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Private game reserves have an opportunity and thus responsibility to make
a significant contribution to the protection of the country’s biodiversity.
However, given the high capital and operational costs associated with
setting up and running a game reserve, the ability for the private sector to
deliver on this opportunity is very often dependant upon securing an
acceptable financial return in the immediate to short-term.
The most frequent approach to achieve this is through the development of
a high-margin, low-volume recreational tourism product, the success of which
is generally dependant on the quality of game viewing on offer.
Consequently, biodiversity objectives are frequently compromised in order to
satisfy short-term game viewing demands, and inappropriate management
practices have resulted in severe habitat deterioration in numerous private
reserves across the country. This trend has been greatly exacerbated by the
increasingly competitive nature of the upper-end game lodge industry, and
the apparent conflict between the economy and ecology of ecotourism
threatens to undermine its promise as a sustainable land-use practice for
private conservation areas. This conflict almost certainly represents the
single biggest challenge facing private conservation in South Africa.
Although many of its members are stakeholders in the ecotourism industry,
Welgevonden does not rely directly on tourism income for its financial
security and this means that the reserve’s strategic planning is not
vulnerable to the volatile market conditions that characterize this
industry. This fortuitous position provides Welgevonden with an opportunity
to take a longer-term approach to ensure the ecological integrity of the
reserve going forward and to ensure that the associated tourism product
retains its vitality and competitiveness well into the future. Delivery on
this opportunity, however, requires a clear management vision for the
reserve.
The key determinants of African savannas are widely considered to be:
- Soil moisture (closely related to geology, soil type and rainfall)
- Soil nutrients (closely related to age of landscape, rainfall, soil
type and geology)
- Fire (resulting from lightning strikes and pastoralist activities)
- Impact of herbivores
The influences of geology, soil type & climate operate over extensive
spatial and temporal scales and these represent the structuring processes
that define savanna type at a very broad scale. The influences of fire and
herbivory operate over far smaller spatial and temporal scales and it is
these processes that create the patch-like mosaic pattern of trees and
grasses that define savanna ecosystems. These and other processes such as
floods and droughts that occur at the scale of months to years at irregular
intervals and at irregular intensities are regarded as disturbance
processes.
Recent ecological thinking has shifted from trying to understand and
describe savanna ecosystems in terms of equilibrium dynamics, or a so-called
balance of nature, to trying to understand and describe them in terms of
disequilibrium, or disturbance. Savanna ecosystems are defined by the
co-existence of trees and grasses, and in essence, the new ecological
paradigm is built on the hypothesis that disturbances prevent either trees
or grasses from dominating by continuously “resetting the clock”. The goal,
therefore, is no longer to manage for stability but rather to ensure that
the system continues to function as it always has by allowing disturbance
processes to operate. However, in order to be effective, disturbance
processes must occur at irregular intervals and intensities otherwise they
simply become cycles to which certain species are better adapted than
others.
The ensuing challenge for management is to move away from conventional
management practices steeped in the equilibrium paradigm to a new and bolder
approach that embraces disturbance and change. Although this challenge is
inevitably compounded in private reserves by the requirement to
simultaneously target short-term game viewing requirements, it is important
to recognize that such reserves would not exist in the first place without
the investment of stakeholders who have an interest in wildlife and game
viewing. Hence, although the primary management objective for any private
reserve that takes an interest in biodiversity conservation must be the
maintenance of ecosystem function, more specific and finite short-term
objectives targeting the more immediate expectations of investors cannot be
ignored.
Of all the determinants of African savannas, management is, in reality,
only able to influence the following:
- Fire
- Stocking rates
- Distribution of game through water point management & other
interventions such as salt licks
- Management of key species
The management goal for Welgevonden is to use this limited inventory of
management tools to achieve an ever-changing tapestry of vegetation
composition and structure over the underlying template defined by geology,
soil-type and climate and at the same time to deliver a satisfactory and
sustainable game viewing experience.
Welgevonden comprises four main habitat types, namely:
- Mixed Burkea africa woodland (found on rocky hill slopes)
- Burkea africana open woodland (found in the valleys & non-rocky
plateaus)
- Rocky plateau open woodland
- Old lands (transformed through prior farming activities)
The first three habitat types represent a background matrix of pristine
mountain sourveld comprising broadleaf deciduous trees and unpalatable,
perennial grasses with a limited ability to sustain year-round populations
of herbivores. However, the presence of old lands used previously for
agricultural purposes embedded in a background environment of mountain
sourveld represents an opportunity for management to proactively manipulate
an already transformed component of the landscape without compromising the
ecological integrity of the reserve.
Hence, Welgevonden has adopted a new and innovative approach whereby
proactive management interventions such as slashing, fertilization and the
removal of woody encroachers such as Stoebe vulgaris and Lippia javanica are
employed to enhance the productivity and palatability of the grass layer on
the old land habitat so as to establish key nutrient areas capable of
supporting populations of high-density herbivore species throughout the
year. The resulting difference in palatability between the old lands and
remaining habitats is expected to result in a concentration of herbivores on
the old land habitat, ultimately leading to the establishment of
self-perpetuating grazing lawns through the disproportionate deposition of
nutrients on these comparatively small areas. Not only will this mitigate
the unnatural impact of year-round grazing pressure on the pristine habitat
types but it will also render the game populations on the reserve
considerably more visible and their distributions more predictable, thus
enabling a highly satisfactory game viewing experience at ecologically
sustainable stocking levels. There is, however, an associated risk that game
numbers could become completely uncoupled from resource supply during the
critical bottleneck period at the end of winter and management is therefore
closely monitoring herbivore stocking rates and distribution patterns.
In summary, therefore, the management vision is to apply appropriate
ecological management to ensure the long-term viability of Welgevonden as
both a conservation and recreational tourism entity, but recognizing that
the reserve would not exist if it were not for the investment of the
members, enhancing the Welgevonden game viewing experience in the short-term
has also been prioritized.
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