Key S. African leopard population 'crashing', study warns

The leopard population in a region of South Africa once thick with the big cats is crashing, and could be wiped out within a few years, scientists warned on Wednesday.

The clash between humans and leopards, experts agree, is mostly due to humanity's expanding footprint, 
especially in Africa, whose population is set to expand by more than a billion before mid-century 
[Credit: AFP/Gianluigi Guercia]

Illegal killing of leopards in the Soutpansberg Mountains has reduced their numbers by two-thirds in the last decade, the researchers reported in the Royal Society Open Science journal.

"If things don't change, we predict leopards will essentially disappear from the area by about 2020," lead author Samual Williams, a conservation biologist at Durham University in England, told AFP.

"This is especially alarming given that, in 2008, this area had one of the highest leopard densities in Africa."

The number of leopards in the wild worldwide is not known, but is diminishing elsewhere as well. The "best estimate" for all of South Africa, said Williams, is about 4,500.

What is certain, however, is that the regions these predators roam has shrunk drastically over the last two centuries.

The historic range of Panthera pardus, which includes more than half-a-dozen sub-species, covered large swathes of Africa and Asia, and extended well into the Arabian Peninsula.

Leopards once roamed the forests of Sri Lanka and Java unchallenged.

Today, they occupy barely a quarter of this territory, with some sub-species teetering on the brink of extinction, trapped in one or two percent of their original habitat.

Leopards were classified last year as "vulnerable" to extinction on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of endangered species, which tracks the survival status of animals and plants.

South Africa recently suspended trophy hunting of leopards, though experts agree this is not a major cause of the population decline.

Bleak findings

A 2008 census of leopards in the 6,800-square kilometre (2,600-square mile) Soutpansberg Mountains found a robust population of nearly 11 adult cats for each hundred square kilometres (39 square miles).

South Africa recently suspended trophy hunting of leopards, though experts agree this 
is not a major cause of the population decline [Credit: AFP/Alexander Joe]

To find out how the carnivores had fared since then, Williams and his team set up four dozen motion-triggered camera traps across the area, and left them in place from 2012 to 2016.

The cameras captured a total of 65 individual leopards during the four-year period: 16 adult males, 28 adult females and 21 younger cats.

They also fitted eight adults with GPS collars to track their movements -- or lack thereof.

Only two of the GPS-tagged leopards survived the monitoring period. Three were done in by snares, one was shot by a local resident whose cattle had been attacked, and two went missing, probably killed since they also disappeared from camera surveillance.

A statistical analysis of the results showed "a 66 percent decline over a period just over 7.5 years," the study concluded.

Ironically, the bleak findings helped conservationists and local officials raise money to hire a "community engagement officer."

Lake Fundudzi sits among the foothills of South Africa's Soutpansberg Mountains 
in the northern province of Limpopo [Credit: AFP/Alexander Joe]

"One of the things he does is help local people adopt non-lethal techniques" to prevent leopards from attacking cattle and other livestock, including the use of guard dogs, Williams added.

But the clash between humans and big carnivores, experts agree, is mostly due to humanity's expanding footprint, especially in Africa, whose population is set to expand by more than a billion before mid-century.

As a result, the habitats of most wild megafauna are diminishing, and getting chopped up into smaller and smaller parcels.

"It is extremely alarming that the trends that we are reporting exemplify trends in large carnivores globally," Williams said.

Studies in Africa of lions, black-backed jackals and bat-eared foxes have showed similar rates of decline.

Author: Marlowe Hood | Source: AFP [April 19, 2017]

byUnknown

in Africa, Endangered Species, Natural Heritage, South Africa, Wildlife

April 19, 2017

Key S. African leopard population 'crashing', study warns

The leopard population in a region of South Africa once thick with the big cats is crashing, and could be wiped out within a few years, scie...

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Earliest dated rock art in Southern Africa depicts shamans' journey to world of spirits

For years, archaeologists have known that southern Africa is home to very rich and well-understood rock art produced by hunter-gatherers in the Later Stone Age, but they had been unable to date these creations precisely.

Example of fine-line Later Stone Age paintings studied by the archaeologists
[Credit: Bonneau/Antiquity]

Using an innovative approach, researchers have now come up with new dates, which suggest that in south-eastern Botswana, rock art was created as far back as 5723–4420 cal BP – the oldest such evidence found to date in Southern Africa. Their complete findings are now published in the Journal Antiquity.

Hunter-gatherer rock art in Southern Africa is made up both of paintings and engravings, which were produced by ancient communities associated with the present-day San (bushmen) culture. A lot of research has been successfully conducted about how to interpret this art.

"Thanks to studies conducted between the 18th and 20thby the Dutch and British settlers as well as current ethnographic research, we have a good understanding of San rock art. They painted to represent what the Shamans had seen during their journeys in the world of the spirits so that the rest of the population could see it", lead author Adelphine Bonneau, post-doctoral fellow at Laval University (Canada), told IBTimes UK.

"They also thought that rocks represented a veil between the world of humans and the spiritual world, and so rock art was thought to help them communicate with the spirits".

Despite these interesting insights, researchers have been limited in their work by the impossibility to accurately and directly date the artworks.

The difficulty of dating rock art

Dating rock art directly is about coming up with a precise date for when it was created. This often entails taking a piece of the painting out to study it – potentially damaging it.

Painting of a fish of Later Stone Age tradition in the Thune Valley, Botswana 
[Credit: Bonneau/Antiquity]

"With current dating methods, we need large samples – sometimes hundreds of milligrams of painting – which often means completely destroying these artworks. We also have to consider that in many cases, the art wasn't protected inside caves and rock shelters but created on outdoors rocks exposed to the elements and to human activity, which means that paintings are often in a bad state and cannot be dated", Bonneau explained.

The most common dating method is radiocarbon dating (Carbon-14 dating) but for it to be used, there needs to be traces of carbon in the paintings. Additionally, where charcoal was used to create paintings, there is always the possibility that the artists used charcoal that had been left over from many years before, so the painting may appear older than it really is.

All of these obstacle have made it hard to establish precise dates for rock art found in Southern Africa. Paintings in the Apollo 11 cave in Namibia have been dated to 25,000 years ago, but these results are highly controversial. Elsewhere, archaeologists have only been able to set very broad time constraints.

A new method to date rock paintings

The authors of this study have, for the first time, attempted to date southern African rock art with a technique known as accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating. The idea is to use the same principles as traditional radiocarbon dating, but a much smaller sample of painting is necessary.

Painting of an eland of Later Stone Age tradition in the Phuthiatsana Valley, Lesotho 
[Credit: Bonneau/Antiquity]

The team worked at 14 sites in three regions of southern Africa - the Thune Dam area of south-eastern Botswana, the Metolong Dam catchment of western Lesotho and the Maclear District of South Africa's Eastern Cape Province.

To increase the chances of AMS radiocarbon dating working, the scientists came up with an innovative and rigorous scientific protocol. They first collected very small painting samples (around 0.5mm2), after requesting the authorisation of the San people who still use the rock art during rituals.

They used these fragments to learn about the paintings' overall composition, to select those with a higher likelihood of being successfully dated. It also allowed them to identify paintings made up of carbon derived from short-lived organic materials rather than from charcoal, to avoid the issue that the charcoal used in paint may be significantly older than the painting event itself.

Finally, the scientists used advanced chemical techniques to clean up the samples, to avoid them being polluted by radiocarbon contaminants.

Following these strict steps allowed them to establish the first direct dates for rock art in South Africa. They identified the oldest paintings documented to date in the region – rock art in Botswana dating from about 5723–4420 cal BP.

"This is a really novel approach as far as African rock art (and Southern Africa in particular) is concerned, with vastly improved protocols for ensuring the highest quality results. The techniques developed have potential to be used elsewhere in the world. More than their actual age, what is important here is that we are now sure of these paintings' dates".

Cave painting by the San people depicting an elephant hunt in South Africa 
[Credit: iStockphoto/Gary Bedell]

Learning about San culture

The findings could also improve scientists' knowledge of the hunter-gatherer society that produced the art, and of the San culture living in Southern Africa.

Until this study, it had been impossible to associate any of the rock art with specific archaeological artefacts found close by. With the art now more accurately dated, it will be possible to study how potteries and other objects evolved in parallel to rock art.

"These dates are only the beginning of these investigations, but they open up the possibility of initiating a dialogue between the art of the San and their archaeological remains. Since rock art reflected their spiritual world, we may get new insights on their society and the cultural and spiritual connections they shared with other tribes", Bonneau said.

Author: Léa Surugue | Source: International Business Times [April 05, 2017]

byUnknown

in Africa, Archaeology, Early Humans, South Africa

April 05, 2017

Earliest dated rock art in Southern Africa depicts shamans' journey to world of spirits

For years, archaeologists have known that southern Africa is home to very rich and well-understood rock art produced by hunter-gatherers in ...

Read More