over on one side. I had to stand on the other side (passenger side) to put weight so that it stayed balanced. The lioness was about 10m from the vehicle. The cubs kept approaching and checking out what was going on. I did not bother to take pictures as it was already dark and I  was a bit frightened.  I called a rescue car from camp. Two vehicles came after an hour. It took two land rovers, one pulling the other, to pull the vehicle out of the hole.  Below is a picture of me and the vehicle taken by my rescue team.

Soon I will write more about my focal project and how I go about developing the survey methods we hope can be applied across the region.