Estuaries rarely experience mass mortalities of fish, which are often triggered by extreme external factors such as pollution, droughts, or floods. Unfortunately, in many instances determining the ultimate cause of such events is often very difficult, particularly when none of these external factors have occurred. A fish mortality event was noted at Isalnd Lake and…
SANParks took part in supplementing the biological knowledge of the future leaders, conservationists, scientists and innovationists. SANParks hosted a fun mini-workshop on crustaceans to a home schooled group of learners, The Explorers Club, based in Knysna on the 26th of October 2023. This group consisted of pupils aged 4 to 12 years. The workshop was…
Following the successful baited remote underwater video (BRUV) best practice workshop held at the Cape Research Centre in October, another insightful workshop was recently organized. This time, the focus was on best practices for camera trapping in conservation. On 21 November 2023, SANParks Scientific Services colleagues, alongside experts from notable conservation organizations including the Cape…
Ash plays a critical role in a post-fire environment. It helps re-stimulate microbial activity and post-fire regeneration of the landscape. Fires and savanna go hand in hand and vegetation and wildlife are known to be adapted to frequent burning. Whether soils and organisms living below ground cope with savanna fires equally well is less understood….
Working out rhino numbers is not a simple exercise of taking the current count and subtracting rhinos reported as poached. Where have all the rhinos gone? This question is asked every year when the new SANParks’ rhino numbers are released. The public subtracts the reported number of poached rhinos in the previous year from the…
As we reflect on 2021/2022, it’s an excellent time to highlight emerging conservation issues that warrant greater understanding and attention. Some of the challenges and concerns we face in Cape parks are large-scale issues that need to be solved through extensive collaborative efforts across multiple spheres and disciplines. Many of these issues are deeply rooted…
Proactive engagement around specific management actions or campaigns go a long way towards educating and raising awareness amongst the public. As part of a project supported by Table Mountain Fund, Alison Kock developed a two-week awareness campaign, KnowYourMPA, from 28 Jan to 13 Feb 2021, on SANParks Table Mountain Facebook page. Project funding enabled purchase…
Through working on data management protocols, we have identified some of the most common issues that constrain data longevity to assist everyone involved in data collection and management in avoiding these. Metadata is often not recorded and data points are missing. Metadata is vital for others to interpret and use your data. Missing metadata and…
Peer-reviewed journal publications remain an important metric for robust research and scientific credibility. Although a couple of colleagues had a particularly productive year, with six SANParks colleagues producing five or more papers in 2021/2022, it was a team effort with 38 colleagues producing a total of 64 papers (13 papers as principal author and 51…
We suggest that when it comes to locally sourced conference gear, it’s not just about the bag, it is also the right thing to do. In the “doing”, positive social and economic opportunities are created locally, which we hope in the long run will also have positive impacts on conservation. Facilitating access for local SMMEs…
SANParks Scientific Services played a significant role in 2021/2022 in supervising post-graduate students. Twelve Scientific Services scientists supervised 25 students from 11 institutions during this period. The study topics were as diverse as the institutions represented. The number of students supervised per supervisor, ranged from one to four students. Thirteen were PhD candidates and the…
Our study highlighted areas around Kruger National Park where there are very few (as well as many) ranger staff employed, and we suggest that this should be a consideration when recruiting in the future in order to ensure fair employment opportunities for communities around the park. One of the first questions people ask one another…