A pILOT SURVEY to implement a monitoring research project in the region of mudumu
Namibia
Peggy PONCELET
Project coordinator- Conservation Scientist
1st September 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACRONYM
PILOT SURVEY SUMMARIZING INFORMATION
ACKNOWLEGEMENT
CONTEXT & PILOT SURVEY OBJECTIVES
METHODOLOGY
Road Network
Vegetation cover
Animal Sightings
RESULTS
Road Network
Vegetation Cover
Animal Sighting
Other Activities
Pilot Project activities and milestones
DETAILS OF PILOT SURVEY BUDGET/ 31st AUGUST 2006
CONCLUSION
LITERATURE
APPENDIX
ACRONYM
BK Burkea-Kiaat-False Mopane woodland
DPWMDirectorate of Park and Wildlife Management
HDSGHigh Dense Shrub Grassland
HDTGHigh Dense Tree Grassland
ICEMAIntegrated Community-Based Ecosystem Management
IRDNCIntegrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation
KLG Kwando-Linyanti grassland
MAW Mopane- Aristida woodland
MBW Mopane-Burkea woodland
MDSGMedium Dense Shrub Grassland
METMinistry of Environment and Tourism
MMW Mudumu Mulapo woodland
MNWCMudumu North Wildlife Complex
MTW Mopane-Terminalia woodland
NBRINational Botanical Research Institute
NNFNamibia Nature Foundation
OKG Okavango-Kwando grassland
OKVW Okavango-Kwando valley woodland
RB Rivers and open water
SPANStrengthening Protected Area Network
PILOT SURVEY SUMMARIZING INFORMATION
1. Main Project Title:4Wildlife Monitoring Research Project- Mudumu North Wildlife Complex
2. Pilot Survey Starting date:
May 2006 / 3. Pilot Survey Ending date:
August 2006 / 4. Duration of pilot survey:
4 months including report writing
5. Pilot Survey abstract:
The “4Wildlife Monitoring Research Project” was launched in the field in May 2006 with a three months pilot survey followed by one month data analysis and report writing. The objectives of the pilot survey consisted in:
-making inventory of the road networks,
-collecting preliminary information on vegetation cover to start assessing veld condition;
-and investigating methods to get more insights on animals’ distributions.
The pilot survey was also used to establish contact with Mudumu’s rangers and key partners in the area as well as to raise awareness about the existence of the 4Wildlife project.The Pilot Survey is a crucial phase of the 4Wildlife project. It was designed with the general purpose of remodelling the initial research proposal to the reality of the terrain by testing methodologies and drawing recommendations.
Road network was successfully inventoried to be mapped. The time needed to drive every road was recorded. Times were used to evaluate time cost as useful information for the coming long-term survey. On average, time cost is 45min per 10km on roads.
The vegetation map provided by Mendelsohn & Roberts (1998) was used as a reference map for vegetation. Vegetation cover was assessed through 22 walking transects using a step-point method (Barnes, 1990). Transect positions were randomly selected based on the vegetation map to make sure at least three transects per vegetation types were going to be carried out. Grass species found during transects were identified to give an indication on veld condition of Mudumu National based on their ecological status (van Oudtshoorn and van Wyk,2004) and their percentage of ground cover per transect. The great variety of grasses show that MudumuNational Park has a general good veld condition thought areas closer from the river show signs of slight overgrazing and areas further away signs of disturbance. Considering the exceptionally good rainy season reported last year, veld condition is likely to have been positively affected. Based on transects data, the various vegetation types described by Mendelsohn & Roberts (1998) seam to encompass relatively heterogeneous patches. For the long-term survey it is thus recommended to repeatedly carry out at least ten 100m walking random transects per vegetation type with more transects for heterogeneous areas. Once the veld condition will be determined, the grazing capacity will then be calculated and further management plans compiled (van Oudtshoorn and van Wick, 2004).
Animal penetration within the Park was investigated through direct animal sighting recorded while driving on the road network of the Park by the project coordinator as well as guides during game drive activities. Wildlife seam to follow a gradient in abundance with higher concentration of animal on the western side of the Park compare to the eastern side were sightings were rarer and consisted mainly in solitary animals or smaller groups. The main factor that could explain the observed pattern in wildlife distribution is thought to be the availability of water points especially for the eastern side of the Park. The above statements must be interpreted with care as the function of animal detectability was affected by the density of the vegetation and habituation to vehicles. In addition to the above findings, the Pilot Survey tested the use of an indirect walking transect method to asses animal distribution. Recorded signs corroborate results from the direct method and provided further information on rarer species. Due to the fact that road counts tend to over or under-estimate wildlife density depending on how shy the animals are (AWF, 1996) it is recommended to use a combination of methods to assess animal occurrence within MudumuNational Park. The “direct driven transect” method will be used based on a stratification of the area due to the gradient in distribution (Buckland et al., 1993). It is also recommended to valorize the participation of Guides in recording data on animal sightings due to the regularity with which a specific area is being “surveyed”. An important point that should definitely be regularly monitored with this method is to ensure that Guides are mapping all sightings carefully with a higher consistency. In addition, the use of the “indirect walking transect” method previously described in the 4Wildlife research proposal is approved (Aulak and Babinska-Werka, 1990). It will be combined with the vegetation survey as it was the case during the Pilot Survey. To avoid double counting the same signs at a subsequent visit, all signs should be removed from the strip after being recorded. Point transects at water holes should also be carried out as several sightings recorded during the Pilot Survey appeared to be related to the presence of water points in the vicinity. This method will still have to be adapted to field conditions as it is not yet know whether the water points are permanent. Last but not least, more cooperation with the rangers from Mudumu should be established in order to benefit from their reliable knowledge especially on rare species.
A total of N$ 79,275.00 was spent on the pilot survey over 5 months. This budget includes the purchase of a second hand 4x4 (N$35,000.00) and mostly the expenses for fuel, public relations and contingencies. Sources of income were mainly based on personal savings and a loan. None of the grant applications were approved. Due to the lack of funds, the core part of the 4Wildlife monitoring research project must unfortunately be postponed for an undetermined period of time. During this period of time, efforts will concentrate trying to secure the support of a university that is hoped to ease fundraising. Further activities will be developed by the 4Wildlife Association in order to increase its financial contribution towards the Mudumu project. Acknowledgements go to all the persons that believed in the project and have supported it so far.
ACKNOWLEGEMENT
4Wildlife was made possible thanks to the initial interest of Chief Wardens, Wardens and Rangers from the area. I would like to personally acknowledge the following persons: Mr. A. Kannyinga, Chief Control Warden for the North-Eastern Parks of Namibia, Mr. S. Siloka, Chief Warden for the Caprivi Parks; Mr. R. Aingura, Warden for BwabwataNational Park, Mr. C. Mulisa, Warden for MudumuNational Park and Mr. M. Singwangwa, Ranger at MudumuNational Park. By providing me with relevant information along with constructive advices, and by writing up letters of support at an early stage, they all have highly contributed to the setting up of the 4Wildlife Monitoring Research Project and its research proposal.
I would like to further thank all the Rangers from MudumuNational Park for their kindness and would like to take this opportunity to highlight their work dedication. My special thanks go to Mr. M. Singwangwa for sharing his time and knowledge about the area, for showing continuous interest towards the project and for his friendship. I would like to express thanks to the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism Windhoek Office for reviewing and approving the 4Wildlife monitoring research proposal. I would especially like to thank the support of both Mr. T. Uahengo, Conservation Scientist and Mr. P. du Preez, Chief Conservation Scientist at the Directorate of Scientific Services.
I would like to express my gratitude towards Mr. R. Meyer-Rust, Mrs. S. Theron and the staff from Lianshulu Lodge. They have also pledged their support towards the project by providing free food, accommodation and logistics. This donation has been of tremendous assistance from both financial and logistical point of views. My special thoughts go to the workshop for desperately trying to fix the research vehicle and to the guides Thompson, Vitalis, Victor, Ivan and Phanuel for their contribution in data collection during their game drive.
As a reflection of the potential importance of the 4Wildlife project for the area, Dr. Chris Brown, Executive Director of NNF, has invited me to become a researcher associate of NNF. I perceived this offer as a great reward and a springboard for contact liaising and fund raising in the future. Thank you very much for trusting in me.
The 4Wildlife project is generously sponsored by Sat-Com Namibia, Trentyre, and Cymot. Should your sponsorship towards wildlife research lead the example! I will keep making sure that your companies are mentioned to people in needs of your services.
I would like to thank the Namibian National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) for their expertise and help in grass identification. I am highly impressed by the kindness of the NBRI team and its speed in delivering information especially Mrs. M. Hochobes for grasses and Mrs. S. Rügheimer, and Mr. B. Strohbach for sedges.
Last but definitely not least, many thanks to Mr. J. Marx, previously general manager at Lianshulu Lodge, for his continuous encouragement, assistance in contact liaising and fund raising, for his faith in me and love. Your personal involvement within the 4Wildlife Association means a world to me.
CONTEXT & PILOT SURVEY OBJECTIVES
4Wildlife is a French registered charitable association aiming at contributing to the safeguarding of wildlife in Southern Africa. The Association wants to promote a better cohabitation between local communities and environment and to sensitize the public with the need of preserving wild animals.
In July 2005, the region of MudumuNational Park in North-East Namibia was identified as a potential project area for 4Wildlife. Located in the East Caprivi, this area witnesses one of the highest human-wildlife incidence rate in the country. The wildlife is an important highly diverse migratory wildlife. A project in this area represented a great opportunity for 4Wildlife to take part in a collaborative pilot co-management mechanism. The Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) in partnership with several organizations is since recently intending to link MudumuNational Park and its neighboring conservancies to create a larger biodiversity management area. As part of this co-management initiative, a number of priority research needs were identified paving the way for the 4Wildlife research project. Since September 2005, the Association has thus been working on setting up a long term monitoring research project to address these identified scientific baseline needs especially on wildlife distribution and veld conditions. The research permit for the 4Wildlife project within Mudumu North Wildlife Complex (MNWC) was approved by the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism on the 22d of March 2006 and delivered on the 28th of March 2006. The “4Wildlife Monitoring Research Project” was discussed and supported by the key partners of the co-management initiative. Data collection was launched in the field in May 2006 with a three months pilot survey followed by one month of data analysis and report writing.
The objectives of the pilot survey are:
-to familiarize with the terrain and its accessibility by driving all the existing roads withinMudumuNational Park;
-to collect preliminary information on vegetation cover to gain more insights on grass species found in the area and subsequently start assessing the veld condition;
-totest various methods as to identify best approaches to obtaining data on animals’ distributions;
-and to liaise with the Park Wardens, other officials and key partners of the Mudumu North Wildlife Committee to benefit from their knowledge as well as to establish mutual beneficial relationships and raise awareness about the existence of the 4Wildlife project.
The pilot survey only focused on MudumuNational Park even though the core part of the 4Wildlife monitoring research intends to concentrate on the Park as well as the conservancies and communal forestry areas of the Mudumu North Wildlife Complex (see Map 1).
Map 1: The pilot survey area consisted in MudumuNational Park while the core survey area will add Kwandu, Mayuni & Mashi conservancies, and Kwandu, Lubuta and Masida forestry areas of the Mudumu North Wildlife Complex.
The pilot survey is a crucial part in the setting up of the 4Wildife monitoring research project as it helps adjusting the theoretical research proposal to the reality of the terrain. It also provides a great opportunity to test various methods in order to identify the most adapted one. It helps in stratifying the area for the long-term survey.
METHODOLOGY
Road Network
Mr. M. Singwangwa, ranger at MudumuNational Park, was contacted to help regarding the inventory of roads within the Park. Two days were spent with him driving most of the Park’s borders and parts of the Nandavu, Nongozi, Mubuyu, Kansoko cutlines. When applicable, cutlines, sites and pans names mentioned by Mr. M. Singwangwa were used for subsequent reference. All the remaining roads (mostly located on the western side of the Park) were driven alone shortly after. Sites’ names were taken from the guides of Lianshulu Lodge. A GPS Garmin 12 lent by NNF was used to record the position of every road for subsequent orientation and mapping.
Once the road network was inventoried, activities concentrated on vegetation to characterize and differentiate habitats, and on animal sightings to investigate whether animals are easy to sight, react to the observer’s vehicle and show a gradient in densities and distributions.
Vegetation cover
The first step in assessing vegetation characteristics consisted in gathering any existing vegetation map on the area. A satellite map from 2000 was found on google-earth website and initially used as reference along with data provided in the Atlas of Namibia (Mendelsohn et al., 2002). After more literature review, a more detailed vegetation map was found in An Environmental Profile & Atlas of Caprivi (Mendelsohn & Roberts, 1998) and used as a reference map. According to this later map, MudumuNational Park encompasses eight types of vegetation as shown in Map 2(for descriptions of every vegetation type see Mendelsohn & Roberts, 1998):
-Burkea-Kiaat-False Mopane woodland (BK);
-Kwando-Linyanti grassland (KLG);
-Mopane- Aristida woodland (MAW);
-Mopane-Burkea woodland (MBW);
-Mopane-Terminalia woodland (MTW);
-Mudumu Mulapo woodland (MMW);
-Okavango-Kwando grassland (OKG);
-Okavango-Kwando valley woodland (OKVW);
-Rivers and open water (RB).
The Okavango-Kwando valley woodland is found only on NakatwaIsland and was thus not considered during the pilot survey. Due to a high water level and subsequent difficult accessibility, Rivers and Open Water vegetation type was also not considered. The accessibility to this vegetation type might change over season or one could consider a boat to survey it in the future. The Burkea-Kiaat False Mopane woodland was also excluded from this pilot survey mainly due to logistics but should definitely be included in the core part of the 4Wildlife research.
Map 2: Arcview vegetation map provided by Mendelsohn & Roberts (1998).
Using the program Arcview along with the reference map, a number of 22 sites were randomly selected following two criteria:
-any given site had to fall within a buffer zone of maximum 2 km away from any road as to ease sites accessibility in the terrain;
-minimum three sites were selected per vegetation types(van Oudtshoorn and van Wyck, 2004)to up to 5 for MMW & MAW.
At every site (later on referred to as walking transect), the botanical composition of the ground cover was then recorded in the field using a step-point method (Barnes, 1990). This method consists in recording the plant touching the observer’s foot at each stepped meter over 100m. When no plant was found, it was recorded as bare. Plant identification was done by collecting samples to create a herbarium and allow subsequent plant identification using Roodt (1998) and Van Oudtshoorn and Van Wyck (2004) as well as the expertise of the National Botanical Research Institute. At the end of each walking transect, an average height for each species was calculated from 5 measurements. The vegetation cover was then visually classified according to its two major vegetation cover (grassland, bushland or woodland) and with information on its general ground cover (bare, open or dense). Other recorded information was on the presence of any animal signs such as trampling, tracks, dung and dust bowl.
According to the “ecological status” of grass species found during the survey, the condition of the veld in MudumuNational Parkwas determined as a preliminary estimation (van Oudtshoorn and van Wyk, 2004). The “ecological status” of grasses refers to the grouping of grasses according to their reaction (increase or decrease in numbers) to different levels of grazing. All grasses are thus classified according to this criterion: Decreaser, Increaser 1, Increaser 2, Increaser 3 or Invader (for non indigenous species). By dividing the grass species into their respective ecological status groups, and calculating the percentage occurrence of each group, the veld condition could be classified as undergrazed, overgrazed or in good condition (review page 22 of van Oudtshoorn and van Wyk, 2004 for more details). Indirectly the grasses can thus also provide information on wildlife utilization of the Park.