Appropriate Ecological Management
Conservation Management Vision

for Welgevonden Game Reserve

Private game reserves have an opportunity and a responsibility to make an important contribution to protecting the nation’s biodiversity. However, the high operational costs of setting up and running a game reserve require these reserves to secure financial returns in the immediate to short-term to allow them to work towards these conservation goals.

The most common approach to do this is by developing a high-margin, low-volume ecotourism product, where the success generally depends on the quality of safari game viewing on offer. Consequently, biodiversity objectives are often compromised to satisfy short-term game viewing demands, and these  inappropriate management practices have led to major habitat deterioration in private reserves across the country. The clear conflict between economy and ecology of ecotourism has been exaggerated further by the increasingly competitive nature of the upper-end game lodge industry. This conflict threatens the viability of sustainable land-use practice for private conservation areas and is the single biggest challenge facing private conservation in South Africa today.

Welgevonden does not rely directly on tourism income for its financial security, although many of its members are stakeholders in the ecotourism industry. This means that the reserve’s strategic planning is not vulnerable to the volatile market conditions that characterize this industry. This allows Welgevonden the freedom to take a longer-term approach to maintaining the ecological integrity of the reserve going forward and to ensure that our tourism product retains its vitality and competitiveness well into the future. Delivery of these goals 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 act over extensive scales in both space and time morphing and directing the broad formation of typical savanna types. Simultaneously, the influences of fire and herbivory act over far smaller space and time scales which creates 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.

The first three habitat types represent a background matrix of pristine mountain sour-veld 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 sour-veld 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,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 prioritised.

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)

Come to the woods for here is rest.

John Muir

Conservation

Conservation Management Vision

Conservation Management Vision

Elephant Management

Elephant Management

Lion Management

Lion Management

Fire Policy

Fire Policy

Species List

Species List

Leopard Research 2008-2011

Leopard Research 2008-2011

Livestock Guarding Dogs

Livestock Guarding Dogs

Blue Cranes

Blue Cranes

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