African Journal of Wildlife Research

Interspecific competition among terrestrial carnivores can have widespread impacts on community structure and can ultimately determine which species are able to coexist. Within the carnivore guild, coexistence can be achieved through either spatial, temporal or dietary partitioning. The most effective method of avoiding competition may be spatial partitioning, as it removes the potential for negative interactions. The ways in which large carnivore species utilize and partition space in small, enclosed reserves in South Africa is currently poorly understood. This knowledge gap weakens our understanding of which mechanisms structure large carnivore communities in these systems. Thus, our aim was to use Global Positioning System (GPS) collars to investigate the spatial dynamics of large carnivores [four lions (Panthera leo), three leopards (Panthera pardus) and three spotted hyaenas (Crocuta crocuta)] on a small, enclosed reserve (Selati Game Reserve). Regarding home ranges, lions had considerable overlap among themselves (especially the females), leopards had minimal overlap, while spotted hyaenas had no home range overlap. Although we found no evidence for spatial partitioning amongst the collared large carnivores, differences in the habitat use patterns of the three large carnivore species is evident. The high prey abundance of Selati, carnivore predation strategies, behavioural adaptations and ecological separation could be facilitating the coexistence of lions, spotted hyaenas and leopards in Selati. We encourage future research to be aimed at investigating the interactions of multiple sympatric carnivores in an attempt to bridge the knowledge gap on which mechanisms structure carnivore communities.

Understanding the environmental drivers that influence the spatial distribution of wildlife is paramount to the conservation of endangered carnivore species.However, presence data on most carnivore species (e.g. cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus) are not readily available to assist conservation efforts. In this study, we used MaxEnt to tease out the key determinants of the spatial distribution of cheetahs using presence-only data of cheetah against five environmental variables, i.e. distance to water (a proxy for prey density), elevation, slope, terrain ruggedness, and soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI; a proxy for vegetation quality and condition). Our MaxEnt model was successful (AUC = 0.98) in predicting the potential distribution of cheetahs in Gonarezhou National Park. We observed that amongst the five environmental variables, elevation and distance to water contributed most (88%) to the potential distribution of cheetahs. The contribution of SAVI, slope and terrain ruggedness (12%) was negligible.We also estimated that the potential predicted habitat of cheetahs was 2572.9 km² (51.2% of Gonarezhou National Park). In addition to providing baseline information, these findings are both novel and specific to Gonarezhou National Park, and provide important insights into cheetah conservation and management.

Egyptian Geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) are indigenous to South Africa and their numbers have increased in the Western Cape province of South Africa during the past 40 years due to an increase in the number of farm dams, the expansion of agricultural crops and the introduction of large areas of urban green space (Davies & Allan, 2005). These increases have had negative impacts on crops in rural areas (Mangnall & Crowe, 2001, 2002) and the fouling of gardens and golfing greens with goose faeces is a common complaint in urban landscapes (Little & Sutton, 2013). Public and private gardens, golf courses and sports fields meet the habitat requirements of Egyptian Geese (MacKay, Little, Amar & Hockey, 2014; Fox & Hockey, 2007), attracting large aggregations particularly during the non-breeding season (Little & Sutton, 2013). Golf courses are particularly attractive gathering areas for the geese because large expanses of irrigated grazing lawns are interspersed with artificial water bodies and predators are largely absent.