The Kruger Experience

Ecology And Management Of Savanna Heterogeneity

Johan T. du Toit, Kevin H. Rogers, Harry C. Biggs, Johan T. du Toit, Kevin H. Rogers, Harry C. Biggs

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781559639828, 9781559639811
• eBook ISBN: 9781597262996
• Subtopic: Ecology

Kruger National Park in South Africa has one of the most extensive sets of records of any protected area in the world, and throughout its history has supported connections between science and management. In recognition of that long-standing tradition comes The Kruger Experience, the first book to synthesize/summarize a century of ecological research and management in two million hectares of African savanna.

The Kruger Experience places the scientific and management experience in Kruger within the framework of modern ecological theory and its practical applications. The book uses a cross-cutting theme of ecological heterogeneity -- the idea that ecological systems function across a full hierarchy of physical and biological components, processes, and scales, in a dynamic space-time mosaic. Contributors, who include many esteemed ecologists who have worked in Kruger in recent years, examine a range of topics covering broad taxonomic groupings and ecological processes. The book's four sections explore:

• the historical context of research and management in Kruger, the theme of heterogeneity, and the current philosophy in Kruger for linking science with management
• the template of natural components and processes, as influenced by management, that determine the present state of the Kruger ecosystem
• how species interact within the ecosystem to generate further heterogeneity across space and time
• humans as key components of savanna ecosystems

In addition to the editors, contributors include William J. Bond, Jane Lubchenco, David Mabunda, Michael G.L. ("Gus") Mills, Robert J. Naiman, Norman Owen-Smith, Steward T.A. Pickett, Stuart L. Pimm, and Rober J. Scholes.

The book is an invaluable new resource for scientists and managers involved with large, conserved ecosystems as well as for conservation practitioners and others with interests in adaptive management, the societal context of conservation, links between research and management in parks, and parks/academic partnerships.

PART I

The Historical and Conceptual Framework

Kruger’s sheer size and its history of management, monitoring, and research over the past century frame in spatial and temporal terms the contribution it offers to savanna ecology. One book cannot convey it all, so a conceptual theme has been chosen to emphasize the relevance of research in Kruger to an understanding of how biodiversity arises from and is maintained by ecological heterogeneity at multiple spatial and temporal scales. No claims are made that Kruger is more heterogeneous than other parks, that savannas are more heterogeneous than other ecosystems, or that Kruger is a center for research on ecological heterogeneity. There will always be other candidates, depending on the purpose of inquiry and the relevant spatial and temporal scales. Part I of this book sets the focus by outlining the human historical background to what Kruger is today and presenting ecological heterogeneity in a conceptual framework to aid in interpreting the structural and functional complexity of the ecosystem.

It is easy to accept that ecosystems are heterogeneous in that they clearly change from one place and time to the next. In Kruger this is obvious to anyone driving from the wooded hills in the south to the open plains in the north, walking down a catena from open savanna on the upland crest to dense riverine bushveld in the valley bottom, or living at a ranger station and experiencing the wet and dry seasons as they come and go. What is less obvious is how to deal with this heterogeneity when conducting research or implementing management, but this first part of the book introduces the concepts and presents the Kruger experience as a case study of evolving understanding and conservation practice. The chapters in Part I sketch the past and introduce a modern perspective of ecosystem heterogeneity as a context for the book and as a platform for integrated science and management in the future.

The early years in Kruger were dedicated to establishing a human order: shooting predators, erecting fences, introducing watering points, and so on, in what seemed to be a wilderness in need of some control. A pioneering approach was understandable then, yet land managers around the world are still strongly influenced today by a desire to control ecosystems, homogenize landscapes, and reduce the effects of environmental variability. In the chapters that follow it is argued that ecosystem management must undergo a paradigm shift to accommodate heterogeneity as the basis for biodiversity. For the natural order to prevail, the goals of ecosystem management must be redesigned to enable natural flux rather than to enforce stasis, which means that the mindsets of people and institutions must change. Kruger’s managers and scientists have risen to the challenge by forging a novel approach to protected area management in which science, monitoring, and management are linked in a strategic adaptive system. Their work in progress is presented here in the spirit of shared learning and illustrates a commitment to ensuring the ecological integrity of Kruger through the vagaries of at least another century.

Chapter 1

The Kruger National Park: A Century of Management and Research

DAVID MABUNDA, DANIE J. PIENAAR, AND JOHAN VERHOEF

In this chapter we provide a brief historical overview of people and events that made Kruger the world-renowned park it is today. It has been said that those who do not honor their past do not deserve their future, but an in-depth analysis of some 40,000 years of history is not possible in one chapter. However, we did feel it necessary to include some early history because it shows how long humans have interacted with this ecosystem. The different eras were chosen to show when human impacts on the system, political power, and management or research philosophy changed. These changes were seldom abrupt and usually had a developing period or overlapped and sometimes coincided with increased technology or the influence of certain people (Figure 1.1).

The Hunter-Gatherer Period

Archaeologists also use the phrase “Stone Age” for this period because of the stone tools that were used during this period. Deacon and Deacon (1999) dated the divisions of the Stone Age in relation to the present as follows: Earlier Stone Age, 2.5 million–250,000 years before present (BP); Middle Stone Age, 250,000–22,000 years BP; Late Stone Age, 22,000–2,000 years BP; and Iron Age, 2,000 years BP to the colonial period.

The Earlier and Middle Stone Age people and the San (or Bushman) of the Later Stone Age period lived in this area for many thousands of years and are thought to have had little impact on the natural processes and populations. The San, the last remaining group of the Stone Age (Deacon and Deacon 1999), were hunters and gatherers and possibly scavenged from the prey of carnivores. They led a nomadic life in small groups, wandering through the area following migrating game herds (Plug 1982). They used the bow and arrow and microlithic tools and left a rich heritage of their rock paintings of animals and humans in numerous shelters in rocky outcrops in Kruger as well as deposits of ash, bone, small stone tools, and ostrich eggshell beads. They would have witnessed the arrival of a different cultural group who herded cattle, sheep, and goats, planted crops, and worked metal about 2,000 years ago.

FIGURE 1.1. A timeline of the known history of the area that is now Kruger National Park.

Humans affect the environment in two ways: through physical presence in high numbers and in an intangible social manner through decision-making, induced conflict, religion, and so forth. The hunter-gatherer peoples surely possessed these characteristics, but population densities were so low that it is generally accepted that early humans did not shape the environment in a permanent way; rather, the environment at that time shaped them. Low-density occupation and low-intensity resource use of the Stone Age hunter-gatherers probably would have constituted a low-impact period in Kruger’s history.

Farmers, Metalworkers, and Traders: The Iron Age (AD 200–1836)

Archaeological research has demonstrated that Iron Age communities had settled in southern Africa by at least AD 200 (Hall 1987), and by about AD 400 the first Bantu-speaking people started settling in the present-day Kruger area along the Letaba River. They possessed metalworking skills, traded, and had a residential lifestyle based on pastoralism. In the next 1,000 years additional groups settled along the Luvuvhu, Letaba, Olifants, Sabie, and Crocodile rivers. Population numbers are thought to have peaked around 15,000 during this period, resulting in localized homogenization of the ecosystem. They constructed villages, collected wood for fire and building material, cleared bush for grazing areas, prepared lands for agriculture, and stayed in an area until resources were depleted (Plug 1982). They hunted in formidable groups, often using fire and game pits to capture bigger animals. Hunting was still a major survival strategy because irregular and erratic rainfall and indigenous diseases limited herding and cropping (Plug 1989). Climatic fluctuations probably led to fluctuating densities of human settlements, with associated periods of higher and lower impact on the environment. Although it was probably a popular hunting locale, the Kruger area is considered to have been marginal or transitional in terms of cultural-historical occupation and farming, with a noticeable influence of human and livestock diseases such as nagana and malaria.

By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was active trade in ivory, skins, slaves, and gold between Mapungubwe along the Limpopo River and Arab traders who used the Sofala port in Mozambique (Huffman 1996). From Thu-lamela, a fifteenth-century site in the northern Kruger, these activities were continued until approximately 1650 (Kusel 1992). However, trade continued from other centers thereafter, and of significance are the references to ivory trade: Ferreira (2002), for instance, reports that ivory export via Inhambane amounted to 26,000 kg in 1768.

When Francois de Cuiper, the first recorded European to set foot in the lowveld, undertook his expedition from Delagoa Bay in 1725 to an area just north of the Crocodile River in the present-day Kruger, he found many black settlements. A hundred years later the situation looked very different, probably as a result of warfare and disease associated with climatic change. The period between 1800 and 1835 was a time of upheaval and changes in black political power south of the Limpopo River. This was a state of continuous war known as the Difaqane or Mfecane. This was also the time when Shaka, ruler of the Zulu nation, conquered many other black tribes and dispersed others toward Swaziland, the South African lowveld, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

The Colonial Period: Pioneers and Hunters (1836–1902)

In 1652 Europeans colonized the cape and introduced both a strong market economy and firearms, starting the overexploitation of wildlife (Carruthers 1995). Religion also played a role as Christianity excluded beliefs in the intrinsic power and value of nature, as believed by hunter-gatherers, and commanded its followers to tame and civilize nature in the service of humankind.

Early in the nineteenth century white people started exploring the area north of the Vaal River, and Louis Trichardt was the first white Voortrekker to trek through the present-day Kruger to Delagoa Bay (Maputo) in Mozambique in 1836. During this journey they lost all their cattle to nagana, carried by the dreaded tsetse fly, and most of the party succumbed to malaria. They recorded only a few small black settlements with hardly any cattle in the lowveld.

More white Voortrekkers trekked out of the Cape Colony and settled in the Transvaal to escape British rule, and political power was wrested from the resident African groups. Rural white Afrikaners and black Africans used wildlife as a resource and depended on produce from the environment for their existence. This was in stark contrast to the increasing number of British sportsmen who killed game for pleasure and trophies and documented their adventures (Cumming 1850; Harris 1838; Selous 1881). British tradition determined that sportsmen were gentlemen, and these upper classes scorned those who hunted commercially or for their own consumption. The rural Afrikaners found it difficult to believe that people would kill animals solely for amusement and waste the byproducts (Anderson 1888).

The period 1836–1902, including the Anglo-Boer War, was characterized by uncontrolled hunting for meat, skins, and ivory. This decimated the game populations in the lowveld (the low-lying area in which Kruger is situated), and campaigns began for the conservation of wild animals. As far back as 1858 laws to regulate hunting were proclaimed by the South African Republic. They were not successful in stopping or even slowing down the slaughter. The rinderpest epizootic that erupted in 1896 decimated both wildlife and domestic stock, and the government suspended all hunting restrictions to aid impoverished rural communities (Carruthers 1995).

After years of campaigning by various people for the creation of a game reserve between the Sabie and Crocodile rivers (Carruthers 1995), and with the looming Anglo-Boer War, President Paul Kruger eventually signed the proclamation creating the Sabi Game Reserve in 1898. The war was fought from 1899 to 1902 over political rights for foreigners and the gold riches in the Transvaal (Pakenham 1991). The British scorched-earth war policy of burning farms and homesteads and establishing concentration camps, in which many more Afrikaner and African women and children died than men on the battlefields, created much animosity against them (Pretorius 2001).

Game Preservation Era (1902–1925)

After the Anglo-Boer War, formal protection of game in the lowveld started in 1902 with the appointment of James Stevenson-Hamilton as warden of the Sabi Game Reserve (Figure 1.2). Stevenson-Hamilton was a Scottish professional soldier who had risen to the rank of major during the war. The instructions that Stevenson-Hamilton received with his appointment were vague and amounted to stopping hunting activities in the area and turning it into a game sanctuary. The British colonial administrators had a long history of European game preservation that centered around the creation of game sanctuaries to be used as exclusive hunting grounds by sp...

Table of contents

• About Island Press
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• Acknowledgments
• FOREWORD
• PART I - The Historical and Conceptual Framework
• PART II - A Template for Savanna Heterogeneity
• PART III - Interactions between Biotic Components
• PART IV - Humans and Savannas
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX
• Island Press Board of Directors