MSc student wins film award

Bongani Mnisi won the Theo Manuel award for the film, Stepping Stones: Through fragmented environments, which was shown at the fynbos forum Conference 2014. The film shows the work Bongani is doing for his master’s project under the supervision of Dr Sjirk Geerts and Prof anton Pauw. The film can be seen via youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IQyixUSkmI&featu re=youtu.be

The Theo Manuel award is hosted by the Conservation education Trust from UCT, and is bestowed upon projects which promote the link between conservation and education. Bongani’s project attempts to restore nectar feeding bird migration routes across the Cape flats by planting nectar rich plants at local schools. School children are an integral part of the project, planting plants, maintaining gardens and assisting with bird monitoring.

To reach out to as many people as possible, the study also has a facebook page, The Iingcungcu “sunbird restoration project”, which has over 200 likes so far: www.facebook.com/pages/Iingcungcu-sunbirdrestoration-project/285157724989224 and a webpage: http://academic.sun.ac.za/botzoo/iingcungcu/index. htm. While the study itself will produce a thesis at the end of 2015, the project is likely to continue through various greening projects and biodiversity and education programmes.

Researcher Rands

The Kgalagadi Lion Project

Husband and wife team, Maya and otto Beukes, are spearheading a groundbreaking project that will reveal critical information on the activities of the lion population in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The Kgalagadi Lion Project forms part of the pair’s master’s research in the field of Nature Conservation. The project was initiated after a survey conducted in the park, which is on the border between South africa and Botswana, indicated an excessively skewed gender ratio in favour of males. This ratio could lead to a decline in the lion population and may ultimately lead to localised extinction. The Beukes are collecting critical information on these lions’ demography and dietary patterns. “This will be used to help identify the cause of the gender skew and to inform management decisions on lion conservation in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park,” said Maya.

The couple have been working in the park since 2013. They have already collected a significant amount of data and have identified 141 individual lions. “In october 2013 four adult female lions were fitted with GPS/VHf collars by SaNParks’s Veterinary Wildlife and Scientific Services. We will use the collars to locate prides as well as prey remains. The collars will also be used to assist with continuous following of collared individuals and their associated prides through telemetric tracking,” said Maya.

The researchers are using a Land rover Defender, sponsored by Land rover Sa in partnership with the SaTIB Conservation Trust, as a base from which to locate and observe lions across the approximately 1.5 million hectare study area. They cover an average distance of 2500 kilometres per month, of which a large part is rough terrain. The project will run over two years and is being supervised by CPUT’s Dr frans radloff and SaNParks’s Dr Sam ferreira, who is also a research associate in the Department of Biodiversity and Conservation at CPUT. Updates on the Kgalagadi Lion Project can be found at http://www.kalaharilions.co.za/