Article: Jane Horgan
It had been three years since we had all gathered together in the manure-scented dust clouds that swirl around the Ghanzi Agricultural Show, but this year’s show was definitely worth the wait. The quality of the livestock was impressive, the rows of colourful stalls were seemingly endless and the jovial show-goers were in fine form.
At their 14th Ghanzi Agricultural Show, the team from Cheetah Conservation Botswana (CCB) know what information is most useful to the farming community and are always keen to engage with visitors about conflict, methods of coexistence and farming in general. This year the team continued with their tradition of running a cheetah quiz, with three lucky winners taking home CCB shirts. They also conducted colouring competitions with children and adults alike, distributed educational resources and visited show-goers with our human-sized cheetah mascot, “Charlie”. Whilst there, CCB’s staff also conducted an anonymous questionnaire with farmers – with those taking part going into a draw to win two tents and sleeping bags, kindly donated by GFS Hardware in Ghanzi. The prizes were just the incentive the farmers needed to come in and fill in the survey. It sounds straightforward enough – but the questions weren’t the easiest – all of them relating to human wildlife conflict, carnivores seen on their farms and how many livestock attacks they experienced and reported to DWNP. This data is critical for conservationists and the Government to understand how widespread carnivore conflicts are and where farmers may need support with mitigating the same. 54 farmers completed the survey and although this represents only a small sample of farmers and the information provided still needs to be verified by groundtruthing, it still represents perceived threats and trends within the farming communities.
And what did the survey tell us? The most commonly seen carnivores were jackals (reportedly seen on 81% of farms), African wild dogs (on 54% of farms), brown hyenas (41%) and spotted hyenas (39%). We calculated what proportion of animals seen on the farms were reportedly causing problems, leading to what we like to call the “bad guys” figure. The data indicated that 62% of cheetahs seen on farms were reportedly causing livestock depredations, 70% of jackals, 76% of leopards and 86% of African wild dogs. Interestingly, lions were considered to be a problem on farms even when they weren’t causing livestock damage, which just goes to show how bad their reputation is with farmers.
Farmers experienced the most conflicts with jackals, African wild dogs and leopards – reinforcing information received from previous farmer surveys as well as DWNP problem animal reports. According to these data – jackals were the most heavily persecuted species (species killed because of conflict), followed by spotted hyena, African wild dogs and lions. Encouragingly, 61% of farmers did not use lethal control at all in the proceeding 12 months and fewer than 15% killed more than five animals in that same period. This gives us hope that the farmers of Botswana are learning that lethal control is not a sustainable or effective solution to manage carnivore conflict and are rather seeking alternative methods to protect their livestock.
According to this survey – only 47% of conflict incidences were reported to DWNP, however, it is important to note that these data included all carnivore species, including those that are not compensated for such as jackals. There is however, a greater probability of species that are compensated for to be more likely to be reported.
Farmer attitudes towards wildlife-focused entities (such as DWNP and Cheetah Conservation Botswana) have been found to influence levels of conflict and tolerance towards wildlife. Results from this recent survey indicated that attitudes towards wildlife authorities were generally positive, though many farmers took the opportunity to comment about the need for increased resources so that wildlife officers could attend to conflict incidences quickly and efficiently. Farmers reported positively towards wildlife in general with one farmer saying “wild animals are very important – we have to conserve them” and another stating “I am totally against the killing of wildlife”. And there were constructive criticisms such as “most farmers do not know the role of cheetah conservation in the community. I think there is a few interactions or reach out to the community. The mode of communication being used is the phone and it is not user-friendly to most farmers.” These comments are very useful to help us evaluate our programmes and improve our engagements with farmers.
To all those farmers who visited our stall and participated in our surveys – thank you! Our engagement with you is crucial to designing programmes and activities that are relevant to the situation on the ground. If you’d like to reach out to us about carnivores on your farm, please don’t hesitate to contact our offices on 350 0613 (Gaborone) or 651 1596 (Ghanzi). FMB
