Cheetah and many other smaller predators are held responsible for farmers’ livestock deaths. Some are to blame but this has resulted in many cheetah being shot at or killed unnecessarily. There is a win-win solution in the form of the Anatolian Sheep Dog.
Anatolian Shepherd dogs are used by Dr Laurie Marker of the Cheetah Conservation Fund and others in the ongoing efforts to prevent cheetahs which have attacked livestock being killed by farmers. These dogs are bred and then given to the farmers to use in protecting and guarding their livestock from cheetah attacks.
The Anatolian sheep dog is spread worldwide, originating in Turkey, and protecting livestock from wolves and other predators for 6,000 years. They have been used in southern Africa for the past fifteen years. These large white dogs (80 Kgs/200 Lbs) live with flocks of sheep, goats or herds of cattle. Unfortunately they have a relatively short life span of less than ten years and are subject to hip dysplasia. They are bred at various breeding centers in South Africa and puppies are placed with farmers in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. One dog is placed per flock and spends its entire life with the sheep or goats believing that it is one of them but protecting them and driving off predators.
To date, over 275 Kangal Anatolian Shepherd have been born and placed on Namibian farmlands by the Cheetah Conservation Fund/CCF. The system is working well with farmers’ reporting large declines in livestock losses and no longer resorting to shooting or poisoning the wild life.
It's ironic that man's best friend is now inadvertently a big cat's best friend!

I have just snapped this cute moment on my cellphone camera: two baby Warthogs relaxing with their mother as she takes a nap. That's a pretty relaxed Mum... but then so would you be here at the beautiful Karkloof Spa in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa - Tatler Magazine's "Most exciting discovery for 2009".

I wish I'd had high res camera to capture it. There are lots of Warthogs roaming the grounds of the Spa and not many predators for them to worry about.

With the long overdue but significant attention to the rapid decline of the world's frogs, it's about time we mentioned the critically endangered Table Mountain ghost frog. Also known as Roses's Ghost Frog, Heleophryne rosei is ONLY found on Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. That's just one mountain in the middle of the city where it lives in about 7-8 km2, in streams and moist, forested gorges.

"This species is adapted to life in fast-flowing mountain streams. Their tadpoles possess sucker-like mouthparts, which they can use to climb up wet, vertical rock surfaces around their streams at night. Adults have been found to stray from streams and have frequently been seen in caves. Numerous threats to this species include the spread of non-native vegetation, frequent fires, heavy ecotourism, and the construction of water storage reservoirs. The virulent fungal disease chytridiomycosis has been found in this species recently and populations are declining fast."

...

"The Table Mountain ghost frog therefore has very few close relatives and is one of the only surviving members of the earliest lineage that gave rise to the modern frogs and toads. The closest ancestors of this species were the first modern frogs."

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www.edgeofexistence.org

Isn't it sad and ironic that "heavy ecotourism" is listed as a threat. For more on endangered species go to EDGE - Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered. For more on endangered frogs in South Africa see Sally Wren's post on the work Werner Conrad is doing.

It seems like "bunch" is becoming the collective noun for everything these days. Bunch of people, bunch of bananas, bunch of stuff. How sad when the English language is filled with so many interesting collective nouns. I think that some of the most descriptive and entertaining collective nouns are for animals which you'll meet on safari in southern Africa. Here are a whole bunch of them to whet your appetite:

Baboons – Troop or Congress
Bats – Cloud
Buffaloes – Obstinacy
Cheetahs – Coalition
Crocodiles – Bask
Elephants – Herd, Parade or Memory
Giraffes – Journey
Hippos – Raft or Pod
Hyenas – Clan or Cackle
Leopards – Leap
Lions – Pride
Lizards - Lounge
Monkeys – Shrewdness or troop
Mongoose - Business
Owls – Parliament
Porcupines – Prickle
Rhinos - Crash

Weasels - Sneak
Wildebeest - Implausibility
Zebras – Dazzle or Herd
For many of the animals there are numerous options. I particularly love a dazzle of Zebra, a crash of Rhino and an obstinacy of Buffalo. Choose your favorite or better yet, make one up for fun and post it as a comment below.

Listed in David Attenborough's world's most amazing animals is the Great White Pelican,Pelecanus onocrotalus, which biologist Marta de Ponte Machado has revealed has adapted it's behaviour to gobbling live Gannet chicks in South Africa.

Dwindling fish stocks off the coast of South Africa have forced pelican to look elsewhere for their food. Many have turned to eating offal found at farms in the Cape Town, while others have taken to eating other seabirds. The pelican's huge bill means it is able to swallow the chicks of gannets, tern, cormorants and even African penguins. The behavior has been filmed for the BBC Life series Life found here. (Those outside the U.K. can view a video clip on BBC here):

Quote:

"On the island of Malgas in South Africa, the pelicans attack any gannet chick that is left undefended by its parents and is small enough to swallow. As a result, entire gannet colonies are in danger of being destroyed. The predatory behaviour is captured for the BBC natural history series Life.

Cape gannets and pelicans are members of the same bird family. Cape gannets (Morus capensis) have a wingpsan of up to 1.8m when fully grown and can live for up to 25 years. The species breeds in just six places, of which one is Malgas island in South Africa. Due to people overfishing sardine and anchovies off the coast of Southern Africa, the population of gannets has dwindled.

...Once the pelicans cooperated to hunt freshwater fish, but a decline in fish stocks and habitat destruction is altering their food preferences. Each day, hoards of the pelicans fly across to Malgas and wander through the gannet colony."

Where to spot them

Birdwatching tours can be booked from Cape Town including trips to Dassen Island, where all the birds mentioned above can be seen.

Man and animals have always been competing for space and now more so than ever. Animals are being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas with dire consequences if they should enter mans’ space. A less obvious result of this is that animals' natural migratory paths have been distrupted which has forced "unnatural" human intervention in managing animal populations and habitats.

An initiative that can help reverse this is the creation of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) or "Peace Parks" - cross border jointly managed natural resources. The removal of boundaries opens larger tracts of commonly managed land allowing a more natural flow of animals in a larger area.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Wildlife Conservation and Law Enforcement of 1999 defines a TFCA as "the area or component of a large ecological region that straddles the boundaries of two or more countries, encompassing one or more protected areas as well as multiple resource use areas". The good news is that SADC political leaders have recognised the importance of TFCAs and have dedicated effort to make them a reality. Just two days ago, at a ministerial meeting that took place on the banks of the Zambezi River in Katima Mulilo, five SADC ministers with the portfolios of environment and tourism in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe expressed satisfaction with the progress made on the proposed trans-frontier tourism park.

There are 7 Southern Africa Peace Park initiatives at various stages of proposal or development but as many as 15 parks proposed by the Peace Park Foundation. Have a look at this map from the foundation for a bigger picture: (click to enlarge)

Here are some of the initiatives with the greatest traction:

|Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier National Park: A vast mountain desert that is the |Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld National Park, an area managed jointly by the local Nama people and the South African National Parks. straddles the borders of South Africa and Namibia. It consists of the 1 625 square kilometre Richtersveld National Park (a World Heritage Site) in South Africa and the 4 420 square kilometres /Ai–/Ais National Park in Namibia.

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park: An amalgamation of the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in South Africa (proclaimed in 1931)and the Gemsbok National Park in Botswana, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park comprises an area of over 3,6 million hectares – one of very few conservation areas of this magnitude left in the world.

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park: The most well known initiative links Kruger National Park in South Africa, the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique, Gonarezhou National Park, Manjinji Pan Sanctuary and Malipati Safari Area in Zimbabwe, as well as two areas between Kruger and Gonarezhou – the Sengwe communal land in Zimbabwe and the Makuleke region in South Africa. The park presently covers 35 000 square kilometres but will eventually expand to a staggering 100 000 square kilometres. Ultimately is may run to the coast- to bazaruto Archipelago in Mozambique.

Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation Area: The Lubombo Transfrontier Conservation Area straddles the borders of Swaziland, southern Mozambique and KwaZulu-Natal and consists of five distinct transfrontier conservation areas (including the current Tembi Park) that are woven together by the Lubombo Mountains, a long and narrow mountain range threading across these three countries.

Maloti – Drakensburg: The Maloti Drakensberg Transfrontier Consefvation Area straddles the borders of South Africa and Lesotho and includes the Maloti and Drakensberg Mountain ranges.

Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area: The Limpopo-Shashe park straddles the international borders of Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe and is situated at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers.

Kavango – Zambezi: The Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area is situated in the Okavango and Zambezi River basins where the borders of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe converge. It spans an area of approximately 287 132 square kilometres and will include 36 national parks, game reserves, community conservancies and game management areas. KAZA was initiated on the 7th December 2006 by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by the 5 countries.

Sustainable conservation is the core of the dream that man and animals can live together and that tourist dollars would assist in the upliftment of local rural communities. Unfortunately Zimbabwe’s politics and instability are a cause for concern and delay. Problems currently being addressed are border crossings, expensive visa and high vehicle taxes imposed on non Southern African residents. The dream, however, is underway with a far bigger dream to follow - imagine a trans-frontier park spanning right across Africa incorporating the above trans-frontier parks and untimately inking with the Etosha pan and the skeleton coast of Namibia - a wildlife dream that could one day materialize.

"In a world beset by conflicts and division, peace is one of the cornerstones of the future. Peace parks are a building block in this process, not only in our region, but potentially in the entire world.”Nelson Mandela

Resources:
Peace Parks Foundation:Peace Parks Foundation is a non-profit organisation that facilitates the establishment of transfrontier conservation areas (peace parks)* and develops human resources, thereby supporting sustainable economic development, the conservation of biodiversity and regional peace and stability.

Boundless Southern Africa : Launched at the 2008 Tourism Indaba in Durban, Boundless Southern Africa is the marketing brand chosen by nine Southern African countries to represent some of the best tourism products the region has to offer: the Transfrontier Conservation Areas

(TFCAs).

SANParks: Southern African national Parks

There are seven sub-species of Cheetah. Two are found in Asia (less than 200 animals) and the other five species are found in Africa - one group in Algeria, a second group spread between Nigeria to Somalia, a third group in the Ngorogoro Crater area, a fourth group on the plains of Kenya and Tanzania. These four groups total less than 3000 animals. The fifth African group belongs to Southern Africa where it is estimated that there are less than 500 animals.

The King Cheetah is the same species as the Southern African Acinonyx Jabatus Jubatus but has different colour markings. Instead of black sports on a yellow/gold coat the King Cheetah have short solid black stripes about the size of three or four spots blending together.

King Cheetah are as the result of a double recessive gene. Most Cheetah do not carry the Tabby gene as the King factor is called. Only when a male Tabby gene carrier and a female Tabby gene carrier breed may they produce one King Cheetah out of four cubs. Hence the King Cheetah is extremely rare and there maybe less than forty animals of which about 90% are in captive breeding centres, zoos or kept as pets. The last confirmed wild sighting was in Kruger National Park in 1993 where a very large male was seen.

The breeding centres of note in South Africa are, de Wildt Cheetah Park near Johannesburg. They have about a hundred Cheetahs of which seven are King Cheetahs. In1981 the first King Cheetah was born at de Wildt. The other centre is the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre which is situated near the Kruger National Park. They have thirty six Cheetah of which only three are King Cheetah.

Cheetah numbers continue to fall. Their genetic base is narrow hence survivability is low. They are continually threatened by lion and hyena that compete and steal the Cheetah’s kill. Farmers have shot Cheetah for centuries but hope is on the horizon in the form of the Anatolian sheep dog which are used to protect the farmers livestock. In addition through education, farmers are no longer culling every Cheetah in sight.