Fresh approach to Elephant impact research on Karongwe Game Reserve

Elephant management and their impact on the habitat they live in has long been one of the most contentious and widely debated issues in modern conservation in Southern Africa. GVI Research teams have been doing elephant impact studies on Karongwe Private Game Reserve on an annual basis since 2001, in conjunction with our then partner, Karongwe Ecological Research Institute (KERI). Although these studies gave a good general idea of the impact on woody species on the reserve, the results were never conclusive in a way that directly aided decision making by reserve management. In addition, until now, no ideas have been tested which would reduce or change the pattern of elephants’ impact on the reserve’s vegetation.

GVI recently teamed up with reserve manager Constant Hoogstad and elephant management staff from SANParks in the Kruger National Park to propose an updated and more results-oriented approach to assessing elephant impact on Karongwe from 2009 on:

Project 1: Establishing 5 exclusion plots in high impact areas of the reserve for monitoring pusposes. Each plot will consist of two, one hectare plots next to each other. Plot A will allow general game to enter and browse the vegetation but not elephants (using electric fencing to exclude elephants). Plot B will be left as is and allow all species to move through and utilise the vegetation.

Project 2: This will involve closing down a number of high-traffic water holes that are concentrated within their current area of core utilisation in the north of the reserve, and establishing more water holes in the south of the reserve, an area that they hardly frequent at all at present. The aim being to try to break the pattern of impact in the north.

Project 3: The third project focuses on rehabilitating the already highly impacted areas by planting seedlings of suitable species and then monitoring their progress and survival. Seedlings would be bought from the well-known indigenous tree nursery at Skukuza in the Kruger National Park.

Fresh approach to Elephant impact research on Karongwe Game Reserve