Premium
Habitat availability, hunting or poaching: what affects distribution and density of large mammals in western Tanzanian woodlands?
Author(s) -
Waltert Matthias,
Meyer Britta,
Kiffner Christian
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
african journal of ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.499
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1365-2028
pISSN - 0141-6707
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2028.2009.01080.x
Subject(s) - poaching , game reserve , habitat , geography , woodland , african elephant , ecology , wildlife conservation , hippopotamus , vegetation (pathology) , tanzania , riparian zone , agroforestry , wildlife , biology , medicine , pathology , environmental planning
Game reserves (GR) in Tanzania have been found to support similar or lower densities of large mammals compared with National parks (NP). But as these areas usually differ considerably not only in regard to management but also to environmental factors, we assessed the relative importance of vegetation cover, species‐specific habitat preferences and legal (trophy hunting) and illegal off‐take for observed differences in species‐specific densities. In the Katavi ecosystem, open habitats were characteristic elements of Katavi NP, while Rukwa GR was dominated by miombo forest. In an inter‐specific comparison, density differences were moderately correlated with preferences for open habitats, and with estimates of combined legal and illegal off‐take but not with one of these separately. In a multiple linear regression, open habitat preference was found to explain 39.6% of the density differences between the two protected areas. This analysis suggests that the broad‐scale pattern of most species’ distributions is governed by differing vegetation cover but that several species are overexploited by illegal (elephant, giraffe, buffalo, bush pig, warthog) or combined off‐take (hippopotamus, eland, waterbuck), thus emphasizing the need for quota readjustments and a more efficient anti‐poaching control.