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The South African Context
In South Africa, conservation planning for cheetahs and wild dogs is limited by a lack of information, at national and provincial levels, on which areas are important and which should be prioritised. Understanding habitat suitability and connectivity in South Africa at a country scale would help with several aspects of conservation planning including: land use planning, conflict mitigation and identification of reintroduction and range expansion sites. To date the large carnivore guild has not been considered in this planning. As both cheetahs and wild dogs are wide ranging, occur at low densities and face similar threats, it is feasible to include both species under one conservation plan (e.g. South African Action Plan Cheetahs and African Wild Dogs [Lindsey & Davies-Mostert 2009] and Regional Conservation Strategy for the Cheetah and African Wild Dog in Southern Africa [IUCN/SSC 2007]). Additionally, owing to their large space requirements, it is likely that conservation plans for these two species will benefit other taxa.
A key threat to cheetah and wild dog survival in South Africa is conflict with land owners (Marnewick et al. 2007; Lindsey & Davies-Mostert 2009; Thorn et al. 2013). Cheetahs particularly have most of their distribution range outside protected areas which makes them vulnerable to persecution (Marnewick et al. 2007). South Africa has few large protected areas that can hold self-sustaining populations of cheetahs and wild dogs. The Kruger National Park is the stronghold for cheetah and wild dog conservation and Kgalagadi National Park is of secondary importance for cheetahs. Several smaller national parks and provincial protected areas are present throughout South Africa, but their effectiveness in contributing to conserving cheetahs and wild dogs is unknown.
Because cheetahs and wild dogs have been extirpated from most of their historical range in South Africa several reintroductions have been done into fenced protected areas (Davies-Mostert et al. 2009; Marnewick et al. 2009). These small isolated populations are managed artificially by simulating dispersals between reserves as a managed metapopulation (Davies-Mostert et al. 2009). Identification of new reserves for both species is generally done on an availability basis in what is considered historical distribution range, without the luxury of prior spatial planning. A better understanding of suitable habitat and connectivity can aid in guiding these reintroductions into areas that are suitable and that could in the future allow for natural connectivity to be developed between these small isolated populations.
To date national level conservation action for both species has been guided by the National Action Plan for Cheetahs and African Wild Dogs (Lindsey & Davies-Mostert 2009) but implementation has been done geographically on an ad-hoc basis. The benefits of these conservation actions could be maximised and resources more effectively utilised if key areas important for cheetahs and wild dogs can be identified for concentrated effort (e.g. Karanth et al. 2012).
In this study I developed maximum entropy models in MaxEnt (Phillips et al. 2006) and current flow models in Circuitscape (McRae & Shah 2009) to 1) investigate current suitability of habitat for cheetahs and wild dogs within South Africa to identify important areas for their conservation and assisted range expansion through the managed metapopulation approach; 2) identify important areas of connectivity between suitable patches of habitat and 3) evaluate how effective the current protected area network is in conserving suitable habitat for cheetahs and wild dogs.
Habitat suitability modelling
The maximum entropy approach to species distribution modelling was used to determine habitat suitability and current potential distribution of cheetahs and wild dogs in South Africa using MaxEnt 3.3.0 (http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~schapire/maxent/; Phillips et al. 2006). MaxEnt and its performance are described in detail by several authors (e.g. Soberón & Peterson 2005, Phillips & Dudík 2008, Elith et al. 2010), and was chosen because it performs well (Elith et al. 2006) and it is not affected by correlated environmental variables (Phillips et al. 2006; Elith et al. 2010), the number of occurrence points (Elith et al. 2006, Wisz et al. 2008), or by spatial error (Graham et al. 2008). These factors are important when modelling for species that only occupy part of their potential habitat (Engler et al. 2004) such as cheetahs and wild dogs in South Africa.
Predictor variables
I used 11 environmental predictor variables that were shown to be important for large carnivores (Swanepoel et al. 2013) as the variables specific to cheetahs and wild dogs are unknown. These included: cattle density, distance from roads, distance from villages, human density, small ruminant density, distance from rivers, a digital elevation model, topographic roughness, grazing capacity, normalised difference vegetation index and land cover. Data for all environmental layers are given in Table 2.1. All environmental layers were scaled to cell size of 3.366 km X 3.366 km using ArcMap10 (ESRI 2010) and projected into Albers Equal Area with two standard parallels at 19.00 and 31.00 with a geographic coordinate system of WGS1984. This scale was felt to be reasonable given that both species have home ranges much larger than the predictor variable resolution. Additionally, the resolution of the presence data was unlikely to be at a finer scale than the predictor variables because much of the data were collected from questionnaires and tourist reports.
CHAPTER 1: General Introduction
1.1 FREE ROAMING POPULATIONS
1.2 THE KRUGER NATIONAL PARK
1.3 FENCED RESERVES
1.4 REFERENCES
CHAPTER 2: Habitat suitability and connectivity for cheetahs Acinonyx jubatus and African wild dogs Lycaon pictus in South Africa
2.1 ABSTRACT
2.2 INTRODUCTION
2.3 METHODS
2.4 RESULTS
2.5 DISCUSSION
2.6 REFERENCES
CHAPTER 3: Evaluating the Status of African Wild Dogs Lycaon pictus and Cheetahs Acinonyx jubatus Through Tourist-based Photographic Surveys in the Kruger National Park
3.1 ABSTRACT
3.2 INTRODUCTION
3.3 MATERIALS AND METHODS
3.4 RESULTS
3.5 DISCUSSION
3.6 REFERENCES
CHAPTER 4: Home ranges of cheetahs outside protected areas in South Africa
4.1. ABSTRACT
4.2. INTRODUCTION
4.3. STUDY AREA
4.4. METHODS
4.5. RESULTS
4.6. DISCUSSION
4.7. REFERENCES
CHAPTER 5: Survival of cheetahs relocated from ranchland to fenced protected areas in South Africa
5.1 ABSTRACT
5.2 INTRODUCTION
5.3 METHODS
5.4 RESULTS
5.5 DISCUSSION
5.6 REFERENCES
CHAPTER 6: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
6.1 INTRODUCTION
6.2 HABITAT SUITABILITY AND CONNECTIVITY FOR CHEETAHS AND AFRICAN WILD DOGS IN SOUTH AFRICA
6.3 EVALUATING THE STATUS OF CHEETAHS AND AFRICAN WILD DOGS THROUGH TOURIST-BASED PHOTOGRAPHIC SURVEYS IN THE KRUGER NATIONAL PARK
6.4 RANGE USE OF CHEETAHS OUTSIDE PROTECTED AREAS IN SOUTH AFRICA
6.5 SURVIVAL OF CHEETAHS RELOCATED FROM RANCHES TO FENCED PROTECTED AREAS IN SOUTH AFRICA
6.6 CONCLUSION
6.7 REFERENCES
