Conservation and the Environment in Namibia 2023

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

T H E G R E AT E R E T O S H A C A R N I VO R E PROGRAMME THE STORY OF NAMIBIAN BUSH

TURNING PROBLEMS INTO OPPORTUNITIES

A TRIUMPH FOR

GIRAFFE C O N S E R VAT I O N I N NAMIBIA T H E N YA E N YA E PA N G O L I N P R O J E C T N A M I B I A’ S C L I M AT E

A N D T H E N E E D T O A D A PT T O A N U N C E R TA I N F U T U R E

824,268 km²

CAPITAL: Windhoek

INDEPENDENCE: 21 March 1990

CURRENT PRESIDENT: Hage Geingob

Secular state

Multiparty parliament Democratic Division of power between constitution executive, freedom of religion legislature and

90%

Christian

judiciary

Freedom of the press/media

BIGGEST EMPLOYER:

NATURE RESERVES:

20% of surface area

HIGHEST MOUNTAIN: Brandberg OTHER PROMINENT MOUNTAINS: Spitzkoppe, Moltkeblick, Gamsberg PERENNIAL RIVERS: Orange, Kunene, Okavango, Zambezi and Kwando/Linyanti/Chobe

EPHEMERAL RIVERS:

Numerous, including Fish, Kuiseb, Swakop and Ugab

46%

14

vegetation zones

400 species

Agriculture

of trees

FASTEST-GROWING Information SECTOR: Communication Industry

CURRENCY:

The Namibia Dollar (N$) is fixed to and on par with the SA Rand. The South African Rand is also legal tender.

Foreign currency, international Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Diners Club credit cards are accepted.

TAX AND CUSTOMS

All goods and services are priced to include value-added 15% tax of 15%. Visitors may reclaim VAT.

ENQUIRIES: Ministry of Finance

Tel (+264 61) 23 0773 in Windhoek

TRANSPORT

Public transport is NOT available to all tourist destinations in Namibia.

There are bus services from Windhoek to Swakopmund as well as Cape Town/Johannesburg/Vic Falls.

Namibia’s main railway line runs from the South African border, connecting Windhoek to Swakopmund in the west and Tsumeb in the north.

There is an extensive network of international and regional flights from Windhoek and domestic charters to all destinations.

680 ENDEMIC plant species

Total road network length of 48 537.7 km 8400km bitumen standard | 330km salt roads | 26024km gravel | 13774km earth

HARBOURS:

Walvis Bay, Lüderitz

46 MAIN AIRPORTS: Hosea

airstrips Kutako International Airport,

Eros Airport

RAIL NETWORK: 2,382 km

narrow gauge

TELECOMMUNICATIONS: Direct-dialling facilities

120+

to

100 inhabitants

MOBILE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM: GSM agreements with

221 countries

150 countries / 80 networks

species of lichen LIVING FOSSIL PLANT:

BIG GAME:

Elephant, lion, rhino, buffalo, cheetah, leopard, giraffe

20 250 256 50 699

ROADS:

6.2

Welwitschia mirabilis

FAUNA

MONEY MATTERS

MINING:

Diamonds, uranium, copper, lead, zinc, magnesium, cadmium, arsenic, pyrites, silver, gold, lithium minerals, dimension stones (granite, marble, blue sodalite) and many semiprecious stones

INFRASTRUCTURE

telephone lines per

FLORA

ECONOMY MAIN PRIVATE SECTORS: Mining, Manufacturing, Fishing and Agriculture

ENVIRONMENT

antelope species mammal species (14 endemic)

reptile species frog species bird species

ENDEMIC BIRDS including Herero Chat, Rockrunner, Damara Tern, Monteiro’s Hornbill and Dune Lark

DRINKING WATER Most tap water is purified and safe to drink.

Visitors should exercise caution in rural areas.

INFRASTRUCTURE

SOCIAL

GENERAL

SURFACE AREA:

ON NAMIBIA

PHYSICAL

FAST FACTS

0.4182 medical doctor per

1,000 people

4

privately run hospitals in Windhoek with intensive-care units

Medical practitioners (world standard) 24-hour medical emergency services

POPULATION

2.6 million

DENSITY: 3 per km²

OFFICIAL

461 000 LANGUAGE: inhabitants in Windhoek (15% of total)

ADULT LITERACY RATE:

92%

English

14 regions 13 ethnic cultures 16 languages and dialects POPULATION GROWTH RATE:

1.8%

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS:

over 1,900 schools, various vocational and tertiary institutions

TIME ZONES GMT + 2 hours

ELECTRICITY 220 volts AC, 50hz, with outlets for round three-pin type plugs

www.thisisnamibia.com

FOREIGN REPRESENTATION More than 50 countries have Namibian consular or embassy representation in Windhoek.

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA

2023

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

T H E G R E AT E R E T O S H A C A R N I VO R E PROGRAMME A TRIUMPH FOR

THE STORY OF NAMIBIAN BUSH

GIRAFFE C O N S E R VAT I O N I N NAMIBIA

TURNING PROBLEMS INTO OPPORTUNITIES

T H E N YA E N YA E PA N G O L I N P R O J E C T N A M I B I A’ S C L I M AT E

A N D T H E N E E D T O A D A PT T O A N U N C E R TA I N F U T U R E

PUBLISHING EDITORS Elzanne McCulloch elzanne@venture.com.na Gail Thomson gailsfelines@gmail.com PRODUCTION & LAYOUT Liza Lottering liza@venture.com.na CUSTOMER SERVICE Bonn Nortjé bonn@venture.com.na PRINTERS John Meinert Printing, Windhoek The editorial content of Conservation and the Environment in Namibia is contributed by the Namibia Chamber of Environment, freelance journalists, employees of the Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) and NGOs. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies held by MEFT or the publisher. No part of the magazine may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.

Visit our website by scanning the QR code or visit: www.conservationnamibia.com Conservation and the Environment in Namibia is published by Venture Media in Windhoek, Namibia www.thisisnamibia.com

Tel: +264 81 285 7450, Unit 1, Wasserberg Park, 1 Jan Jonker Road PO Box 21593, Windhoek, Namibia

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

1

Elzanne McCulloch

ABOUT VENTURE Media SHARING STORIES THAT MATTER.

TELL, GROW, SHARE YOUR STORY WITH US IN 2021

That’s our mantra at Venture Media. Sharing stories, information and inspiration to an audience that understand and value why certain things matter.

Why conservation, tourism, people & communities, businesses and ethics matter.

How these elements interrelate and how we can bring about change, contribute to the world and support each other. Whether for an entire nation, an industry, a community, or even just an individual.

We find, explore, discover, teach, showcase and share stories that matter.

www.venture.com.na

or email us at info@venture.com.na for a curated proposal.

In 2021, we're focussing on telling and sharing STORIES THAT MATTER acros our various magazines and digital platforms. Join the journey and share your stories with audiences that understand and value why certain things matter.

Why ethical business, conservation, tourism, people and communities matter

How these elements interrelate and how we can bring about change, contribute to the world and support each other. Whether for an entire nation an industry, a community, or even just an individual.

WWW.VENTURE.COM.NA or email us at info@venture.com.na for a curated proposal

from the PUBLISHER

I

Devoted to our stories and our truths

find myself pondering the delicate balance that needs to be attained in all things while we are producing this latest issue of Conservation and the Environment in Namibia. For us here, in this small yet dynamic corner of southern Africa, the balance is perched precariously on a knife’s edge. Global pressures and local needs leave us in a sort of grey mist of what is right or wrong. This dilemma most often shifts along with the viewpoint. So many of the tried and tested pillars of our conservation model are under attack and ‘wrong’ in the eyes of a global audience. An audience far removed from our day to day realities and thus not the most authoritative voice on the matter. But the problem is that their voice is often so much louder than ours. Their narratives more appealing to a spoonfed mass audience. Their marketing budgets much larger.

Sustainable utilisation is one of the cornerstones of Namibia’s conservation success story. This, alongside our community-based natural resource management systems, has been the key to unlocking a balance of preserving nature and socio-economic development for a small burgeoning nation. So many of our greatest assets for effective conservation and development in fact are misconstrued by the world as negative practices. But this is a world that does not understand the balance. And it is our job to remain staunch in our endeavours, and to educate them.

In a recent interview, for example, environmental scientist Dr Chris Brown explained the global perception of our country’s flourishing biomass and bush control sector. What the world perceives as deforestation is in fact a large-scale landscape restoration project.

Removing massive sweeps of bush encroachment at great economic and ecological benefit for the country.

We should, as a conservation community, be steadfastly focused on ensuring that we are not discouraged or silenced in our efforts to successfully manage our natural resources and environment.

We should also be careful of not falling into the trap of the global narratives and accidentally joining in the mass media narratives.

While sensationalism may garner attention, it often veers away from the essence of our collective mission as advocates of Namibia’s natural treasures. What we truly aim to achieve is the dissemination of stories that resonate with those who understand the intricacies and significance of conservation.

It is both a privilege and an honour to be part of a publication like this one. These pages contain a collection of contributions penned by authors, researchers, scientists and conservationists who remain devoted in their commitment to the cause. These stories, whether they illuminate our successes or our challenges, form an integral part of our nation’s ongoing narrative – a narrative that must be shared, allowing others to learn from and with us.

Learning, appreciation and celebration are the cornerstones of our endeavour. Namibia stands as a unique nation, guided by conservation and environmental policies that chart a course for success.

I extend heartfelt gratitude to the talented contributors and to our cherished readers who not only appreciate these stories but also understand their profound significance. Together, we form a community that values conservation and believes in the power of authentic accounts to drive positive change.

Conservation greetings,

A second example is the ever-present negative bias against hunting, even though our conservation hunting sector is one of the largest contributors to the government’s conservation coffers and one of the least intrusive and destructive land-use models. Hunting secures large areas of land for biodiversity preservation and has minimal and well-managed offtakes providing economic incentives and employment opportunities.

Elzanne McCulloch

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

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ABOUT NAMIBIAN CHAMBER OF ENVIRONMENT The Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE) is a membership-based and -driven umbrella organisation established as a voluntary association under Namibian Common Law to support and promote the interests of the environmental NGO sector and its work. The Members constitute the Council – the highest decision-making organ of the NCE. The Council elects Members to the Executive Committee at an AGM to oversee and give strategic direction to the work of the NCE Secretariat. The Secretariat (staff) of the NCE comprise a CEO and Office Manager. Only the Office Manager is employed full-time. The NCE currently has 63 Full Members – Namibian registered NGOs whose main business, or a significant portion of whose business, comprises involvement in and promotion of environmental matters in Namibia; and 13 Associate Members – individuals running environmental programmes and non-Namibian NGOs likewise involved in local to national environmental matters in Namibia. A list of Members follows. For more information on each Member, their contact details and website link, please go to the NCE website at www.n-c-e.org/members.

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THE NCE HAS FOUR ASPIRATIONAL OBJECTIVES AND FIVE OPERATIONAL OBJECTIVES AS FOLLOWS: Aspirational Objectives • Conserve the natural environment • Protect indigenous biodiversity and endangered species • Promote best environmental practices • Support efforts to prevent and reduce environmental degradation and pollution Operational Objectives • Represent the environmental interests of Members • Act as a consultative forum for Members • Engage with policy- and lawmakers to improve environmental policy and its implementation • Build environmental skills in young Namibians • Support and advise Members on environmental matters and facilitate access to • environmental information

The NCE espouses the following key values: • •

•

• • •

To uphold the fundamental rights and freedoms entrenched in Namibia’s Constitution and laws, including the principles of sustainable use, protection of biodiversity and inter-generational equity; To promote compliance with, uphold and share, environmental best practice, recognising that the Earth’s resources are finite, and that human health and wellbeing are inextricably linked to environmental health; To recognise that environmental best practice is best promoted by implementing the following seven principles: sustainability, polluter pays, precautionary, equity, effectiveness and efficiency, human rights and participation; To develop skills, expertise and passion in young Namibians on environmental issues; To ensure political and ideological neutrality, be evidence-based and counter fake information; and To promote inclusiveness and to fiercely and fearlessly reject any form of discrimination.

TO EFFECTIVELY IMPLEMENT THESE OBJECTIVES AND VALUES, THE NCE HAS DEVELOPED EIGHT STRATEGIC PROGRAMME AREAS: 1. Support to Members

The NCE provides office facilities, boardroom, internet and safe parking for its out-of-town Members when in Windhoek; in partnership with Westair, a Cessna 182 for conservation purposes such as aerial surveys, radio-tracking and anti-poaching work; three 4x4 Toyota Hilux double-cab vehicles for use

by Members for their conservation work; registration and research permit facilitation; and any other support requested by Members.

2. National facilitation

The NCE organises symposia and workshops on topical and priority issues; supports the development of strategic Best Practice Guides at sector level, the first on mining, the second (in preparation) on hunting; reviews policy and legislation on and/or impacting Namibia’s environment; facilitates collaboration on conservation assessments and action plans, the latest being Namibia’s Carnivore Red Data Book; and representing the sector and Members on national bodies.

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

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3. Environmental information

The NCE hosts and supports the development of Namibia’s Environmental Information Service (EIS at www.the-eis.com) in partnership with Paratus Telecom, a one-stop-shop for all environmental information on Namibia. The EIS comprises an e-library with over 26,000 reports, publications, maps, data sets, theses, etc., which are searchable and down-loadable. It provides an Atlasing platform for citizen science data collection that currently covers mammals, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies, invasive alien plants and archaeology, and records are conveniently entered via a free cell phone App. The NCE has also established a free, open access scientific e-journal – Namibian Journal of Environment – now in its seventh year (www.nje.org.na). The NCE and Venture Media recently launched a new environmental website “Conservation Namibia” (www.conservationnamibia.com) to tell Namibia’s conservation stories via blogs, factsheets, video and articles from this magazine. The NCE informs the public on topical environmental issues on its website (www.n-c-e.org), Facebook page, X (Twitter) feed and LinkedIN profile.

4. Environmental advocacy

The NCE addresses national threats to Namibia’s environment and natural resources by first attempting to work constructively with the relevant government or other entity but, if necessary, through public exposure. The NCE has addressed the issue of Chinese incentivised poaching and illegal trade in specially protected wildlife, the overfishing of pilchards in Namibian waters, illegal and unsustainable timber harvesting and export, and the need to reduce and eliminate single-use plastic from Namibia’s environment. It has also initiated a highly successful pangolin reward scheme in partnership with MEFT, some NCE Members and communities. The scheme rewards people for providing information on pangolin trafficking leading to arrests – more than 300 criminal cases opened and over 500 people arrested and charged.

5. Environmental policy research

When we talk about the “environment” we mean the interrelationship of ecological, social and economic aspects – essentially sustainable development. This is appropriate for a country with an economy reliant mainly on natural resource-based primary production where ecological and socio-economic issues are two sides of the same coin. However, this conceptual approach is rarely understood by people from western

6

industrialised countries who think of environment as being just the green environment. To get around this problem, the NCE has established a socio-economic / livelihoods component that works seamlessly with the environmental component and focusses mainly on the urban environment. Over 50% of Namibians now live in towns and the city of Windhoek, with a projected rise to 70% by 2030. The priority areas of focus are access to affordable urban land for housing, appropriate sanitation, solid waste management, energy and research on the economics of poverty.

6. Young Namibian training and mentorship

Over the past six academic years the NCE in partnership with Woodtiger Fund has provided 181 post-graduate bursaries in the broad environmental field (including subjects such as environmental economics, environmental law, environmental engineering) and 52 internships, mainly for NCE bursary-holders, that involves close mentoring by experienced environmental professionals. The aim is to build the capacity and confidence of young Namibians to become the environmental leaders of tomorrow.

7. Fund raising

Core funding for the NCE is currently provided by B2Gold. This means that all additional funding received is invested directly into environmental projects and programmes – there are no overhead costs. The NCE focuses on corporate support and avoids targeting funding sources that may compete with its Members.

The corporate sector assists with fund raising by approaching their clients, partners and networks. Our main sponsors are shown on the back cover.

8. Grants making

Funds raised by the NCE are used strategically to support priority environmental projects and programmes in Namibia. Emphasis is placed on legacy initiatives that have tangible outcomes. These are often based on national policy and bring together government and NGO partners, communities and the private sector, and frequently lead to investments by larger bilateral or multi-lateral funding organisations.

An on-line grant application process allows NCE Members to apply for funding. To date 202 grants have been awarded, to the value of N$ 27.885 million, with 90% going to NCE Members. Some of these projects are showcased in this magazine.

MEMBERS FULL MEMBERS A. Speiser Environmental Consultants cc African Conservation Services cc Africat Foundation Ashby Associates cc Biodiversity Research Centre, NUST (BRC-NUST) Botanical Society of Namibia Brown Hyena Research Project Trust Fund Bwabwata Living Museum Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) Canyon Nature Trust Conservancy Association of Namibia (CANAM) Desert Lion Conservation Trust Development Workshop Namibia (DW-N) Earthlife Namibia Eco Awards Namibia Eco-logic Environmental Management Consultancy cc EduVentures Elephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA) Environmental Assessment Professionals Association of Namibia (EAPAN) Environmental Compliance Consulting (ECC) EnviroScience Felines Communication and Conservation Consultants cc Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) Gobabeb Research and Training Centre Greenspace Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) JARO Consultancy Kwando Carnivore Project LM Environmental Consultants Museums Association of Namibia N/a’an ku sê Foundation Namib Desert Environmental Education Trust (NaDEET) Namibia Biomass Industry Group (N-BiG) Namibia Bird Club Namibia Nature Foundation (NNF) Namibia Professional Hunting Association (NAPHA) Namibia Scientific Society Namibia Archaeological Trust Namibian Association of CBNRM Support Organisations (NACSO)

Namibian Environment and Wildlife Society (NEWS) Namibian Hydrogeological Association NamibRand Nature Reserve Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia (NNDFN) Ocean Conservation Namibia Omba Arts Trust Ongava Game Reserve / Research Centre Orange River-Karoo Conservation Area (ORKCA) Otjikoto Trust Pangolin Conservation and Research Foundation Progress Namibia TAS cc Rare and Endangered Species Trust (REST) Research and Information Services of Namibia (RAISON) Rooikat Trust Save The Rhino Trust (SRT) Scientific Society Swakopmund Seeis Conservancy SLR Environmental Consulting Southern African Institute of Environmental Assessment (SAIEA) SunCycles Namibia Sustainable Solutions Trust Tourism Supporting Conservation Trust (TOSCO) Twin Hills Trust Venture Media

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS Bell, Maria A Black-footed Cat Research Project Namibia Bockmühl, Frank Desert Elephant Conservation Irish, Dr John Kolberg, Herta Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research Lukubwe, Dr Michael S Namibia Animal Rehabilitation, Research and Education Centre (NARREC) Seabirds and Marine Ecosystems Programme Sea Search Research and Conservation (Namibia Dolphin Project) Strohbach, Dr Ben Wild Bird Rescue

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

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Foreword

C

onserving the environment is all about people. How people use natural resources will determine whether those resources are still available for the next generation; how we relate to any given species plays a major role in whether it goes extinct or proliferates. This edition of Conservation and the Environment presents numerous people-centred projects and concepts that go a long way to conserving our natural heritage.

Community rangers that focus on tracking and protecting particular species are coming to the fore as Namibia’s first line of defence against humanwildlife conflict and poaching. The newly established Nyae Nyae Pangolin Project (p.70) is adapting the model of community rangers to protect the world’s most trafficked mammal. Meanwhile, Lion Rangers in the Kunene are using smartphones to track their activities and record their sightings to reduce human-lion conflict (p.68). They also played an important role in the first-ever systematic count of the lion population in their area (p.58).

While lions may be difficult to live with, who doesn’t love giraffe? Two conservancies in the Kunene Region celebrated the return of these elegant beauties on p.20.

The importance of people in conservation goes beyond looking after particular species, however, as our behaviour is closely linked to how we make a living and survive. The Khwe San people in Bwabwata National Park are leaning into their basket weaving traditions to generate environmentallyfriendly and climate resilient incomes for their households (p.56). In this and other parts of the Zambezi Region, farmers are learning to produce more food from less land through sustainable agricultural practices, thus reducing the need for clearing land to plant crops (p.42).

In his thought-provoking article on p.62, John Mendelsohn challenges us to take our concern for people to the next level. He argues that we need to pay more attention to sustainable urbanisation to alleviate the pressure on land and increase prosperity for all Namibians. Urbanisation could also help Namibia adapt to climate change, a phenomenon that is being closely monitored by scientists across southern Africa (read more on p.32). The budding bush biomass industry is one way that Namibia can support sustainable urbanisation, as encroacher bush can be transformed into a source of energy and other products while simultaneously restoring degraded rangelands (explore more options for using bush on p.52).

Education and awareness remain priorities for people-centred conservation, as we only conserve what we care about and understand. The seeds of our behaviour towards the environment are planted at a young age, which is at the heart of the environmental education effort on p.16. Adults also need a strong tug on the heartstrings to start changing our behaviour, and social media provides the vehicle for such messages. Ocean Conservation Namibia has made full use of these platforms to create awareness of plastic pollution by posting their adrenaline-pumping, feel-good seal rescue videos on YouTube and TikTok (p.38).

Conservation at the landscape scale requires people, institutions and nations to work together as a team. This is beautifully demonstrated by the Etosha Carnivore Project on p.46 and the impressive aerial survey for elephants and other wildlife in the Kavango-Zambezi Trans-frontier Conservation Area (p.26). The people behind these projects deserve all the plaudits for their vision and commitment to achieve bigger goals than any individual or institution could achieve on their own.

The 2023 edition of Conservation and the Environment is dedicated to the late Dave Ward, a man who embodied the principle of people-centred conservation. His work supported communal conservancies across the country to monitor their progress through the pioneering Event Book System, while one of his favourite hobbies was contributing to Namibia’s Environmental Information System (p.12). The highly reliable and valuable records he captured and submitted to national and regional Atlases over the years are part of his legacy as one of Namibia’s leading conservationists.

Yours in Conservation,

Chris Brown and Gail Thomson

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

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“Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.”

- Aldo Leopald

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contents

About Venture Media From the Publisher About NCE Foreword

2 3 4 8

Tribute to David Graham Ward - Namibia’s champion citizen scientist Chris Brown, Namibian Chamber of Environment

12

Inspiring action and creating change among rural Namibian primary school learners and their communities Anna Sheehama, Elephant Human Relations Aid

16

A triumph for giraffe conservation in Namibia Giraffe Conservation Foundation

20

The Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier elephant survey Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism and WWF Namibia

26

Namibia’s climate and the need to adapt to an uncertain future Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL)

32

Giving plastic pollution a cute face Ocean Conservation Namibia

38

Conservation starts on a full stomach Vera Corry and Mareike Voigts, Namibia Nature Foundation

42

The Greater Etosha Carnivore Programme Rhys Medcalfe, James Beasley, Madeline Melton and Stephanie Périquet

46

The story of Namibian bush - Turning problems into opportunities Ina Wilkie and Mirja Stoldt, Namibia Nature Foundation

52

Weaving resilience San women are adapting their livelihoods to climate change Siphiwe Lutibezi, WWF Namibia

56

First-ever systematic lion population survey in northwest Namibia John Heydinger and Uakendisa Muzuma

58

Towards healthy environments and decent livelihoods John Mendelsohn

62

SMART Rangers for the conservation of desert-adapted lions Mathilde Brassine

68

The Nyae Nyae Pangolin Project - benefitting people and pangolins Kelsey Prediger, Pangolin Conservation & Research Foundation (PCRF)

70

NCE Supports

76 CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

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TRIBUTE TO DAVID GRAHAM WARD

NAMIBIA’S CHAMPION CITIZEN SCIENTIST 5 OCTOBER 1949 TO 15 JUNE 2023

By Chris Brown – Namibian Chamber of Environment

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For the past 20 years Dave Ward was the backbone of the monitoring system of Namibia’s community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programme, which now covers over 20% of the country. The 86 communal conservancies and two community associations within the CBNRM programme support some 240,000 rural people living in the most remote parts of Namibia. These rural communities manage their wildlife and other natural resources, as well as their wildlife economies (tourism, hunting, crafts, plant products, etc), for the benefit of their people. They appoint community game guards, carry out regular patrols, run coordinated annual wildlife counts, and monitor wildlife and ecosystem parameters under a national standardised Event Book system.

D

ave’s job was to train community game guards to use the system, help run annual game counts, carry out annual audits on the monitoring system, provide refresher training, take annual fixed-point photographs for vegetation monitoring, carry out focussed resource assessments and surveys, check and enter data, and to maintain the whole Event Book monitoring system. This work took him into many poorly studied parts of the country with limited biodiversity data.

Dave’s love of citizen science preceded the first Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP1) when he was a geological field assistant. Like many people in geology, he had a love of nature

which went back to his childhood and school days in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) at Rhodes Estate Preparatory School in the Matopos, Bulawayo, and at Plumtree School on the Botswana border, and holidays and short-term jobs in Botswana, particularly in the Chobe area. Birds were his passion, and he was one of the leading contributors to Namibia’s bird atlas project in the 1970s and 1980s when Namibia brought its data into SABAP1. Dave contributed over 100 atlas cards recording the presence of birds in different quarter degree squares (15 x 15 minute grids), and was in the top 10% of Namibian contributors.

But it was to SABAP2 and Namibia’s biodiversity citizen science programme that Dave made his largest contributions. Over a period of almost 12 years, from 2012 to 2023, he recorded 516 bird species for SABAP2, with a yearly average of 387 species (range: 342-429).

These numbers are impressive when considering that Namibia is a hyper-arid, arid and dry-subhumid country with a total bird list of some 680 species. He averaged about 120 cards per year and covered 314 different pentads (5 x 5 minute grids, see map below).

All except three of his 1,325 submissions were full protocol card.

Dave was the leading contributor to Namibia’s biodiversity citizen science programme with 14,926 records. His focus after birds was on mammals and butterflies, but he made significant contributions also to atlases of reptiles and invasive alien plants. These records were mostly at the monad level (1 x 1 minute grids) and covered an impressive amount of the more remote parts of Namibia, particularly in the central, the north-western and the north-eastern regions.

Number of records and species submitted by Dave Ward to Namibia’s biodiversity citizen science programme: Taxon

Full protocol pentads submitted by Dave Ward under SABAP2 over almost 12 years (2012 to 2023).

No. records

No. species

Mammals

8,514

95

Reptiles

759

241

Amphibians

107

11

Butterflies

4,088

83

907

26

Invasive alien plants

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN NAMIBIA 2023

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Besides the impressive number of records that Dave submitted to the various atlas programmes, the geographical scope and quality of his records stood out from the rest.

He worked in remote areas where few other citizen scientists ventured, and repeatedly visited these areas as part of his work. In 2012 and 2013 about 90% of his SABAP2 pentads were low coverage, many being virgin pentads, where no previous records existed. By 2021 and 2022 he had almost single-handedly brought this down to about 33%. His work in remote areas allowed him to gather more detailed information on some lesser studied species. An example was the data he collected on the status and distribution of oxpeckers in Namibia, which resulted in a scientific publication in the Namibian Journal of Environment where he was the senior author.

His records were scrupulously reliable. He was meticulous in recording information, always handwritten in notebooks, and making sure that all identifications were correct. “You can take Dave’s records to the bank” was the view of atlas administrators. New distribution records from Dave, no matter how far removed from conventional knowledge, were never rejected. To do so would be folly. All follow-ups confirmed the new distributions.

He was also a guiding mentor to young field staff in the CBNRM programme and got them interested and involved in citizen science.

One of Dave’s protégées is now the second-largest contributor to the programme, and another is in sixth place.

Records submitted by Dave Ward to Namibia’s biodiversity citizen science programme from the central and north-western regions of Namibia. The large blue blocks are of sensitive species whose precise locations have been obscured on the map.

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Records submitted by Dave Ward to Namibia’s biodiversity citizen science programme from north-eastern Namibia. The large blue block is of a sensitive species whose precise location has been obscured on the map.

The information from these citizen science programmes is used in research, conservation planning, education, policy development and other related ways. Dave’s records, together with those of all the other citizen scientists, will live on far into the future, helping the country move towards a sustainable future.

Tributes to Dave from his many friends and colleagues include: “His campfire stories were legendary!” “One of the greats in Namibian conservation.” “Our beloved wilderness will be the poorer for his absence.” “His quiet commitment to his work will be a great loss to the conservation world.” “Always unassuming and humble, he was a great friend and mentor – a quiet legend.” “David always made us laugh with his amazing sense of humour and jokes.” “His beautiful heartwarming soul could take the chill off a cold evening.” “He will be deeply missed by all who he touched.”

Go well Dave, and rest assured that your citizen science contributions are of great value to science and conservation, and your dedication and commitment is greatly appreciated, both now and far into the future. You set the bar high and leave a legacy of which you can be justifiably proud.

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INSPIRING ACTION AND CREATING CHANGE AMONG RURAL NAMIBIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL LEARNERS AND THEIR COMMUNITIES

By Anna Sheehama, Elephant Human Relations Aid

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In the heart of the rugged landscapes and untamed beauty of northwestern Namibia an extraordinary initiative has been unfolding, aimed at fostering environmental awareness among rural primary school learners. The Sustainable Environmental Education for Development (SEED) Programme was launched in September 2022 to nurture a sense of curiosity, deepen the connection to nature and redefine how children engage with their natural surroundings.

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he SEED Programme is the latest initiative by Elephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA), a non-profit organisation dedicated to addressing the challenges faced by rural communities living with elephants in the Kunene and Erongo regions in northwestern Namibia. Since its inception in 2003, the organisation’s mission has been to ensure the long-term survival of desert-adapted elephants through a community-based approach that includes education, research, development and physically protecting water points from elephants.

The SEED programme offers a unique 3-day environmental education opportunity for rural learners in grades 5-7 to experience outdoor

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learning. After years of working with schools in this part of rural Namibia, the EHRA team observed that compared with urban schools, many rural schools lack the resources to provide outdoor learning experiences. By offering this programme we hope to bridge that gap and help learners connect with nature and learn about environmental conservation.

During the programme learners are hosted at EHRA’s eco-friendly centre which is situated on the beautiful Ugab River and overlooks stunning mountains. The eco-camp is located in the Erongo Region, 50 km from Uis and 85 km from Khorixas, and provides a peaceful and serene environment, an ideal setting for the learners to absorb the natural world around them.

The course involves hands-on activities such as arts and crafts, and interactive learning experiences such as games, group discussions and nature walks. By immersing learners in nature’s classroom, educators can tap into the boundless wonders and hidden treasures of nature as a source of inspiration for each lesson. The learners embark on a journey that ignites their passion for environmental conservation, fosters a sense of environmental stewardship and empowers them to become advocates for conservation and sustainable development in their communities.

other incredible species that can be found in their surroundings, we instil in them a profound awareness of the importance of protecting their habitats and living in harmony with nature.

The impact of the SEED programme

Beyond the immediate impact on individual learners, the programme seeks to create a ripple effect throughout their communities. The children, armed with newfound knowledge and a sense of agency, become catalysts for change in their schools, families and communities, thus amplifying the impact of our programme.

Since its launch in September 2022, the SEED programme has achieved significant milestones. With the valuable support of the Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE) we aim to reach at least 500 learners from 10 rural schools in the Kunene and Erongo regions by the end of 2024. At the time of writing, over 100 learners and 6 teachers from these regions have been involved in our courses.

Each child receives valuable learning materials to take home, including the illustrated workbooks titled I need the Earth and the Earth needs me.

These workbooks reinforce the environmental messages the children learn during the course, allowing them to continue their learning and reflection at home. This 35-page booklet is designed to educate children on conservation and inspire them to take action to protect the planet.

To ensure that the booklet is both fun and informative, it incorporates visually appealing graphics and interactive elements that cater to different learning styles. These include word-matching games, quizzes, colouring-in pages and fill-in-the-blanks exercises, all designed to engage kids while they learn about various environmental concepts.

The booklet covers a wide range of topics, including climate change, pollution and water and energy conservation. The final page of the booklet presents a pledge, urging kids to think of practical ways to care for their environments. By taking this pledge, children can commit themselves to making a positive impact on the planet and inspiring others to do the same.

The ripple effect

Environmental education holds immense importance for young children, particularly in rural areas, where nature plays a vital role in their daily lives. The Kunene and Erongo regions boast unique and delicate ecosystems that need continuous conservation efforts to safeguard their rich biodiversity. By teaching children about the fascinating local wildlife, such as desert-adapted elephants, majestic lions, graceful gemsbok and

Furthermore, we empower these children with practical skills that have real-life applications. Through engaging activities, they learn waste management, composting, safety measures during encounters with elephants and water conservation techniques, all of which are invaluable in these regions where water is scarce.

To monitor the impact of the SEED programme, we conduct surveys before and after each course to gather feedback and insights from the children. These assessments help us gauge the changes in their knowledge, attitudes and behaviour towards the environment due to their participation in our programme. This in turn enables us to adapt and refine the programme, ensuring that we achieve our desired outcomes and make lasting positive impacts on the children and their communities.

After attending one of our courses, one of the learners told us that the highlight of her time at the camp was learning about elephants and seeing them up close. She was so moved by the encounter that she promised to share the message with her friends and family: “The nicest thing I enjoyed here at the EHRA camp is seeing elephants. I even told myself I will take this message home. I will tell my parents that if elephants come to our house, we must just be quiet.”

SEED provides an opportunity for learners to immerse themselves in nature and gain a deeper understanding of the importance of conservation. Safe but powerful encounters with elephants is just one example of the transformative experiences that learners have at our centre.

The SEED programme is sowing the seeds of change in the form of an inspiring environmental education programme for primary school learners. With continued support and dedication our programme will inspire many generations of young environmentalists and lead us toward a greener, more sustainable future.

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A TRIUMPH FOR GIRAFFE CONSERVATION IN NAMIBIA Reintroducing Angolan giraffe into communal conservancies in the remote northwest

By Giraffe Conservation Foundation

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Watching a journey of giraffes stride off a large translocation truck and make their first tentative steps in their new home is exhilarating and comes with a huge sigh of relief. Moving giraffes is not an easy feat and poses many risks to the animals as well as the people involved.

So, when such a complex mission is completed successfully, it is cause for celebration.

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s part of the long-term community-based conservation efforts in Namibia, four Angolan giraffes (a subspecies of the Southern giraffe that occurs in Southern Africa) donated by the Etosha Heights Private Reserve made the journey to the Ongongo and Otjiu West conservancies in early June. Coordinated by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF), this successful operation brought together public entities, private companies, community-based organisations, non-profit organisations and academic institutions to support the long-term conservation of these majestic creatures on communal lands.

The Ongongo and Otjiu West conservancies cover scenic yet harsh desert landscapes on the upper Hoarusib River. Giraffes disappeared from the area most likely during the severe dry spell

A suitable candidate for translocation is identified and darted from the helicopter.

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of 1980 that coincided with high poaching rates. The members of both conservancies were keen to bring giraffes back to their areas and had submitted a formal request to the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) with the support of Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC).

The translocation was meticulously planned and executed by GCF and its partners as part of a 10-day training programme for African wildlife veterinarians on the Etosha Heights Private Reserve. This annual training course is organised and fully funded by GCF, and implemented in collaboration with the University of Namibia School of Veterinary Medicine.

For the second year, GCF invited young wildlife veterinarians from different African countries to obtain hands-on specialist training in

Loading a giraffe is not an easy task and requires a combination of skill, patience and at times pure strength.

wildlife immobilisation. This year, course participants came from seven countries: the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia. Under the guidance of a handful of Namibian, South African and international wildlife veterinary experts these young doctors had the opportunity of a once-in-a-lifetime training experience.

Giraffe translocations require long-term planning. They are preceded by a comprehensive feasibility study to assess the likely success of an introduction and the giraffes’ contribution to the local ecosystem. This assessment was undertaken by Dr Morgan Hauptfleisch of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), supported

by IRDNC, the Namibian Chamber of Environment and GCF. It included determining the most suitable location for reintroducing the giraffes in these two conservancies. Key considerations were vegetation, water availability, road access, security and local community interest.

Giraffe translocations are high-risk operations because giraffe anatomy does not lend itself to easy transportation, and disaster can easily strike during any stage of the operation. However, with careful planning and experience, potential hazards can be minimised.

After the capture, the giraffe is allowed to find its footing before the loading process begins.

Up at sunrise on the day of the translocation, the team gathered in the field to do one last check of all equipment and vehicles.

The previous afternoon had been spent planning the sequence of events, doing practice runs on the ground and making sure everything was ready for the next day’s operation.

Dr Carl-Heinz Moeller of the African Wildlife Conservation Trust provided crucial support from the air. Not only an excellent helicopter pilot but also an experienced wildlife veterinarian himself, Dr Moeller knows how to identify individuals suitable for translocation and how to get the darting veterinarian into the perfect position to safely immobilise the animal. GCF’s Dr Sara Ferguson was joined in the helicopter by one or two of the young African vets during each capture to show them the ropes, while other trainees were literally shown the ropes that are used by the ground capture team to bring each giraffe safely to the ground.

While the giraffe is on the ground, the team takes numerous measurements for research purposes. This is also a great learning opportunity for the course participants.

Drs Sara Ferguson and Richard Harvey make sure that the giraffe remains calm on her way to the translocation truck.

Once all four giraffe were securely loaded to the truck, their long journey could begin.

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The MEFT Game Capture Unit under the guidance of Dr Janine Sharpe provided expertise and their specialist equipment to physically manoeuvre the long-necked live cargo first into a trailer and then into their large game capture truck for transport. Giraffe capture and translocation is a team effort, and together the team members from MEFT, IRDNC and GCF ensured the successful completion of this arduous task. After the early start, four long-legged giraffes had taken up temporary residence in the truck by lunchtime and were on their way northwest.

After a few minor repairs to the truck en route, the giraffes reached their destination at the border between the Ongongo and Otjiu West conservancies just before midnight. A crucial aspect to successful giraffe translocation is a smooth road for the truck, since any major shaking or hitting ditches can destabilise the precious passengers. Local conservancy members and IRDNC staff accepted the challenge and worked diligently to prepare the dirt road into the rugged and awe-inspiring landscapes by clearing vegetation that had encroached on the track. The truck still had to carefully navigate a few sandy and rather challenging river crossings to get to the destination. The hard work and careful driving paid off to ensure the safe delivery of the giraffes.

After a night in the truck, and with many excited community members in attendance, the giraffes were successfully released into their new habitat, marking a pivotal moment in their conservation journey. It has been many decades since giraffes roamed this part of northwestern Namibia, and the community spontaneously broke into joyous song and

The giraffe were eagerly awaited by members from the local communities.

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dance, excited to witness giraffes returning to their home.

Since the release, the animals have been closely monitored by conservancy game guards. Three giraffes seem to have settled in the lush riparian area near Ongongo village where perennial pools in the river provide ample water, while one has ventured close to the foot of a hill, aptly named Giraffenberg.

This successful translocation stands as a significant milestone in the ongoing efforts to protect and conserve the Angolan giraffe population. The collaborative approach between conservation organisations, academic institutions and government bodies exemplifies the power of collective action in safeguarding Earth’s precious biodiversity.

But this is only the beginning. Many similar operations to return more giraffes to these vast landscapes are in the pipeline. They will contribute to the ecological balance of the region. Their presence in the Ongongo and Otjiu West conservancies serves as a testament to the unwavering dedication and passion of those who share their space with wildlife for the good of the conservation and protection of these magnificent animals. By working together, we can ensure that future generations will have the privilege of witnessing the grace and beauty of these iconic creatures in their natural habitats.

A giraffe’s first few strides into its new home.

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THE KAVANGO-ZAMBEZI TRANSFRONTIER

ELEPHANT SURVEY

By Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism and WWF Namibia

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The first flight to begin an elephant survey covering parts of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe took off from a dirt strip in Zimbabwe on 22 August 2022. The survey area, known as the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), hosts over half of Africa’s savanna elephants, which underlines the importance of the survey.

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lmost a year later, after careful analysis and peer overview, the results of the survey were shared by the KAZA member states. The elephant population for the region was estimated to be a staggering 227,900 and confirmed numbers from previous counts held in each of the five countries. The survey also showed that populations were growing in some countries and declining in others, but remained stable over the whole region.

Previously, regional elephant surveys have aggregated results from separate surveys. The KAZA survey was the first to use a coordinated and synchronised flight plan that follows aerial survey standards developed by MIKE (Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants) under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora).

Coordinating the elephant survey across borders was challenging, but worth it: “The KAZA-wide elephant survey brought the five partner countries together. It demonstrated the need for us to work together and to learn together. It reinforced the rationale of why we value the Kavango-Zambezi TFCA,” Kenneth /Uiseb, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Environment Forestry and Tourism said.

The survey was conducted from August to October 2022 during the dry season when most trees are bare, thus maximising visibility. It

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covered 60% of the KAZA TFCA’s 520,000 km² and focused on areas in the landscape where elephants are known to occur. Pilots and observers flew 67,000 kilometres of transects, nearly twice the circumference of our globe.

Dr Russell Taylor, the transboundary conservation planning advisor from WWF Namibia, who has been flying in this region for decades, commented on the importance of synchronised flights for establishing strong baselines and increasing our understanding of elephant cross-border movements and dynamics. He had already stressed this need at a meeting of the KAZA Conservation Working Group held in Calais, Angola, in 2011: “We knew that an aerial survey would help to identify gaps in our knowledge of the area, and allow us to safely survey areas that had been land mined during Angola’s civil war. Twelve years later, for me this survey was an aspiration come true.” /Uiseb added that without collaboration it would have been impossible to pull off such a complex survey. “Donors provided the funding, partner countries gave the necessary permissions and civil aviation authorities approved the aircraft used in the survey to fly in all the different countries. The people who participated were nominated by partner countries and needed training, so the survey team used this opportunity for capacity building,” he said.

Elephant numbers in KAZA and Namibia

Country

KAZA Survey

2016 AESR

Angola

5,983

3,395

Botswana

131,909

129,939

Namibia

21,090

19,549

Zambia

3,840

6,688

65,028

57,398

Zimbabwe Total

227,900 (±16,743)

The results of the coordinated KAZA elephant survey in 2022 compared with surveys held in 2014-15 for the same area, as shown in the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) African Elephant Specialist Report (2016 AESR).

Estimates of the other large wild herbivores seen during the KAZA TFCA aerial survey.

Botswana accounted for 58% of the elephant population, Zimbabwe for 29%, Namibia for 9%, and the remaining 4% of elephants were found in Zambia and Angola combined. The surveyors also found an estimated 26,641 (±1,645) elephant carcasses, or 10.47% of the live elephant population. This suggests a high level of mortality, which warrants further investigation as a potential warning sign for the health and stability of the elephant population.

Namibia’s Zambezi Region has been described as the sword that cuts through KAZA, or as the key that unlocks its full potential. This pivotal landscape links the KAZA countries and provides the corridors for wildlife to move from one country to another. Namibia’s total land contribution to the KAZA TFCA includes parts of Kavango East and the Zambezi Region (12,345 (±2,519) elephants), as well as Khaudum National Park and the Nyae Nyae Conservancy (8,745 (±3,009) elephants).

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Spatial distribution of live elephants (bulls and family herds) and livestock observations in the KAZA TFCA survey area during the 2022 survey, overlaid on a human settlement density map created from the Open Buildings dataset (Sirko et al, 2021).

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Mapping human activities and wildlife

The KAZA survey team maximised the opportunity provided by the elephant survey to count as many other large animals as they could see, including livestock. “We have identified wildlife corridors based on their utilisation with data mainly from collared elephants’ movements. This survey provides us with another layer of information,” /Uiseb said. “It gives us a snapshot of how the elephants and other wildlife are distributed, a view of communities and their activities, and how settlements and livestock are distributed.” Decision makers can use this information for conservation planning and for working with the local communities to create space that can be used by wildlife without affecting livestock farming.

The size of the domestic livestock herd in the surveyed area was estimated at 736,426, of which 73% were cattle and 24% sheep and goats. When combining the number of elephants and all other large herbivores counted, the ratio is 1.16 wild herbivores per domestic animal. The survey also pinpointed human settlements and mapped the distribution of livestock and wildlife (see map).

Making the counts count for conservation and sustainable development

All five partner states will use the results of the survey as a source of information when implementing the Strategic Planning Framework for the Conservation and Management of Elephants in the KAZA TFCA. This framework aims “to ensure the longterm survival of the species, with the vision that KAZA’s elephant population is conserved for the benefit of both people and nature within a diverse and productive landscape.”

Ongoing monitoring and research will play a vital role in assessing the conservation status of elephants in the KAZA TFCA. By continuously evaluating population trends, addressing key threats and promoting sustainable conservation practices, the partner countries and stakeholders can work towards ensuring the longterm survival of the species.

One result that warrants further investigation is the overall carcass ratio of 10.47%. “Several factors are likely contributing to the somewhat elevated mortality we’re observing,” KAZA Elephant Survey coordinator Darren Potgieter said. “Factors such as ageing populations, improved sampling methodologies, disease, environmental conditions and poaching could all be at play here.”

Looking forward, /Uiseb noted, “The landscape is changing. We are experiencing climate change, an increase in human population, an increase in livestock, an increase in elephants, and a lot of investment in conservation and community development. All this is taking place in a concentrated area, so you need to understand through repeated surveys the relationship between wildlife and livestock to see which of the two is increasing in number and what this increase means for the other.”

Surveys allow us to build information bases that can be used in future research and to make predictions, model populations, create early warning systems and predict the impact of climate change on this dynamic system. The KAZA partner countries are committed to keep monitoring and conserving the elephants and wildlife in this, the largest trans-frontier conservation area on earth.

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Namibia’s climate and the need to adapt to an uncertain future Text and graphics by Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL)

Historically, Namibia has been a country trapped by, and vulnerable to, a highly erratic rainfall regime. Therefore, the questions Will it rain? and Will there be grazing? affect the well-being of most of Namibia’s population and have a direct impact on the country’s fledgling economy.

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Scientists from SASSCAL’s Open Access Data Centre and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform inspect the Windhoek NBRI Automatic Weather Station.

When is a rainy season normal?

In Namibia, as in most of southern Africa, the hydrological year runs from October to the end of September of the following year. No significant rainfall is expected from June to September.

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he threat of drought is a real and ever-present phenomenon in Namibia. Water security relies mainly on dams or the precious and finite resource of groundwater. The majority of the population lives in northern Namibia and is largely dependent on rain-fed subsistence farming. Namibia’s agricultural pride, its culture of pristine open-range livestock farming, is also dependent on the whims of the rainfall regime.

Therefore, in the spring of 2022, farmers and governments of southern Africa rejoiced when various regional and international meteorological services predicted normal to above-normal rainfall for most of southern Africa, including Namibia, in the 2022/23 rainy season. However, the current season has once again highlighted Namibia’s vulnerability to unpredictable rainfall. Contrary to the hopeful forecasts, Namibia and most of the southern African region experienced the second-poorest rainfall since 1981/82. Only the 2018/19 season has been worse.

In addition to this uncertain and precarious reliance on the rainy season, Namibia has woken up to a new reality, where climate science warns of a statistically likely future of a more erratic rainfall regime exacerbated by a warmer climate. Climate research has already established warmer temperatures as the new reality. In Namibia, for example, the past 13 years have seen the best and the worst rainy seasons in over 40 years.

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To understand what normal rainfall is, one needs historical rainfall data. Due to Namibia’s erratic rainfall regime, a sufficiently long historical record of rainfall data is required to define normal. In statistical terms, normal is not synonymous with average: the former is derived from 30 years of rainfall (precipitation) data and the latter from 10 years.

How do we monitor rainy seasons?

Data is the most challenging aspect of climate science. Sufficient and scientifically sound data is essential if climate scientists are to attempt to predict the climate of the future. Both the length of the historical record available to us and the spatial distribution of the meteorological stations affect our understanding of the trends and variability of a rainfall regime. For instance, not having enough stations around the famous Maize Triangle between Otavi, Grootfontein and Tsumeb would mean that the higher rainfall associated with this microclimate would not be captured accurately.

Namibia’s rainfall record is inadequate both in terms of the spatial distribution of weather stations and the period over which these stations have been active. Recognising this gap, the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL), with support from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), has funded the installation of 64 Automatic Weather Stations (AWSs) in Namibia and a further 100 stations in Angola, Botswana, South Africa and Zambia since 2010. This valuable resource serves scientists, farmers and the general public (see text box for a list of links to each of the portals mentioned here).

To obtain a comprehensive picture of rainfall in southern Africa over extended periods of time, it is essential to go beyond the limited data available from rain gauges and weather stations on the ground.

SASSCAL uses the Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) dataset, which spans more than 40 years. Developed by the Climate Hazards Center, CHIRPS expertly combines precipitation estimates from ground-based gauges, including the SASSCAL WeatherNet stations, with precipitation data from satellites. Satellites, equipped with advanced instruments designed to measure atmospheric conditions, use this information to generate precipitation data. The data is updated monthly and is freely available.

Various precipitation data products derived from CHIRPS 2.0, including maps and datasets, as well as other satellite-based datasets and products such as land surface temperature, burned areas and vegetation indices are available free of charge on the SASSCAL Data and Information Portal.

Back to the 2022/23 rainy season

A simple comparison of the total rainfall of the 2022/23 season with the historical average season total shows that for most of Namibia, the total rainfall for the 2022/23 rainy season was considerably less than the historical average.

Comparison of the total rainfall of the 2022/23 season with the historical season average total rainfall (1981/82 to 2021/22).

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The Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) for the 2022/23 rainy season (Oct 2022 to Jun 2023).

However, as average rainfall is quite variable in different parts of Namibia, it is difficult to put the deviations in millimetres of rainfall into context.

Meteorological indicators allow us to assess seasonal rainfall and determine whether a season can be classified as normal, dry or wet. For instance, expressing the season’s total rainfall as a percentage of the historical average rainfall total allows us to classify a season as normal, above normal or below normal.

For the 2022/23 season, the map of the percentage of the season’s total rainfall suggests that most of the country had below average rainfall.

Similarly, the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) is an indicator proposed by the World Meteorological Organisation that is also used to objectively assess whether a rainy season was normal, good or bad.

More importantly for Namibia, the SPI is relevant to objectively conclude if a rainy season can be classified as a drought year, by comparing it with the available historical record. The SPI for the 2022/23 rainy season suggests that much of Namibia was moderately to severely dry, with Kavango West and Zambezi being extremely dry during the 2022/23 season.

Comparing the average annual rainfall total for the 2022/23 season to date with the average annual rainfall in the previous 41 years suggests that, on average, all regions of Namibia have received substantially less rainfall than could be expected according to the preceding 41 years.

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Comparing the average annual rainfall total for the 2022/23 season to date with the average annual rainfall in the previous 41 years suggests that, on average, all regions of Namibia have received substantially less rainfall than could be expected according to the preceding 41 years.

How does SASSCAL support climate research and adaptation?

SASSCAL, under the leadership of its Executive Director, Dr Jane Olwoch, has launched its new research programme (SASSCAL 2.0) to help prepare the southern African region for the impending consequences of climate change. Notably, Namibia features prominently, being included in nine out of the thirteen research projects. A collective of regional and global scientists will pool their expertise to devise tangible, impactful and sustainable solutions to the climate-induced challenges that threaten Namibia’s food and water security.

At the launch of the SASSCAL 2.0 Research Programme in April 2023, Professor Francois Engelbrecht, a climate change scientist at Wits University, reminded the research community that “Our science has to be better than ever before!”. Research needs to be trans-disciplinary and trans-boundary. Researchers must work together to ensure that the southern African region can identify the risks of climate change, ensure the much-needed awareness and the necessary preparedness for events such as droughts and floods.

The SASSCAL 2.0 research portfolio is fully collaborative and transdisciplinary to ensure realistic, effective and sustainable solutions

Links to SASSCAL Data Portals

SASSCAL WeatherNet Portal: sasscalweathernet.org SASSCAL Data and Information Portal: data.sasscal.org

to Namibia’s food and water security challenges. Among other goals, the research promises to provide more reliable and highresolution climate projections, identify more resilient crops that can withstand the whims of an erratic climate and identify sustainable and alternative land use practices. SASSCAL further aims to provide solutions to scarce water resources, and amongst others, identify methods of ensuring rangeland health.

SASSCAL 2.0 will support academic and non-academic capacity development to further ensure climate change adaptation and sustainable land management. At least 60 Bachelor, 60 Master and 25 PhD students will be facilitated, thus contributing to a knowledgebased society in southern Africa.

SASSCAL strives to ensure that its contribution to research on climate change and adaptive land management as well as to capacity development will help bolster Namibia against the effect of a hotter and possibly more erratic climate.

About SASSCAL

The Regional Secretariat of SASSCAL resides in Windhoek, Namibia.

SASSCAL has National Nodes in each of its member countries – Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia. For more information see www.sasscal.org. For more information on SASSCAL’s research portfolio visit: www.sasscal.org/sasscal-ii-research-portfolio/.

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GIVING PLASTIC POLLUTION A CUTE FACE

By Ocean Conservation Namibia

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Seals are popularly known as the dogs of the sea. This is because seals and dogs are physically similar and therefore classed in the same carnivore sub-order called Caniformes (meaning dog-like). Even their behaviour is similar, as seals are known to be playful and intelligent. Not surprisingly, humans can easily relate to seals as the marine version of man’s best friend.

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ur interest in seals took on a new dimension when Namibian kayaking guide Naude Dreyer filmed himself freeing a Cape fur seal entangled in a fishing line in 2013. Sharing footage of this rescue mission and many subsequent ones on social media generated thousands of views per video and a following of over three million viewers on YouTube and TikTok combined. People around the world watch in admiration while Naude and his team wrestle seals to the ground just to cut them loose and let them go.

Each video is quite simple: a seal is spotted with a piece of plastic or other man-made object biting into its body like a snare. Naude or one of his team members takes off after the seal and catches it with a net or his hands (in early videos), then sets it free by cutting off whatever caused the problem. Even though some of the wounds left by these “snares of the sea” are deep, it is likely that they heal quickly when exposed to the salty seawater.

Entangled seals point to a bigger problem Most Namibians will know that the Cape fur seal is abundant along the coast and increasing in numbers. With an estimated one million individuals in a range that includes Namibia, South Africa and Angola, it is not surprising that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List assessed this species as Least Concern.

Rescuing seals that would otherwise die a slow and painful death from man-made waste is a noble animal welfare activity, but Naude and his

wife Katja see a bigger conservation picture that goes beyond seals. In their words, “seals give plastic pollution a cute face”.

Something about the simple act of rescuing an animal in distress touches the human psyche and makes us care more about our environment. This human trait, combined with the power of social media, allowed Naude and Katja to create a new non-profit organisation called Ocean Conservation Namibia (OCN). Launched during the tourism shutdown caused by Covid-19 in 2020, OCN is dedicated to saving seals and highlighting the much bigger problem of plastic pollution.

Every piece of plastic we throw out on the road, or put in an ordinary dustbin rather than a recycling bin, ends up in landfill sites around our towns and cities, or is simply blown across Namibia by the wind.

In the end, much of this waste is washed out to sea by rivers coming down and emptying their load of water, soil and plastic into the ocean.

Plastic from every country in the world has entered the ocean this way, accumulating as massive “garbage patches” that cause huge ecological damage and are almost impossible to clean up.

More direct forms of pollution involve industries operating in the ocean or along the coast. Commercial fisheries use longlines or nets for trawling, but not all of this equipment is brought back onto the boat. When fishing lines get tangled they may be cut loose, or nets break under too much pressure. This makes lines and nets one of the biggest sources of marine pollution.

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The ocean is so vast that when we drop something into it we may feel that our impact is insignificant. But the collective impact of human activity on the ocean is massive. The seals rescued by OCN give us an idea of the scale of the problem along Namibia’s seemingly pristine desert coastline, all of which is formally protected.

Seals as a barometer of plastic pollution Since Naude started rescuing seals, which began with occasional operations during his regular kayak tours in 2013, and intensified with the establishment of OCN in 2020, he and his team have rescued over 3,500 individuals. The OCN team only works out of Walvis Bay and has government permission to rescue seals from the Pelican Point colony, with occasional trips to Cape Cross. OCN estimates that their operations cover only 10-20% of Namibia’s seal population. Extrapolating OCN’s rescue data, we are looking at some 15-30,000 entangled seals along Namibia’s coastline in just a few years.

However, seals have a big advantage over most other marine animals because they frequently come ashore to rest in conspicuous colonies where people can see them. What we do not see is the number of sea turtles, dolphins, birds and other species that get entangled or ingest plastic and die agonising deaths because no one was around to rescue them. When we extrapolate this to the rest of the world, we begin to realise that the problem of ocean pollution is monumental – too big to wrap our heads around, which is why we have been so slow to do something about it.

Working towards a solution This year’s announcement to ban single-use plastic bags by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) is a step in the right direction. Single-use plastics are flimsy and over time tend to break down into so-called micro-plastics – fragments of plastic so tiny that we eat and drink them without realising. Marine animals also eat this plastic, which causes unknown numbers of deaths. MEFT should therefore be congratulated for this decision that will hopefully reduce plastic waste in Namibia. While this is a victory in the fight against plastic pollution, much more needs to be done.

Single-use plastics are a relatively small problem when it comes to animal entanglements. According to OCN’s statistics from 2021 and 2022, fishing lines and nets are the main culprits, causing 48-52% of entanglements, followed by other plastics (36-42%) and non-plastic materials (10-12%, e.g. bits of metal or cloth).

Globally, an estimated 16.3 million kilometres of fishing line and 78,447 km2 of fishing net are lost at sea each year. Clearly, this problem cannot be solved without addressing the waste generated by the fishing industry.

Reducing the environmental impact of the fishing industry is certainly possible, as evidenced by the massive reduction of seabird bycatch in Namibian fisheries in recent years. The OCN team believes that two key approaches need to be followed

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to tackle the plastic problem: create broader awareness among fishermen and introduce laws or accreditation to reduce line and net losses at sea. A final option that may become viable in the future is the development and use of biodegradable nets and lines.

The second option would involve working with the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources and the Marine Stewardship Council, which certifies Namibian fish for the lucrative export market. The Albatross Task Force’s efforts to reduce bird bycatch have already set an example. Finding practical ways to retrieve lost nets or fishing line balls will require close cooperation with fishing companies operating along the Namibian coast. Although these efforts will benefit a vast number of marine species in addition to seals, OCN’s statistics on seal entanglement will provide a good measure of progress over time.

Until then, OCN will continue to rescue seals and raise much-needed awareness of the problem of plastic pollution. Pending approval from MEFT, OCN hopes to access more remote colonies and save more seals from entanglement in the future. Seals may be common, but they do not deserve to die a slow and painful death. Just as people remove wire snares to save animals on land, freeing seals from their man-made burdens is simply the humane thing to do.

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Anderson Yanda in her food circle in Masambo Village.

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Conservation starts on a

full stomach Improving agricultural practices in communal conservancies Text by Vera Corry and Mareike Voigts, Namibia Nature Foundation Images by Marcus Westberg

It is early morning in Malengalenga Village in the Zambezi Region. Kazi Kumukwake, a lead farmer in the Dzoti Conservancy, and her older brother are on their way to her twohectare plot to harvest beans, watermelon and pumpkins. She also grows maize and sorghum, which will be harvested in a few weeks. Despite the erratic rainfall this season, her plot has yielded enough to meet her own household’s needs and a surplus that will be sold to others in her community.

K

azi is part of a long-term training programme, the Multiplier Support Programme (MSP), where she learnt about organic agricultural practices such as mulching and improving soil quality through compost application. Kazi uses her income from selling fresh produce to support her mother, two brothers and two sons. During the drier winter months, Kazi focuses her efforts on her backyard garden (known as a “food circle”) where she grows carrots, beetroot, tomatoes and spinach among fruit trees such as guava, mango and papaya. Kazi also owns six head of cattle, which are integrated into her farming system by supplying manure and transporting reeds, grass and poles.

Farming and conservation in Namibia’s communal conservancies

An estimated 9% of Namibians live in communal conservancies. These were established by communities wanting to conserve and use their natural resources sustainably. In conservancies, wildlife-based industries such as tourism and hunting play a vital role for creating jobs and generating income for community benefits and development projects.

However, the majority of community members in these areas are also farmers who plant crops and raise livestock for food, to earn extra income from selling surplus produce, and for traditional purposes.

Namibia’s communal conservancies thus provide an ideal testing ground to show how conservation and agriculture can complement, rather than contradict, each other.

Combining conservation and agriculture is counter-intuitive for some, since the agricultural sector is one of the main drivers of biodiversity

loss, land degradation, human-wildlife conflict and climate change worldwide. The combination of practices such as tilling or ploughing, fossil fuel use in agricultural systems, using synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and the mass production of livestock in feedlots accounted for 18% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Few people realise that agriculture could be part of the solution to these challenges, if practices change to working with ecological processes to grow food whilst avoiding land degradation and biodiversity loss.

Sustainable agriculture is an umbrella term for several environmentally friendly agricultural approaches: conservation agriculture, organic agriculture and agroecology. Conservation agriculture focuses on three main principles: minimum tillage to reduce soil disturbance, permanent organic soil cover and diversification of crop species. Organic agriculture aims to enrich the soil using natural forms of fertiliser (e.g. compost, cow manure and urine) and integrated pest control systems rather than ecologically harmful chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Agroecological practices expand on these concepts by capitalising on the unique socioeconomic and ecological context where each farm operates to adapt the production system to its environment.

In Namibia’s northern regions the sandy soils are inherently deficient in organic matter. That has a direct impact on water holding capacity, nutrient availability and microbial life. This in turn reduces agricultural productivity, leading to lower-than-expected yields that farmers try to compensate for by shifting cultivation every few years and clearing more land. Sustainable agriculture aims to increase soil fertility over time, leading to increased production on the same land. This is

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Tanaka Muradzikwa

A densely planted food circle, as developed by the Kambashu Institute, allows for a diverse crop of vegetables for household consumption with minimal water requirements.

Tanaka Muradzikwa

Phillip Gammo and Anderson Yanda prepare a liquid manure fertiliser. especially important in communal conservancies, where communities set aside potential farmland for wildlife to allow tourism to develop and provide alternative livelihoods. Reducing the amount of land needed for agriculture thus reduces competition between these two important sectors.

The Namibia Nature Foundation (NNF), which supports communal conservancies in several parts of the country and has over a decade of experience in agricultural projects, established its Sustainable Agriculture Programme in 2020 to expand its work in this area. This programme focuses on communal conservancies in the Kavango and Zambezi regions, since local communities living there rely heavily on crop and livestock farming for their food security.

Promoting sustainable agriculture through local capacity building

Despite the benefits of sustainable agriculture in terms of improving productivity, decreasing costs of agricultural inputs (e.g. fertiliser) and reducing the need for land, uptake of these practices remains slow.

This is likely attributable to the lack of information available to the communities on these practices, which leads to misconceptions and subsequent resistance to change. Overcoming this challenge is central to NNF’s work in this region.

One common misperception is that organic agriculture is defined by what it is not: i.e. ‘not using chemical inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides’. Since subsistence or small-scale farmers usually do not use such inputs because they cannot afford them, some believe that they are organic farmers by default. The fact that these farms often produce lower yields than commercial farms that use chemical inputs is seen as ‘evidence’ that organic farming leads to reduced yields. Instead, organic farming involves replacing chemical inputs

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Celebrating the Multiplier Support Programme graduation in August 2023 in Katima Mulilo with natural ones that can be just as effective in the short term and even better in the long term.

While conventional agriculture is input-intensive, sustainable agricultural practices are knowledge-intensive. This gap in knowledge can be addressed by bringing in experts or trainers from elsewhere in Namibia, but this is a costly undertaking due to travel distances involved. Training is thus reduced to once-off workshops with limited follow-up training sessions and no long-term mentorship. Furthermore, external trainers cannot always fully relate to local conditions and constraints. Since farming is an on-going learning process that involves unexpected challenges and environmental changes, continued information exchange and mentoring by people who farm in the same area is essential.

To address this issue, NNF has adopted the Multiplier Support Programme, a new model of promoting sustainable agricultural practices. The programme trains active community members with experience and a keen interest in farming who show a willingness and aptitude to share their knowledge with peers.

These local champions are first provided with intensive training on sustainable agriculture to give them an in-depth and holistic understanding of these concepts. Next, they are taught how to design and select relevant training content for farmers in their area, deliver it effectively, and plan logistics and administration for training events. Once trained, they are known as Community Extension Officers (CEOs). CEOs are more than just lead farmers: they are independent consultants who can offer their services to other local farmers and partner organisations.

Using sustainable agriculture to address other conservation challenges

Human-wildlife conflict is rife in the Zambezi and Kavango regions, with

A Community Extension Officer’s training and experience

Phinny Muyoba lives in Kena Village in the Zambezi Region where she has a small plot of land with her husband. Phinny was invited to join the Multiplier Support Programme (MSP) in 2022, a programme implemented by the NNF under the Knowledge Hub on Organic Agriculture in Southern Africa (KHSA). KHSA is part of the continent-wide Knowledge Centre for Organic Agriculture (KCOA), designed to support multipliers through capacity building, creating networks and disseminating knowledge and information on organic agriculture and agroecology.

Phinny Muyoba and her daughter.

In Namibia the MSP focuses specifically on personal growth and ‘’farming with nature’’. By the end of August 2023, Phinny and her fellow multipliers had undergone six three-day training sessions. During this time, Phinny was mentored to improve her own farming practices and thus grow her capacity to share information and become a mentor in her community.

Living soil - soil life is transforming organic matter into nutrients available to plants. crop fields being raided by elephants, buffaloes and other herbivores, while livestock are killed or injured by predators. An agroecological approach to farming reduces conflict with herbivores that cause crop damage by respecting existing wildlife corridors and not farming in those particular areas, thereby promoting coexistence. Conflict with predators can be reduced by keeping livestock overnight in enclosures known as “kraals”. The natural fertiliser produced in kraals in the form of animal manure and urine can be used on crop fields and in gardens.

Manure is deposited in any kraal, but the nutrients break down if exposed to sun and rain, which is the norm in open-topped kraals. By putting up a roof over part of the kraal that attracts animals to its shade and protects the manure and urine deposited there, farmers can create a ‘’deep litter system’’. The shaded area is carpeted with dry organic matter (e.g. grass) or kitchen waste that binds nitrogen and other volatile nutrients, and is ready for collection and composting before being used as natural fertiliser.

The Kwando Carnivore Project has been assisting farmers in this area with erecting mobile kraals using shade net. Not only has it successfully reduced predation on livestock, but by moving these kraals over crop fields (every 10 days to four weeks depending on the size and number of cattle) the manure is also deposited where it is needed. Yields on fields where mobile kraals were used have increased by 100-300% when compared to other fields. This effect can last for up to five years.

Another conservation challenge in this area is deforestation.

Agroecological approaches reduce deforestation by incorporating trees into gardens and crop fields and by increasing productivity, thus reducing the need for clearing more land. Another benefit is water conservation, since less water is required on smaller fields where mulch and compost reduces the rate of evaporation. Reliable access to water

Phinny has also participated in nutrition training offered by the Nutrition and Food Security Alliance of Namibia (NAFSAN) and GIZ-Farming for Resilience (F4R). Nutrition plays a key role in ensuring food security and health by promoting a diverse diet, often presented as ‘rainbow’ plates: meals that consist of an array of colours from types of food that farmers can grow themselves.

This training allows CEOs and other NNF field staff to include information on nutrition in their day-to-day training, outreach and mentoring work that covers organic agricultural practices.

is a problem for farmers who do not have boreholes and must therefore pay for water piped by Namwater. These farmers often run into debt by not paying water bills.

An integrated and collaborative approach

The NNF and Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) are jointly implementing a project together with the Kyaramacan Association that represents communities living in Bwabwata National Park. The project focuses on food security and habitat protection, whereby small-scale and subsistence farmers are introduced to sustainable agriculture approaches and are mentored by local CEOs. In partnership with the Kambashu Institute, which previously focused on communities in the informal settlements around Windhoek, farmers in Bwabwata have been trained on the concept of ‘’food circles’’ in small backyards. A hole for composting material is dug in the middle of a circle of vegetables such as spinach, peppers, pumpkins, carrots and sweet potatoes, with fruit trees planted in a larger circle around the vegetables. Ideally, this circle is placed close to a house where grey water from the kitchen can be used for watering the compost and plants in a way that prevents contamination of the edible parts of plants.

This water-efficient system provides fresh nutritious vegetables at the household level, thus improving food security.

Since agriculture is central to the well-being and food security of any community, collaboration between organisations, individuals and government is key to ensuring that agricultural practices align with the overall needs and values of community members. Organic agriculture and agroecology are not only relevant for communities living within conservancies. Any farmer can adopt this approach, whether operating at large or small scales, thus benefiting future generations by looking after and protecting the land and natural resources that exist today.

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THE GREATER ETOSHA CARNIVORE PROGRAMME

Studying and conserving carnivores in a changing world

By Rhys Medcalfe, James Beasley, Madeline Melton and Stephanie Périquet Images by Stephanie Périquet

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S. Periquet

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S. Periquet

As human population growth continues, climate change accelerates and natural habitats shrink, carnivores and many other species are increasingly threatened. As a result, only 36% of terrestrial habitats host the same set of carnivore species today as they did in the past and some species have lost up to 93% of their historical range. Large carnivore species are often the first to be eradicated from an area because of the threat they pose to human livelihoods through the loss of livestock. Yet these species fill the important role of apex predators, which influence the behaviour and numbers of herbivores that in turn affect plant diversity and ecosystem health.

W

hile protecting African carnivores is imperative for maintaining healthy ecosystems, these species can also generate economic benefits through tourism. Charismatic carnivores are flagship species for tourism, which contributed over N$3 trillion (US$150 billion) to Africa’s economy in 2022. Despite their economic and ecological significance, many African carnivores remain understudied, demonstrating a critical need for research addressing key questions to enhance our understanding of their ecology, population dynamics and human-carnivore interactions to implement science-based management.

Etosha National Park and the surrounding human-dominated landscape is an intricate, complex system that raises interesting research questions which, if answered, could be applied to other areas in Namibia, across Africa, and globally. The park itself is characterised by a strong rainfall gradient ranging from 300 mm/year in the west to 550 mm/year in the east. While water is available year-round at natural and artificial waterholes, this rainfall gradient creates

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pronounced differences in vegetation, which leads to differences in wildlife communities, abundance and movement patterns throughout the park. The landscape around Etosha (here defined as being within a 40 km radius of the park boundary) includes towns, communal lands and conservancies, private game reserves, livestock and game farms.

We call this area the Greater Etosha Landscape (GEL).

Etosha has been completely fenced since 1973, although parts of the fence were erected as early as 1963. Fences are a common feature of protected areas throughout southern Africa. They limit largescale animal movements across the landscape beyond Etosha, which has affected animal populations and distributions within the park.

However, the numerous holes and breaks in the perimeter fence allow movement of wild and domestic animals between Etosha and neighbouring lands, leading to human-wildlife conflict, particularly when carnivores cross the fence. The human-carnivore relationships in this landscape are especially complicated, as some view carnivores as an opportunity for ecotourism while others see them as a threat to their livelihoods.

While the human population and its impacts are ever increasing, African large carnivore populations and their ranges are plummeting.

The Greater Etosha Landscape (GEL): a complex landscape composed of a mosaic of land uses and ownership. Note the division above and below the veterinary cordon fence or red line.

This figure is reproduced from a publication Africa’s Drylands in A Changing World: Challenges for Wildlife Conservation Under Climate and Land-use Changes in the Greater Etosha Landscape Wendy C. Turner, Stéphanie Périquet, Claire E. Goelst, Kimberlie B. Vera, Elissa Z. Cameron, Kathleen A. Alexander, Jerrold L. Belant, Claudine C. Cloete, Pierre du Preez, Wayne M. Getz, Robyn S. Hetem, Pauline L. Kamath, Marthin K. Kasaona, Monique Mackenzie, John Mendelsohn, John K.E. Mfune, Jeff R. Muntifering, Ruben Portas, H. Ann Scott, W. Maartin Strauss, Wilferd Versfeld, Bettina Wachter, George Wittemyer, J. Werner Kilian. Global Ecology and Conservation 2022 https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2022.e02221

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The Greater Etosha Carnivore Programme

The conservation of species and their natural habitats can only be achieved through understanding their ecology and science-based management. Recognising this, the Etosha Ecological Institute and Ongava Research Centre established the Greater Etosha Carnivore Programme (GECP) in 2020 with the overarching goal of identifying and quantifying factors driving carnivore distribution and abundance in the GEL. The GECP aims to establish a long-term, collaborative partnership of researchers conducting comprehensive social and ecological studies to facilitate the conservation of the entire carnivore guild at the landscape scale. This programme currently includes partners such as the Ministry of the Environment, Forestry, and Tourism, the University of Georgia (USA), the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Germany), the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), the Namibia University of Science and Technology, the University of Namibia (UNAM) and the Namibian Lion Trust. Our diverse group hails from multiple scientific disciplines. Where we have exchanged ideas and pooled data and resources to develop a comprehensive, holistic research programme that seeks to match the complexity of our focal landscape and the diversity of its carnivores. For example, some of our projects will focus on particular carnivore species and study their behaviour, genetics, diseases and ecological relationships. Others will concentrate on the complexity of predator-prey relationships in this diverse landscape and on human-carnivore interactions beyond the park boundary, looking for ways to promote coexistence.

Results from the first two years of the GECP

We started our research by collating scientific papers, book chapters and reports on carnivore research conducted in and around Etosha in the past century to find out what was already known and to identify areas that lacked research. We reviewed 139 sources and discovered that most previous research was conducted inside Etosha, on large charismatic species and predominantly focused on single-species ecology. Topics such as genetics, disease, smaller carnivores, what happens when carnivores leave the park, and interactions among carnivore species were largely under-studied.

To start filling in the knowledge gaps revealed by our literature review and synthesis, we began developing and implementing studies on carnivores throughout the GEL. One of the GECP’s first research projects estimated the leopard population in Ongava Game Reserve, a private reserve on Etosha’s southern border.

Combining data from GPS collars and camera trap images collected over three years, we found that about a third of the leopards on the reserve were residents with established territories, while the rest appeared to be just moving through (i.e. transient). This raised new questions about the transient part of the population that we seek to answer in coming years.

The GEL harbours a diverse community of carnivores, 13 of which we aim to study under the GECP.

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Another GECP study focused on the fence-crossing behaviour of large carnivores in Etosha. Fences are used worldwide as a management and conservation tool in an attempt to separate wildlife and human activities from each other and thus reduce conflict. However, little is known about the effects of fences on movement behaviour and where and when animals cross them.

Using existing GPS data from collars deployed on lions and spotted hyaenas in and around Etosha, our research team found that hyaenas were twice as likely as lions to cross the fence. Spotted hyaenas also moved in a straighter line in the vicinity of the fence,

UGA/GECP

and abundance in the park, record wildlife interactions with the Etosha fence and reveal aspects of ecology for carnivores that are not intensively monitored using collars.

A graphical summary of the findings from our study on the effects of the Etosha fence on lion (represented in blue) and spotted hyaena (in yellow) movement and behaviour. indicating they were heading for known gaps or holes to enter and exit the park. Another observation that was less straightforward to explain was that most lion crossings occurred in the cold-dry season, whilst spotted hyaenas primarily crossed the fence in the wet season.

Understanding what drives these movements is key to developing strategies for reducing conflict between humans and these two very different large carnivore species.

Where are we heading?

These research projects are just the start of our long-term plans for the GECP. We have recently deployed GPS collars on more lions and spotted hyaenas with accelerometers that will measure movement, speed and direction in great detail, and audio loggers to record sounds in the immediate vicinity of the collared animal, including its own vocalisations. Veterinary students from UNAM participated in capturing and immobilising these animals as part of their practical training.

The detailed information produced by these collars will help us to understand their spatial and social ecology, communication, interactions within each species and between species, impact of tourism, effects of darting and chemical immobilisation, and human-wildlife conflicts.

To identify factors influencing human-wildlife conflict, we also deployed GPS ear tags on livestock on communal lands and conservancies outside Etosha. However, focusing solely on the animal side of this equation is not enough to understand the full scope of conflict, so we are also conducting interviews with community members outside the park to better understand the socio-economic context in which they live, their local animal husbandry practices and the conflict mitigation measures they use.

Besides using collars, we have established multiple extensive remote camera surveys using trail cameras (or camera traps) that trigger when they detect movement or heat changes (i.e. when an animal walks past). The results will provide baseline estimates of prey distribution

Other projects focus on carnivore health, using faecal and blood samples from carnivores to study their diets, intestinal microbiome communities and diseases. Finally, we are developing additional projects to estimate the population and distribution of both large carnivores and smaller, less-researched species in Etosha. These projects will provide a wealth of information in the coming years that will aid in the conservation and management of carnivores and other wildlife in the GEL. Our research under the GECP is also providing multiple training opportunities for the next generation of wildlife ecologists through employing Namibian and international students and technicians to conduct research. The students and senior researchers will benefit from the diverse insights and perspectives brought together by this multi-national and multi-disciplinary group. Our research is expanding in scope and scale and will continue for many years, serving as a flagship programme for carnivore conservation and promoting human-carnivore coexistence for generations to come. We hope that our results and findings will be beneficial within the GEL as well as nationally and worldwide. The challenges faced in this landscape are representative of those faced by protected areas and adjacent lands across the globe.

Publications

The research projects conducted during the first two years of the GECP were published in the following scientific journal articles, which are available on the internet and free to read.

1. Weise F. J., J. W. Kilian, S. Periquet. 2021. Of Teeth and Claws: Taking stock of Carnivore Research in the Greater Etosha Landscape. Namibian Journal of the Environment 5:12-24. https://nje.org.na/index.php/nje/article/view/ volume5-weise 2. Periquet S., S. Crawford, S. Nahalo, S. Stratford, K. Stratford. 2022. At Home or Passing Through? Leopard Population and Spatial Ecology on a Private Game Reserve.

Namibian Journal of the Environment 6:78-91. https://nje. org.na/index.php/nje/article/view/volume6-periquet 3. Naha D., S. Periquet, J. W. Kilian, C. A. Kupferman, T. Hoth-Hanssen, J. C. Beasley. 2023. Fencing Affects Movement Patterns of Two Large Carnivores in Southern Africa. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 11: https://doi. org/10.3389/fevo.2023.1031321.

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A research team setting up a transect on a farm near Tsumeb.

The story of

Namibian bush Turning problems into opportunities

By Ina Wilkie and Mirja Stoldt, Namibia Nature Foundation 52

An estimated 45 million hectares of Namibia are considered ‘bush encroached’: local bush species have turned once open savannah into thicket. Bush encroachment reduces grass growth, biodiversity and the water-holding capacity of the land, posing a problem for farming and conservation alike. Counter-intuitively, the bush also provides a huge opportunity – farmers looking to restore their rangelands can generate economic returns by joining the dynamic bush biomass industry.

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iomass is organic matter that can be used as a source of energy or fuel. Its uses also extend to animal feed or natural soil fertiliser. Namibia’s bush-encroached rangelands host an estimated 1.5 billion tonnes of standing woody biomass, of which an estimated 30% could be harvested sustainably.

These estimates do not consider the annual expansion in bushencroached areas or the regrowth in harvested areas. Regrowth of woody biomass is estimated at more than 10 million tonnes annually.

Only two million tonnes of biomass are currently removed per year, mainly for charcoal and firewood.

have been fighting bush to bring back grasses to their rangeland. It is a complicated, complex and often costly struggle. Sickle bush and blackthorn are particularly aggressive. “You need to handle these species very carefully and definitely need aftercare,” says researcher Richard Kamukuenjandje. Without aftercare, the regrowth can be aggressive and worsen the original problem over a much shorter period of time. Tapping into the biomass industry can facilitate restoration of degraded land by increasing farming income streams and allowing for improved rangeland management to take place. This will consequently create more jobs, especially in rural areas.

Much more bush can be harvested in Namibia without depleting the resource, while at the same time helping to regenerate rangelands and improve their productivity. For decades, farmers

Recognising this opportunity, private stakeholders are buying into the bush business, and government agencies are providing support for this new industry. Michael Humavindu, Deputy Executive Director in

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the Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade, says that Namibia now sees the ‘bush problem’ in a more positive light. “It is an enabler bush: for industrialisation, for job creation, for environmental sustainability and also to ensure that we have an ecological carbon sink.”

As Chris Brown from the Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE) explains: “Bush biomass is carbon neutral when managed sustainably. That gives us a very strong competitive advantage in terms of current global energy requirements. Eurocentric rangeland management practices have resulted in this bush encroachment.

What we are focusing on now is restoring rangelands to their predamaged condition.”

In terms of development, it is strategically significant that “biomass is intrinsically decentralised,” as Colin Lindeque, Managing Director of Carbon Capital, puts it. “We need to ensure that people do not lose all economic opportunities in the rural areas. Our urban areas cannot sustain the entire Namibian population. The biomass industry has a critical role to play in the economic development of the country,” Lindeque says.

Namibian researchers, conservationists, government ministries and private sector interests such as those quoted above are interested in exploring how we can expand the biomass industry in Namibia while maintaining the highest standards of environmental sustainability and social responsibility. Namibia Nature Foundation and NCE have created the National Dialogue Platform on Bush Resources to take these conversations further and raise broader awareness of the potential of the biomass industry to drive sustainable development.

Some of the key questions the Dialogue Platform tackles include: how can we maximise the economic returns from our biomass? How do we regulate this new industry and maintain standards? How do we market our biomass to the world as a win-win for the environment and development? How can we go beyond primary production and use biomass to create more value?

Maximising returns through exports Considering the huge amount of biomass available for harvest, Namibia’s domestic market is tiny and local buying power is generally insufficient to support the biomass industry on its own. Furthermore, in most cases, higher prices can be realised on export markets. “It’s important for us to get the best value possible for our resources and sometimes export markets allow that,” Colin Lindeque points out.

Export markets not only realise higher prices, they often also demand high ecological and social standards from producers. European consumers are especially concerned that the products they purchase must be produced as sustainably and as ethically as possible, for which they are prepared to pay a premium. Standards such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for charcoal, for example, raise the bar in harvesting practice and socioeconomic responsibility in Namibia and help set Namibian charcoal apart from other less sustainable alternatives.

Namibia’s certified area has boomed over the past years, mostly through FSC certification. Namibia became the first country in Africa to obtain an FSC Group Chain of Custody certificate, with 11 different organisations certified. The group scheme provides local processors with an opportunity to join the FSC value chain at an affordable cost.

Consequently, FSC certification in Namibia has grown by over 500% in the past four years. In 2022, 1.8 million hectares of land in Namibia were FSC certified.

Beyond firewood and charcoal: opportunities to expand the market The main use of Namibian bush is currently charcoal and firewood.

Some farmers are using bush as animal feed. Biomass experts are now identifying a “next generation of products”.

One of the most promising ideas for both local and export markets is to use biomass to generate electricity in power plants that are

Researcher Richard Kamukuenjandje (left) with farmer Jefta Mbunga Tjamuaha who raises Brahman cattle on a communal leasehold property near Okondjatu in the Okakarara District. His efforts in bush control have brought back savannah grassland on his farm.

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Ndeshi Ndapulamo, a graduate in environmental biology, with a colleague in the field. The researchers want to find out more about the impact of bush encroachment, bush control and grazing management on Soil Organic Carbon.

Experts at the Dialogue Platform hosted by Namibia Nature Foundation: host Kirsty Watermeyer, Michael Humavindu (Deputy Executive Director in the Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade), Chris Brown (Namibian Chamber of Environment), Colin Lindeque (Managing Director Carbon Capital).

designed for this kind of fuel, rather than using fossil fuels. “I think we have an opportunity to revolutionise and modernise our energy sector locally,” Colin Lindeque points out. “50% of Namibians still rely on firewood as their primary energy source and that’s something we need to change.” NamPower, Namibia’s national power utility, is planning to generate 40 MW of electricity with bush-based biomass. Smaller-scale technologies could support decentralised electrification. Some of the large industrial energy users in the country have also made the switch from fossil fuels to renewable biomass for thermal energy.

Research and communication are needed to grow the industry

A project known as SteamBioAfrica, funded with an EU grant, uses superheated steam to upgrade bush biomass into a more coal-like alternative that is cleaner-burning and easier to process, handle and store than raw biomass. The resulting torrefied (superheated) biofuel can be used as a renewable coal alternative, a clean-burning domestic fuel alternative or an intermediary product for the further production of synthetic liquid fuels. The demonstration plant is located at the Cheetah Conservation Fund’s Biomass Technology Demonstration Centre and will be used to further test and refine the technology before it is launched commercially.

Sequestering carbon in the soil is seen as a way to mitigate global climate change by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Small increases of soil organic carbon over very large areas will significantly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. To learn more about the impact of bush control and biomass utilisation on carbon levels, research institutions are working with industry, civil society and government to refine the Namibian soil research methodology and set up a farmer research network.

Another biomass product with multiple possible uses is known as biochar. It is a form of charcoal produced by burning biomass at extremely high temperatures, usually in an oxygen-free environment. Biochar must meet specific chemical requirements in order to be called biochar. Soil structure and productivity can be improved by biochar when following best practices. The addition of a stable carbon into soil also creates opportunities for generating carbon credits. Namibia generally has poor soils and little rainfall. Enriching agricultural soils with properly prepared biochar is expected to increase agricultural productivity as well as food security for marginalised subsistence farmers. Biochar also has applications for soil remediation, water treatment and absorption of pollutants, and can therefore play an important role in the local mining and water sectors.

Developers in Namibia are looking into producing alternative building materials by combining the recycling and biomass sectors. Wood-plastic composites using bush biomass and recycled plastics make durable, high value materials for the construction industry. Industry leaders and researchers are still adding to these new ideas and testing production methods and markets to find profitable ways of using bush biomass.

More research is needed to fully explore the potential of harvesting bush to restore rangelands, capture carbon and conserve biodiversity. “Currently, we don’t have scientific consensus on whether bush harvesting decreases or increases soil organic carbon,” says Evert Strydom, Programme Director at the Perivoli Rangeland Institute.

While Namibian stakeholders are positive about the biomass industry because they understand the issue of bush encroachment, external stakeholders who are not familiar with the Namibian situation may see it as deforestation or environmental degradation. “The one constraint that we do have is that not everyone everywhere understands this,” says Chris Brown. “That is one of our challenges, to get information out to the world to explain that this is actually a rangeland restoration project, not a deforestation project. When people hear about bush being cut, they automatically assume that we are involved in deforestation.

To get the message across, that this is actually rangeland restoration, not deforestation, is quite a difficult thing.”

The bush biomass industry is only just beginning in Namibia and it will take many different sectors of society to realise its full potential. Ultimately, Namibia is looking for a ‘triple win’ situation where rangelands are restored to improve agricultural productivity, biodiversity is conserved and green energy production encouraged, and the rural economy is developed to create jobs and business opportunities for entrepreneurs. Over time, the bush thickets that dominate the central areas of Namibia will be viewed as an economic opportunity rather than just an ecological problem.

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WEAVING RESILIENCE San women are adapting their livelihoods to climate change

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By Siphiwe Lutibezi, WWF Namibia

amibia is famous for its desert landscapes. Visitors may therefore be surprised when they encounter the lush green Zambezi Region, cradled in the confluence of the Kwando, Zambezi and Chobe rivers. This relatively wet part of the country is not immune to climate change, however. The negative effect of this global phenomenon is felt most keenly by the local communities who rely on natural resources for income and sustenance.

The Khwe and !Xun people are indigenous San communities who live in the 6,274km2 Bwabwata National Park, which straddles the Zambezi and Kavango East regions. When the park was established, the resident San communities retained their right to remain on the land, but their traditional lifestyle of hunting and gathering was restricted. While the Kyaramacan Association, formed by the community, allows them to co-manage their natural resources with the park authority, community members must abide by hunting regulations and park rules.

the park, but other options for earning income are scarce. Climate change leading to crop failure, reduced forage for livestock, a decrease in wild fruits and limited water availability, is adding to these social and economic challenges.

Today, most families in Bwabwata rely on subsistence farming and government aid with limited access to employment and other income-generating activities. Kyaramacan provides employment for 64 people and generates benefits through hunting concessions in

Our team conducted 43 interviews in six villages in the park to explore how the respondents’ livelihoods have been affected by the weather and climate. Most respondents (77%) reported decreased crop production and less wild fruit due to decreasing rainfall, hotter temperatures,

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To understand the magnitude of these impacts on the Khwe community, WWF Namibia started the Climate Crowd initiative, a bottom-up, community-driven initiative that helps people and nature thrive in a changing climate. Its aim is to work with communities and local nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to collect and analyse data on local climate impacts. The results are presented to the relevant communities.

Based on this shared information, we work together to develop, fund and implement solutions relating to water security, climate-smart agriculture, alternative resilient livelihoods, protecting and restoring forests and adapting to a changing climate.

prolonged droughts and population growth straining existing resources.

They struggle with hunger, poverty, food insecurity and loss of income as yields and the availability of wild fruit decline.

About one third (35%) of respondents reported a decline in the availability of firewood due to population increase, decreased rainfall, prolonged drought and changes in wind patterns. A similar number (33%) also noted that less pasture is available, resulting in poor livestock health. These changes make subsistence farming and other activities that rely on natural resources increasingly precarious. As a result, about 30% of respondents have turned to other ways of earning an income.

Selling crafts and honey, and building traditional homes were among the ways of generating cash to pay for food and other necessities. Families also rely on child social grants.

Access to water is a significant issue for the Khwe. Several villages have to do without water for days during prolonged overcast conditions that reduce the efficiency of solar pumps which supply community waterpoints. Natural streams and ponds no longer hold as much water as they once did, increasing the reliance on pumped water. Two villages lack access to potable water, as the water pumped from boreholes has an extremely high iron content.

People in these villages rely on rain for freshwater or they have to fetch water from neighbouring villages during the dry season. This is particularly difficult for the elderly. They explained that drinking the contaminated water from their village boreholes causes diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases, and stains their teeth and clothing.

for ourselves but now we have started selling them to survive,” one of the weavers said.

Basket weaving is a traditional craft that has proven to be resilient over time and could therefore reduce the impacts of climate change. WWF Namibia, through the Climate Crowd project, provided funding for Omba Arts to conduct a nine-day basket-weaving training workshop in December 2022. Sixteen women from three villages in Bwabwata National Park (Kachenge, Tonxei and Omega 3, which was a good representation of the Khwe community) participated in the workshop.

Participants were divided into three groups – older weavers (including those with impaired eyesight), inexperienced weavers and experienced weavers who wanted to experiment with new shapes and designs – to ensure that everyone could work at their own level. The women learned the warp and weft technique and created both traditional and new styles of baskets. Every weaver completed at least one basket, while some completed a second one or started working on it.

Beyond the artistic and practical aspects of weaving, the workshop addressed marketing, pricing and quality assessment. The women thus gained self-confidence and hope for financial sustainability in the future.

Their products, woven with palm leaves and coloured with forest plant dyes, reflect their surroundings and culture. All the materials used in making the baskets are collected from the nearby forest. Basket weaving provides a long-term sustainable source of income which is eco-friendly and will help make the community more resilient to the changes in weather and climate that affect other livelihood options.

Listening to community members as they describe the realities of their lives is critical, but it is only the first step. The next step is to work towards solutions that will help make a difference. Omba Arts Trust has been marketing Khwe baskets for many years, primarily from Masambo Village in Bwabwata where high-quality products are produced. However, due to anti-poaching teams limiting the weavers’ access to palm trees, basket production ceased for a few years. Now the anti-poaching team is working with the Kyramacan Association to help the weavers get their weaving materials.

The partnership between WWF, the Omba Arts Trust and the Khwe communities has also facilitated market access, turning local creativity into a global commodity. For a start, all baskets that were produced in the workshop were purchased right away. In future, WWF-US will offer baskets woven by the Khwe women in their online gift centre and holiday gift catalogue. This illustrates WWF’s role in connecting people, who live and work in critical conservation areas, with support from people a world away.

Omba Arts, IRDNC (Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation) and the Kyaramacan Association reached an informal agreement in November 2021 whereby Omba purchases baskets that are produced by the communities with support from the other two organisations. “In the past, we used to weave baskets and keep them

The story of Khwe women weaving baskets isn’t just about craft: it is about embracing change with innovation. It is about nurturing traditions while adapting to the demands of a changing world. As the palm leaves intertwine, so do the lives of the Khwe women, bound by the threads of sustainability, empowerment and the future that they are weaving.

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FIRST-EVER SYSTEMATIC

LION POPULATION SURVEY IN NORTHWEST NAMIBIA

By John Heydinger and Uakendisa Muzuma

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The lions of Namibia’s Kunene Region are sought after by tourists, but they are a local threat to livestock farming, and are still largely unresearched in terms of their ecology and ranging behaviour.

Though lions in Kunene have been monitored for more than twenty years, it may come as a surprise that the population has not been systematically counted throughout its range – until now. It is less surprising when one realises that the lion range in Kunene covers more than 51,000 km2 of mountainous desert landscape. Counting any cryptic species in this huge area is no easy task, and it took a massive team effort of nine weeks to finally produce an accurate estimate of 57-60 adult lions.

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rom 6 November 2022 to 6 January 2023, four teams of 45 trained surveyors traversed thousands of kilometres of communal and government-managed land in the Kunene Region to find and individually identify all free-ranging adult lions in the area. The team included staff from Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT), in partnership with the Lion Rangers, the Namibian Lion Trust and field staff from Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC). This survey will provide decision makers with baseline information for management, set a standard for future surveys and strengthen support for community-centred lion conservation on communal land.

The population survey was designed by researchers in consultation with MEFT staff and drew heavily on the expertise of the Lion Rangers and other local conservationists. The survey focused on an area of 41,000 km2 of the historical 51,000 km2 due to recent reductions in lion range primarily caused by the effects of drought and ongoing human-lion conflict. This area, known as the core lion range, encompasses eleven communal conservancies (Anabeb, Doro !Nawas, Ehi-rovipuka, ǂKhoadi-ǁHoas, Omatendeka, Orupupa, Puros, Sesfontein, Sorris Sorris, Torra, and Tsiseb), three tourism concessions (Etendeka, Hobatere and Palmwag) and the Skeleton Coast National Park from the Hoarusib River in the north to the Huab River in the south. The survey covered all accessible lion habitats in this core range.

Drawing on the local ecological knowledge of the Lion Rangers and MEFT regional staff, four teams moved across the landscape using routes roughly parallel to each other from north to south. The teams started around the Hoarusib River in the Puros Conservancy and ended in the Ugab River course which forms the boundary between the Kunene and Erongo regions. From there the teams turned eastward and moved up the escarpment to the western border of Etosha National Park. Throughout the survey teams relied heavily on movement data from collared lions to ensure that all areas where lions are known to roam were covered. Currently, there are 47 working GPS/ satellite collars fitted to lions across Kunene.

Each time a team found lions, they attempted to uniquely identify each adult lion by its whisker-spot patterns. These spots, visible below a lion’s whiskers on both sides of its face, have been shown to be unique to each individual in small to medium-sized populations, and they remain unchanged throughout a lion’s adult life. Using high-powered

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An identity card like this one was produced for each lion, showing the pattern of whisker spots on both sides of the face. The way in which the top row of spots (Row A) aligns with the second row (Row B) is unique enough to identify each lion in the Kunene population. zoom lenses and digital cameras, the survey teams captured highquality photos of both sides of the face of 54 of 57 adult lions that clearly showed their whisker-spot patterns. The remaining three could not be photographed closely enough due to the presence of small cubs, but they were individually identified on video, which was confirmed through extensive monitoring. The resulting high-quality photos, along with available life history of each individual, are being used to create individual identification cards for each lion. These ID cards are disseminated to Lion Rangers and researchers, so stakeholders can better monitor lions in their areas.

After careful analysis of the data collected by all ground teams, the final estimate came to 57-60 adult lions, plus 14 cubs under one year of age. While we counted 57 lions, given our sampling effort and preexisting knowledge of lions in the area, we are aware that a further three lions may exist – as no deaths have been confirmed for these

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known individuals. Our estimate is approximately 45-60% lower than previous estimates. Those estimates, however, were based primarily on expert opinion.

At 0.11 lions/100 km2, lion density in Kunene is the lowest recorded for stable, free-ranging lion populations in Africa. This is to be expected given that arid and semi-arid environments support fewer prey animals than wetter parts of the continent. Lions are not uniformly distributed across the landscape. No lions were found in the southern survey area which covered the Doro !Nawas, Sorris Sorris and Tsiseb conservancies, and no lions were found in Skeleton Coast National Park south of the Huab River, although lions were previously known to reside in those areas. Follow-up monitoring around the Ugab River and Brandberg mountain confirm the absence of lions there – but a small group may exist near the Doros Crater.

Continued monitoring is focusing on this area.

A crucial finding is that the lion population appears to be healthy and has stabilised after the apparent recent decline. This assessment is based not solely on the number of individuals, but also on the relatively good physical condition of all individuals identified, as well as on the sex ratio of the population (36 females to 21 males, or 1:0.58) and the number of cubs. This small lion population may be healthy, but it still faces several threats to its long-term survival which must be addressed continuously.

Human-lion conflict remains the primary driver of adult lion mortality in Kunene. Recently completed social surveys among communal residents indicate low levels of tolerance for living with lions. The relative youth of males within the population (10 of 21 were estimated below five years of age) points to the possibility that many will not reach full adulthood: in Kunene as many as 50% of male lions die before six years of age. Finally, declines in available prey over the past decade due to a severe drought lasting several years mirror declines in the lion population. Continuous monitoring of the lion population as well as increased monitoring of prey species is needed to determine possible management interventions.

Looking forward, follow-up population surveys and monitoring will continue to improve our collective understanding of the northwestern lion population. Cautious management is required, given the precarious state of this population of lions that lives entirely in arid and semi-arid areas alongside farmers. The region’s declining prey base is cause for concern. Further research and conservation action are needed to promote the recovery of these species, for the benefit of people and lions. Improving local tolerance for living with lions to limit human-lion conflict is essential. Namibia’s tourism industry can play a role in this by contributing to rural livelihoods, showing that high levels of international interest in Namibia’s lions can bring benefits to the Namibians living alongside them.

The Kunene lion survey team comprising MEFT officials and Lion Rangers.

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Towards healthy environments and decent livelihoods

By John Mendelsohn

Two big challenges afflict Namibia: poverty and environmental degradation. Both problems are largely concentrated in rural areas where most people are poor, and where considerable areas have been stripped of woodland and forest by shifting agriculture and overgrazing. In Namibia the problems are interlinked in many areas, and across the world these challenges receive much attention, for example to end poverty via the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and commitments to counter the effects of climate change. At COP26 held in Glasgow in 2021, world leaders agreed thus: “We commit to working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation.”

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Helge Denker

Most large herds of cattle and flocks of goats and sheep in communal areas, such as these cattle crossing a pan in Oshana, belong to wealthy people who make a living in urban areas. The majority of livestock in areas with traditionally agropastoral economies, such as in northeastern and central-northern Namibia, serve as capital to be used or sold to meet the costs of emergencies and investments.

By contrast, livestock in other communal areas in Namibia, where pastoral economies have prevailed, are also often sold to generate recurring income.

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John Mendelsohn

A crop of pearl millet (mahangu), in part failed due to poor soil in the foreground that holds little water and few nutrients. The fundamental importance of soils must be emphasised over and over so that their defining influences are well understood.

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wo questions about these problems: what are their causes, and how can they be addressed?

Answers are offered by a few fundamental features that make Namibia what it is. Most telling is the poor quality of soil, which limits yields of our main cereals – millet (mahangu), sorghum and maize. Together with Botswana, Namibia has the lowest yields in Africa, and this is the main reason why both countries have small populations, as does much of the continent. Soil quality is the major determinant of rural wellbeing simply because food production and nutrition have such strong effects on the health, wealth and survival of people. In Namibia most soils are variously hampered by their shallowness, limited water-holding capacity, low organic content, poor structure, or low content of different nutrients. Rectifying these deficiencies is very expensive, and only possible if farmers reap high returns from harvests to make their costly investments worthwhile. Similar circumstances prevail in large areas of Africa where soils are poor, crop yields are low, malnutrition and poverty is rife and populations are small.

Poor soil fertility is also the primary cause of shifting agriculture and therefore land degradation. Crops soon deplete the limited supplies

of soil nutrients, compelling farmers to clear new fields every few years. Great swathes of wooded and forested land on poor soils have been decimated for these reasons across Africa. For example, in the 15 years before 2015, shifting agriculture led to the loss of 363,000 square kilometres of woodland and forest in sub-Saharan Africa. That is close to half the size of Namibia. In this country, about 100 million trees had been killed by shifting agriculture by the year 2000, and some three million more trees are lost in the same way each year.

Cleared land takes decades to recover, again because of the poor quality of its soil.

Three other factors often jeopardise yields in Namibia: high rates of water loss due to evaporation and transpiration, inadequate or irregular rainfall, and diseases and pests. Even with good yields, options for earning income are often limited because markets where surpluses can be sold are unreliable, offer low prices or are hard to reach, and because long histories of failed harvests and famine mean that prudent families are reluctant to sell surpluses. Productive – let alone profitable – farming is not easy where environmental conditions are so tough. Farming also requires hard work. That and other investments are only worth making if the returns and incentives are attractive.

Proportions of land cleared in Zambezi in 1996 and 2018, from the Atlas of Namibia.

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Compared with other areas of central-northern Namibia, very little land had been cleared until 1991 around pans and drainage lines in the Okongo area of Ohangwena (top), but thousands of fields had been cleared and many abandoned by 2023 (bottom). Zoom in to this area in Google Earth and use its historical images to see the changes in detail. The LandSat 4 and 8 images shown here were downloaded from https://apps.sentinel-hub.com.

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While food insecurity and malnutrition have been constraints for centuries, most Namibians are now also tormented by another limitation: income insecurity. This is a severe impediment of the 20th and 21st century. If you think otherwise, run this experiment: leave all your money and debit cards at home for a week. Without income, people don’t have clothes, transport, or the means to communicate over distances, or to buy soap, candles, salt, supplementary food, or medicines. Income deficiencies retard access to education, job opportunities, housing, energy, sanitation, information, contacts, ideas and social status. These are essentials, not luxuries. For many Namibians being without money is a long-term endurance, not a brief experiment.

Few of us will grasp how living in a shack in town is preferable to life in the village, especially when we haven’t spent time in rural homes where access to money is usually very, very limited. True, some rural households have incomes from remittances, pensions or jobs in schools, farms, lodges and shops. These incomes free them from dependence on local soils and other resources. However, the only option for most people – and all young people wishing to get ahead – is to leave for a town or city where a decent future is possible. As the saying goes ‘money makes the world go round’. In Namibia, too.

How can these challenges be addressed?

Many people living in the communal areas of Namibia could – and should – be better off, and the same should be true for many woodlands and forests. While land degradation is also a challenge on freehold land and

resettlement farms, this article focuses on communal lands because of the high number of people affected.

As obvious as it may be, a first step is to achieve political agreement on the need to foster the development of decent livelihoods. Patronising assumptions that rural Africans prefer to live in the bush, that food security is their main need, that they are ignorant and don’t need capital, that livestock are simple commodities for sale and that Africans are farmers by nature, must be abandoned.

Firm distinctions are needed between programmes that aim to develop Namibia and those that seek to alleviate poverty. Do government and donor programmes place emphasis on the promotion of food or financial security, the reduction of poverty or creation of wealth, the development of the formal or the informal economy, the stimulation of rural or urban development, or on the development of resilience or dependence, for example?

Truthfulness is vital. It is misleading to suggest to people living in remote areas on poor soil that they will have decent livelihoods once we upgrade their water and sanitation systems, build them a school or clinic, or teach them better ways of farming! At best, poverty will be perpetuated, perhaps with slightly less discomfort. Worse is the propagation of poverty if promises of improved livelihoods in depauperate areas are believed. Of course such people need all the help they can get. But the help should then be charitable, preferably through social grants that provide essential income, and it should be progressive

John Mendelsohn

There are quite a number of inspiring examples of peri-urban horticultural farms producing food profitably near Namibian towns. Important lessons are to be learnt from these enterprises which can be copied and multiplied, not least because profits cultivate both skills and incentives to increase production. Cabbages, tomatoes, onions and other vegetables are grown at Salem just east of Rundu – a great example of what can work.

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in offering people and their children viable opportunities to fully escape poverty. The goals of development assistance must be clear and realistic, not vague or founded on false hopes.

Government and donor programmes that seek to deliver development need to be directed to fertile ground where food and financial security go hand in hand. It serves little purpose to invest in areas where incremental increases in crop yields just might provide farmers with a 10 or 20% gain over their current income, when what they currently receive is so meagre. A boost from N$2,000 to N$2,200 per year will have very little impact on the living conditions of a farmer and her or his family. Support for subsistence farming often only helps to keep Africa and Africans poor.

The most obvious need is to focus crop production in places where people can farm and trade profitably, earning incomes from their produce while enjoying access to the necessities of modern life. Most such places are close to towns where peri-urban farmers can sell their produce in nearby markets, and close to shops and good education, health and other services that are often only available in urban centres.

These are also areas where most young Namibians want to be because they offer the best chances of having decent livelihoods. Why should people live in food-based subsistence economies in depauperate areas if cash-based livelihoods are available in urban and peri-urban areas?

Urban centres are growing rapidly, which is even more reason to support their orderly development. These are the places where Namibia can reduce poverty most effectively and significantly. Many more resources should be invested in urban areas, surrounding peri-urban farming zones and services that supply water, sewerage systems, transport, education and health, as well as proper land tenure for residents. Urban development in Namibia has largely been informal in recent years – now is the time for the ordered development of towns and cities to attract people to benefit from greater food and income security.

As tough as this sounds, along with developing commercial agriculture close to urban markets and services is the humane need to discourage people from living where poverty and malnutrition is rife, yields are low, surpluses are rare and/or hard to sell, services are distant, and where new fields must be cleared continually.

Apart from raising the living standards of a high proportion of Namibians, these changes could yield benefits for Namibia’s natural environment. For example, with better income security, poaching and exploitative trade in freshwater fish should decrease, and vegetation that recovers will store more carbon dioxide to ease global warming.

Virgin land unsuited to crops will continue to provide these and other ecosystem services to Namibia and planet Earth for present and future generations. Namibia will also gain more distinction for its preservation of natural habitats and wildlife, and the economic values and comparative advantages of our natural environments will grow as wildernesses elsewhere in the world shrink. Ideally, this land should be open and undivided to allow free animal movement, rather like the

commonages and other unfenced land should be in communal areas.

How could it be managed?

Like communal land? Hopefully not, if its management over the last 33 years is anything to go by. Rather than being maintained as open, common property providing resources to benefit the poor as per the Communal Land Reform Act, much communal land is progressively being taken by affluent Namibians. As a result, the small numbers of animals kept by local, poorer residents can’t compete for forage and water with the substantial numbers of cattle, sheep and goats belonging to people who make a good living from businesses or lucrative jobs in towns far away. In addition to these extensive areas of appropriated grazing are the large areas of commonage fenced and expropriated by the affluent with the collusion of traditional authorities, especially in Kavango East and West, Oshikoto, Ohangwena, Otjozondjupa and Omaheke.

Namibia seems to have abandoned its stated intention for communal land to be a safety net, and so the poorest of its citizens suffer the most. Among them are !Xun and Ju/’hoan people, who continue to be dispossessed of their land and its resources decades after independence. Commonage or common property resources which give value to conservancies and community forests have dwindled as more and more of their gazetted land has been appropriated or expropriated. Large areas of communal land are now severely overgrazed – another environmental calamity.

Promoting appropriate land uses and the orderly use of commonproperty natural resources requires firm controls. Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana, made this clear in a speech that applies as much to Namibian communal areas as to his own country: “Under our communal grazing system it is in no one individual’s interest to limit the number of his animals. If one man takes his cattle off, someone else moves in. Unless livestock numbers are tied to specific grazing areas, no one has an incentive to control grazing.” He made this logical point 48 years ago!

Secure tenure over land is a necessity if its resources are to be managed for sustainable use and value for their intended beneficiaries. The idea that anyone can move in and around communal land to graze hundreds of livestock is not tenable. Communal land can no longer be ‘a free for all’.

For The Future

Adoption of five key strategies would advance the development of wealth for people and health for environments. First: Namibia should promote urban development, especially in lower income, informal areas. Second: crop farming should be supported where it can be profitable, so that people can have decent livelihoods. Third: it should be discouraged to live in places mired in poverty which require shifting agriculture. Fourth: land uses must be truly suited to their target lands, which means that areas not suited to human occupation should be preserved for their ecological values and the services they provide. Finally: land tenure systems should be tailored to the best uses of land and the needs of Namibians.

The ideas expressed here have been incubated over 25 years of trying to measure and understand how poor people make a living in both rural and urban areas of Namibia, and in Angola and other parts of Africa, and how land is managed and mismanaged by governments, traditional authorities and local authorities. This article benefited from comments on earlier drafts provided by Chris Brown, Helge Denker, Bennett Kahuure, Stephie Mendelsohn, Ara Monadjem, Ndapewa Nakanyete, Nyambe Nyambe, John Pallett, Chris Shatona, Hannu Shipena and Gail Thomson.

I hope the article stimulates more critical thinking about development, poverty, the management of resources and land, and the natural environment. Namibia has much to gain.

Readers who want to know more about the challenges and opportunities in Namibia, including the topics covered in this article, are encouraged to read the Atlas of Namibia (2022) available in hardcopy or at https://atlasofnamibia.online/.

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Lion Rangers patrol vast distances in vehicles and on foot (blue lines on the map). Their movements and all of their sightings are recorded via the SMART application installed on cellphones.

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SMART RANGERS FOR THE CONSERVATION OF DESERT-ADAPTED LIONS

By Mathilde Brassine

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amibia’s famous desert-adapted lions in the northwestern part of the country largely owe their survival to a dedicated team of Lion Rangers. These rangers patrol the vast Kunene Region on foot, equipped with little more than smartphones to record their progress and environmental observations.

The Lion Rangers programme was founded in 2018 as part of the Human-Lion Conflict Management Plan for North West Namibia introduced by Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) in response to escalating human-lion conflict in this region. The programme is based on community conservation approaches developed by the Lion Guardians programme in East Africa, and by Namibia’s Save The Rhino Trust. It brings together conservancies, government and non-governmental organisations around the shared mission to protect farmers’ livelihoods and their families’ wellbeing by limiting human-lion conflict whilst conducting lion research and monitoring. The programme has expanded to eleven conservancies: Anabeb, Doro !Nawas, Ehi-Rovipuka, ≠Khoadi-//Hôas, Omatendeka, Orupupa, Puros, Sesfontein, Sorris Sorris, Torra, and Tsiseb. It employs 47 lion rangers and four Rapid Response Teams across the Kunene and Erongo regions in northwestern Namibia.

Lion Rangers are community members (and often also livestock farmers) who are selected by their conservancies to receive specialised training and support in order to carry out their duties in limiting conflict between humans and lions. One of the main tools the rangers are equipped with are smartphones with an application known as SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) Mobile, which is part of a set of software and analysis tools developed to help rangers around the world to collect data during monitoring patrols. All Lion Rangers and members of the Rapid Response Teams have been trained to use the app in an efficient and reliable manner to ensure rapid and accurate data collection and transfer.

Among the data collected are lion and other carnivore sightings, prey species sightings, tracks, scats and dung, water hole status and locations, and the position of homesteads and livestock. Rangers also enter information gathered during community meetings that they hold to inform farmers and their communities on the presence and movement of lions in their areas. The rangers export all patrol data via Google Cloud to a centralised server. The data are analysed by the Lion Rangers Programme Administrator, who creates reports to share with the partner conservancies. Conservancy managers can thus identify potential conflict hotspots and take proactive steps to mitigate conflict. SMART reports are also sent to MEFT to contribute to the overall management of northwestern Namibia’s lion populations.

In the 18 months since the SMART system was implemented in April 2022, the Lion Rangers have recorded 12,002 patrols across the

northwest – 8,889 of which were on foot, with an average foot patrol of 9.2 km covered in 3.3 hours. The rangers spent a combined total of 50,065 hours patrolling 279,854 km, of which 87,678 km were covered on foot. They recorded 445 lion sightings and 876 lion tracks during this period. The SMART system was also used during the first-ever Northwest Lion Population Survey, which was conducted from 6 November 2022 to 6 January 2023.

The data collected through SMART is also used to reward communities for living with lions. The Wildlife Credits scheme is applied to all 11 conservancies where lions are known to occur. Wildlife Credits pays conservancies for proactive, verifiable conservation results in conserving particular species or their habitat. The SMART system produces the data needed to show whether lions are present in an area, which triggers direct payments to the relevant conservancies.

Paying for results through Wildlife Credits complements existing funding streams, while recognising conservancies for their contribution to conservation.

At the end of each year, a Lion Ranger award ceremony is held to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements of the top performers.

The three rangers topping the list this year have already logged 956 foot-patrols, covering 13,299 km in 11 months. Rinoveni Tjauira, from Omatendeka Conservancy, is patrolling up to 800 km on foot per month! The top three at the end of the year are each rewarded with a ram and goats.

Because the majority of Lion Rangers are farmers themselves, they have first-hand experience of the challenges facing Kunene farmers who live alongside lions and other large carnivores. This enables rangers to better relate, connect and communicate with the farmers they assist in managing human-lion conflict. Since the deployment of SMART, Lion Rangers have responded to 113 human-wildlife conflict incidents, including 57 lion-related incidents, in which 342 livestock (primarily goats) were killed. While collecting this information in itself does not resolve conflict, it provides important insights for conservancy managers, government and other support organisations to consider when developing ways to address this challenge.

SMART has proven to be an important tool to monitor Kunene’s lions in particular and its wildlife in general, but data collection requires a high level of effort and care from the Lion Rangers to cover their local landscape and adhere to good data management practices.

Those receiving the data and reports produced from this hard work must ensure that they form part of an adaptive management loop, where information informs action. Through the Lion Rangers programme, communities are partnering with the government to transform citizen science into conservation, thereby supporting the survival of Namibia’s desert-adapted lions and rural livelihoods.

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THE NYAE NYAE PANGOLIN PROJECT

BENEFITTING PEOPLE AND PANGOLINS

Le Roux van Schalkwyk

Text and images by Kelsey Prediger, Pangolin Conservation & Research Foundation (PCRF)

Flamingos in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy.

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The Nyae Nyae Conservancy (NNC) is the first conservancy registered in Namibia and at 8,992 km2 the second largest. The conservancy borders Khaudum National Park and is part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) shared by Namibia and four neighbouring countries. This extensive wildlife habitat combined with the culture of the indigenous San Ju/’hoansi tribe living in NNC makes it an ideal area for pangolin conservation.

The Ju/’hoansi already protect pangolins as part of their cultural belief systems – with the establishment of the Nyae Nyae Pangolin Project they now reap tangible benefits from pangolin conservation and research.

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he San people believe they must protect pangolins because when the pangolin walks, it whistles a song to call the rains, which are essential for survival in the dry, hot Kalahari bushveld. They also believe that killing a pangolin could cause a year of bad rains, and that if you pass an area where a pangolin is killed, you will be plagued with a severe nosebleed that will lead to your death if untreated.

The San people’s traditional knowledge, superb tracking skills and connection with nature make them excellent pangolin rangers.

Unfortunately, job opportunities are extremely limited in this remote area and many people live in poverty. In 2020 the Pangolin Conservation and Research Foundation (PCRF) therefore identified this conservancy as a suitable location for a pangolin research and conservation project.

The Nyae Nyae Pangolin Project started in 2021 with the aim of using the ancient tracking skills of the San combined with modern technology to protect this elusive species, while providing jobs and other benefits to the San communities. To date the project has tagged eight free-roaming pangolins thanks to community engagement and outreach across 25 villages. This is the first time Temminck’s ground pangolins have been tagged in this habitat (semiwetland ecosystem and broadleaf Kalahari woodlands) and land-use type (open communal conservancy).

A Ju/’hoansi San walks through the bushveld in traditional attire on his way to collect honey.

Left: Map of Nyae Nyae Conservancy in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (Credit: Peace Parks Foundation); Right: More detailed map of Nyae Nyae Conservancy (Credit: NACSO).

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Contributing to pangolin conservation and local livelihoods

Pangolins are the most trafficked mammal worldwide since 2014, yet they remain one of the most under-researched mammal species.

Trafficking has been on the rise in Africa to meet demand from Asian markets. Over the last five years 427 pangolins were confiscated in Namibia (118 live and 309 carcasses or skins) and 591 arrests were made. Given the average wildlife crime detection rate (10-18%), numbers are closer to 2,500-4,000 pangolins poached over the past five years.

Pangolins are also vulnerable because we do not know their current population and, unlike elephant or rhino poaching that leaves large carcasses, cannot easily detect a poaching incident unless the animal or animal product is confiscated.

Lead pangolin ranger Oma Sao handing out donated clothes and toys to N!omdi village.

The Nyae Nyae Pangolin Project (NNPP) supports communities to conserve this species through employment of local San people as pangolin rangers to locate, tag and monitor pangolins around their home villages. Pangolin rangers are trained as research assistants and equipped with smart phones to collect data relating to pangolins and their environment. The rangers use their traditional knowledge, their understanding of the environment and exceptional tracking skills to produce high quality data.

The results of this research will contribute to conservation planning for the species, including the development of monitoring methods and guidelines. This is one of only two projects in Africa focusing on wild Temminck’s pangolins in their natural habitat.

How do we provide support for communities?

Besides permanently employing pangolin rangers, we provide food packages for their families and the communities supporting our work, while we are currently developing the first demonstration garden to increase food security. During our outreach trips to collect information from the nearby villages (we have visited 25 out of 40 in NNC) we bring food in exchange for their time spent sharing information. This information flows both ways: our rangers raise awareness about the plight of pangolins, while the communities share their recent sightings and their perceptions of the species.

Arne Kurscheidt

Local artisan Kxao Cwi with hand-carved wooden pangolin crafts.

If there is information about a sighting, we employ some of their best trackers on a short-term basis to assist our team to confirm the sightings and presence in the area. If a pangolin is tagged, a pangolin ranger is employed in that village full-time. Since the start of the project we have employed 40 short-term trackers and 11 full-time rangers. In addition we distribute donated clothing, blankets and toys in all of the villages we visit.

Raised awareness of the area has led to increased tourism, which contributes directly to the communities through the use of community campsites, participation in traditional activities and by purchasing artisanal crafts as souvenirs. Where possible, we also help upgrade community campsites. To date we have upgraded one community campsite by subsidising the construction of a long-drop toilet and two shower stalls. We have supported other villages by purchasing crafts such as hand-made jewellery and carved wooden animals.

Early research results

Full-time pangolin rangers from left to right; Isak, Oma, Kaqece.

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All pangolins are tagged with a VHF and GPS transmitter for research and security purposes. Transmitters allow us to collect spatial data to understand home range sizes and dispersal, whereas the pangolin rangers and local trackers identify foraging sites and collect prey samples.

Left: Pangolin rangers Oma, Kaqece and Isak tagging NN06 in May 2023; Right: NN06 after tagging at sunrise.

Home range maps for five resident pangolins tagged in Nyae Nyae Conservancy.

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A total of 35 pangolins have been identified in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy so far. Eight of them have been tagged with GPS and VHF since 2021. Five pangolin tags produced enough data to map home range sizes with 1333 spatial data points collected over 22 months.

Notably, one of the tracked males had a home range of 96.9 km2 – the largest ever recorded for any pangolin species. Another male was the first pangolin to cross an international border (into Botswana) while being tracked by GPS. Camera traps are placed at known burrows to monitor pangolin activity and behaviour patterns, and the overlap of burrow use among pangolins and with other species. This information can also contribute to our understanding of the population and to the development of monitoring guidelines. For example, four pangolin pups born between August and December 2023 were caught on camera. Cameras deployed over the past 12 months have recorded 29 mammal species (bat, gerbil and mice; rats couldn’t be identified), five reptile species (geckos and skinks; lizards couldn’t be identified), and nine bird species.

The research team continuously collects scientific and social data through interviews with the local communities, while also noting sightings of other wildlife species. Community reports have identified two natural deaths of pangolins in the area over the past year. During routine fieldwork the team recorded sightings of African wild dog, cheetah, spotted hyena, striped polecat, African wild cat, honey badger, serval and Mozambican spitting cobra.

Some of the other species recorded by camera traps placed near pangolin burrows.

Sponsors and Donors

The following long-term supporters of PCRF help keep the Nyae Nyae Pangolin Project going: Bushwhackers, Galanthus Foundation, Ju/’hoansi Traditional Authority, Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism, Camping Hire Namibia, Namibia Car Rental, Namibian Chamber of Environment, Namibian Pangolin Working Group, Namibia2Go, North American Pangolin Consortium, Namibia University of Science and Technology, Nyae Nyae Conservancy, Oak Foundation, Otto Herrigel Environmental Trust, Brookfield Zoo, Vienna Zoo, Pelorus Foundation, the Pupkewitz Foundation, the University of St. Andrews, WWF International and WWF Namibia.

The Nyae Nyae Pangolin Project permanent research camp.

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Every component of the research camp was generously donated by the following local sponsors and donors: Absolute Logistics (Pty) Ltd, Aqua Services and Engineering (Pty) Ltd, Avril Payment Solutions (Pty) Ltd, Ben D’Alton, GI Construction (Pty) Ltd, Henning Crushers (Pty) Ltd, KL Construction (Pty) Ltd, Mandume Park Investments 31 CC, Metallum Fabrication (Pty) Ltd, Radio Electronic (Pty) Ltd, SN Architects, Store - Tech CC, WML Consulting Engineers (Pty) Ltd, Almut Boye, Leon Boye, Hartmut Rechholtz, Marco Selle, Sandra Kurth, Stephen Kenny.

Additionally, we would like to thank our generous international supporters: Brookfield Zoo, Chicago Zoological Society, North American Pangolin Consortium, and every individual who donated to the GoFundMe campaign to cover the additional infrastructure.

All results and recommendations from the pangolin research are published in scientific and popular publications and submitted to the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism for future conservation planning and management. Our records of other key species are logged on public platforms to contribute to the conservation of all species in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy.

The future of the Nyae Nyae Pangolin Project

In 2022, the NNPP received approval from the Ju/’hoansi Traditional Authority and Nyae Nyae Conservancy to establish a research camp and expand their work across the communities. Since the NNPP plans to employ one ranger in every village of the conservancy by 2028, it was necessary to offer a more stable base than camping from a vehicle. Thanks to many generous donors, PCRF received a fitted container and infrastructure for the research camp. The camp was officially opened on 30 September 2023 and will host local and international students conducting research on endangered species in the NNC. This year, PCRF is excited to participate in the Great Southern BioBlitz (24-27 November 2023), for the first time representing the greater Nyae Nyae area. Goals for 2024 include plans to host a training event for women and children on how to make gardens that are wildlife proof and productive, based on our demonstration garden.

Acknowledgments and collaboration

Kelsey Prediger is the Founder and Executive Director of the Pangolin Conservation & Research Foundation and co-chair for Southern Africa of the IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group. Find out more about the PCRF at pangolincrf.org. This research was conducted through multiple projects under her leadership with support from Kenneth /Uiseb, Novald Iyambo and Piet Beytell of the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism, Dr. Morgan Hauptfleisch of the Namibia University of Science and Technology and Dr. Monique MacKenzie and Dr. Lindesay Scott-Hayworth of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

Arne Kurscheidt

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Gail Thomson

NCE Supports For a comprehensive view of the Namibian Chamber of Environment’s (NCE) work, see pg. 4-6. Here, we highlight some of our work on advocacy for effective nature conservation policies.

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ADVOCACY FOR SUSTAINABLE USE AND NAMIBIA’S WILDLIFE ECONOMY

ne of the many functions of the Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE) is to provide a voice for the environmental sector vis-à-vis policy and lawmakers in Namibia and beyond. The ultimate purpose of our advocacy work is to conserve the natural environment. We believe that an important means to that end is to uphold the principle of sustainable use found in Namibia’s constitution, and to address internal and external policy threats to this principle.

Since human beings have to use natural resources to survive, the alternative to sustainable use is unsustainable use, with the very real risk that species go extinct and ecosystems break down. Even when the use of a species is declared illegal, illegal use will nevertheless abound if it comes with the potential for high rewards (e.g. selling rhino horn on the black market). Limiting illegal use to sustainable levels is far more difficult and resource intensive than regulating legal use for sustainability, especially for widespread species that are difficult to protect.

Banning legal use and protecting individual plants and animals only makes sense when there are so few left that any level of use could lead to extinction. In cases where population numbers and natural growth rates allow limited off-take, legalising and regulating use is the most effective means of conserving that species. Why is it effective? As we stated in the foreword to this year’s magazine: whether or not a species goes extinct or proliferates is closely linked to how humans perceive that species. This is why domestic plants and animals that humans use legally for many different purposes are by far the most common species on the planet, while many plants and animals that are not owned and used sustainably are in danger.

Ensuring sustainable use involves applying normal human motivations to protect our own interests. Just like a shop owner takes steps to prevent shoplifting and a cattle farmer guards against stock theft, if people are given real ownership over valuable wildlife resources they will protect them from freeloaders and thieves.

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In Namibia the Nature Conservation Ordinance 4 of 1975 (and its predecessor, Ordinance 31 of 1967) and its amendment in 1996 enabled people to own and manage wildlife under certain conditions. The attitude towards wildlife on private and communal land changed almost overnight, from 1967 and 1996 respectively, because the ordinance and its amendment effectively turned people living with wildlife into “shopkeepers” rather than “shoplifters”. This resulted in the immediate recovery of wildlife numbers through the establishment of private game farms, mixed game and livestock farms, freehold conservancies and communal conservancies with both game and livestock.

In this system, the value of wildlife is no longer a problem – as it is when use is illegal – but part of the solution. When the full value of wildlife can be captured, it will be favoured over less profitable farming land uses. Conversely, if the value of wildlife is artificially depressed through restrictions on trade and use (e.g. allowing use for meat only but not for trophies), then livestock farming will continue to have the upper hand. Arid and semi-arid countries like Namibia are particularly well positioned to develop a wildlife economy that outcompetes livestock farming, since wildlife is better adapted to these environmental conditions than cattle and sheep.

Livestock production has just one stream of revenue, i.e. the protein value of the animal, which is based on primary production. Primary production on Namibia’s arid rangelands is severely limited by low and highly variable rainfall and poor soils. Wildlife by contrast, has at least four streams of revenue of which only one, i.e. meat, is a primary product. The other three – trophies, tourism and live sale of high value species – are service industries that generate far higher returns than the protein value of the wildlife. With good management all these revenue streams can be practised on the same piece of land, thereby making the wildlife economy more attractive than conventional farming. This in turn leads to more land being converted for wildlife use, better protection of indigenous biodiversity and ecosystem services, increased connectivity across the country and greater resilience to droughts and climate change.

A vibrant wildlife economy is a good thing for conservation and the protection of biodiversity.

While the nature conservation legislation mentioned above was a critical first step for Namibia to create suitable policy conditions for a wildlife economy, developing the full potential of this economy remains a work in progress. At the local level, communal conservancy governance systems must be improved to increase household incomes from wildlife. Nationally, the use and trade of buffalo – a high value species – is banned south of the Veterinary Cordon Fence due to misplaced fears of disease transmission to livestock, thus depressing the wildlife economy.

Hunting animals that are considered iconic (i.e. particularly majestic or beautiful) is coming under increasing pressure. The anti-hunting movement has gained traction among European societies, urbanised North Americans and even urbanised Africans. People who are not directly responsible for keeping wildlife on the land have taken a sense of ownership over these animals and are trying to prevent those who live with wildlife from benefitting from it.

Going back to the shop-keeping analogy: someone on the other side of the world is trying to prevent African shopkeepers from making an honest living. If they (on the other side of the world) succeed, the shops will shut down and the goods will be sold illegally or stolen and not restocked. In conservation terms, wildlife will make way for other land uses and rampant poaching will ultimately lead to extinctions outside state-protected areas. The latter will become the only places where high value wildlife species remain and will therefore be increasingly threatened by poaching.

This worst-case scenario of wildlife eradication is not hypothetical. It is based on Namibia’s past experience and the current state of many other countries worldwide. Prior to the legislation that allowed local people to own wildlife, Namibia’s private farmlands were subjected to a systematic ecocide – wild animals were eradicated as perceived competitors with valuable livestock. On communal lands, people who had lived with wildlife and hunted it for millennia were now barred from using the “government’s animals”. This resulted in high levels of illegal, unsustainable use and created fertile ground for black market trade that also included corrupt government officials at the time.

If Namibia had continued on this trajectory of preventing the legal ownership and use of wildlife, it would have lost everything except the animals left in national parks – which make up less than 10% of all wildlife in Namibia today.

Many African nations have fallen into the trap of exerting government ownership over wildlife and preventing legal trade. In much of West Africa the only wildlife that is left is in a few national parks which are increasingly threatened by illegal settlements and poaching. Populations of high-value species like elephants have been lost.

Gail Thomson

At the international level the sustainable use of the highest value wildlife products, namely rhino horn and elephant ivory, has been blocked through the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). To make matters worse, political pressure is building for bans related to trophy hunting. This form of hunting takes far fewer animals than meat hunting and greatly increases the value of each individual in a species. For example, hunting a few old post-breeding male black rhinos per year contributes substantially to Namibia’s national budget for conserving this iconic species and biodiversity in general. As an added benefit, it reduces the incidents of old bulls killing young bulls.

Despite the clear evidence in favour of sustainable use, many Western nations and non-governmental organisations based in those countries are pressuring African countries to adopt an anti-use approach to their wildlife. This takes the form of banning or restricting the importation of hunting trophies from Africa into their respective countries, which sends a political message that hunting in Africa is “unacceptable” by some arbitrary standards (hunting is legal in those very same countries). More directly, anti-use countries form voting blocs at CITES to restrict the trade in wildlife parts, even when there is no evidence that legal trade is a threat.

As an advocate for nature conservation that is based on evidence rather than ideology, the NCE has tracked the progress of proposed legislation and anti-use campaigns in the UK, Germany, the European Union and the United States of America. Those proposals involve severely restricting or completely banning the importation of hunting trophies from Namibia and other African countries. We have written letters to key politicians, given interviews to the media and explained the role of hunting in Namibia’s wildlife economy in our opinion editorials countless times.

In each case, we have sought to educate and inform those, who are opposed to hunting, on its benefits for wildlife and people.

While responding to proposed anti-hunting policies remains an important aspect of our advocacy work, we are becoming more proactive in our approach. The world needs to know why the wildlife economy is important and what role hunting plays within that economy. This will not only benefit Namibia, but also other countries that are currently pursuing failed anti-use policies. They could reconsider their approach and adopt sustainable use models instead, based on practices in Namibia and other southern African countries. The NCE is therefore funding a mini-documentary that lays out the concept of the wildlife economy, the necessary enabling policy conditions for it to work and its potential to halt and even reverse the global biodiversity crisis.

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Promoting and supporting conservation of the natural environment.

A membership-based organisation established as a voluntary association to support and promote the interests of environmental NGOs and their work to protect Namibia’s environment, biodiversity and landscapes. The NCE currently has 76 members and associate members, comprising environmental NGOs and individuals running nationally significant environmental projects and programmes.

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