Desert Lion Decline | Guano-Eating Chimps | Cyclone-Loving Trees | Dormouse Diary
Whisker-Spot Survey Reveals Dip in Desert Lion Numbers
A recent survey, using whisker spots, shows that Namibia’s desert lion population is currently declining due to drought and conflict with people.
The country’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism carried out the survey, the most systematic to date, tracking desert lions across an area of 40,000 square kilometers (15,400 square miles).
In late 2022 and early 2023 they photographed and analysed whisker spots on both sides of each sighted lion's muzzle to verify its identity and ensure they weren't double counting any of the animals.
The survey revealed the population stood at 57-60 adults and 14 cubs, though since January 2023 the number has dipped to between 45-52 lions.
Some of the recent lion deaths have been linked to conflict with people. Lions sometimes prey on domestic animals, and Namibians have the right to defend their property.
Namibia’s desert-adapted lions, the smallest self-sustaining population of savanna lions in Africa, eke out a living in the extremely harsh conditions of Kunene. A few famously hunt seals and seabirds along the Skeleton Coast when times are really tough.
Successive droughts in recent years have depleted food resources and consequently numbers of wild herbivores that the lions usually prey on. For instance, numbers of gemsbok, a long-horned antelope, have fallen by 85 per cent in the last five years.
Some parts of Kunene have, however, received decent rains this year, one lion researcher told me. He said this might lead to an uptick in prey numbers and consequently lions.
Already, 32 new desert lion cubs, that weren’t captured in the 2022 survey, have been recorded.
A desert lion on the prowl in Kunene Region | Lion Rangers Program
Ugandan Chimps Feed on Bat Guano After Forest Stripped of Palms
A new study reveals that farmers in Uganda who overharvested a native species of palm in a forest reserve in the west of the country, may have caused chimpanzees that fed on the plants to turn to eating virus-riddled bat guano instead.
The farmers virtually wiped out all of the palms, known as Raphia farinifera, inside Budongo Forest Reserve over a six-year period to make strings with which to tie up and dry tobacco leaves at their farms.
The research team suggests the apes switched to guano in the absence of the palms, whose naturally-fallen and decaying wood contained the minerals they needed.
A camera trap the researchers set up near the base of one bat roost inside the forest reserve found it wasn’t just the chimpanzees who had a taste for bat droppings.
The camera also recorded regular feeding visits by black-and-white colobus monkeys and red duikers.
The guano was analysed and found to contain all the minerals needed by the chimpanzees: sodium, potassium, magnesium and phosphorus. But, worryingly, it also contained 27 different viruses, including a novel betacoronavirus.
The latter is related to SARS-CoV-2, which sparked the Covid pandemic.
It’s not yet known if this new betacoronavirus can infect people.
But the authors believe their study shows how resource extraction can “initiate elaborate chains of causation, ultimately increasing virus spillover risk.”
A chimpanzee take a nap in a Ugandan forest | flowcomm | Wikimedia Commons
‘Cyclone Trees’ Flower in Wake of Powerful Storm
Two tree species growing on Mauritius have been flowering spectacularly for the first time in more than a decade in the wake of Cyclone Belal that hit the island and neighbouring Réunion, in January.
The cyclone triggered massive flooding and tragically killed at least two people.
But to both Indian Ocean islands’ native flora, cyclones are a necessity, says the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.
It says two species of Homalium, one of them unique only to Mauritius, and the other native to both islands, are known collectively as ‘bois de cyclone’, or cyclone wood because of their strong relationship with storms.
They only flower in the wake of powerful cyclones, and the flowers produce masses of fruits that quickly colonise gaps left in the forest after the storms.
The MWF says in its latest newsletter that the prodigious flowers ranged in shades, from white and yellow to “reddish gleams” that covered the trees’ entire canopies.
This rare botanical spectacle occurred in a number of places on both Mauritius and Réunion , including in Black River Gorges National Park, on Mauritius’ west coast.
MWF staff collected seeds from both species for their reforestation work.
The organisation says it’s worried that despite the prolific flowering that occurred, the trees will struggle to perform their natural role of gap-filling.
That’s because Mauritius’ native forests have been severely infested by invasive trees — like privets, guavas and traveller’s palms — introduced on the island in past centuries.
A species of Homalium flowers in the wake of Cyclone Belal | Echo News | MWF
Dormouse Diary: In Loco Parentis
Our daughter has gone off on her annual week of sailing school, and I have been left in charge of her two lesser savannah dormice.
Both of the dormice were rescued by her when they were still blind and helpless.
They’d fallen from the rafters, and I knew they had almost no chance of survival. But amazingly she kept them alive.
She kept them warm with hot water bottles and fed them warm milk on the end of a paint brush throughout the night. But we quickly realised that they’d become too habituated to survive in the wild.
She spent weeks studying their habitat and how to recreate it, and how best to feed them, and exercise them.
Seventeen months on, she trusts only herself to tend to them. And very occasionally, when she has no choice, she trusts me. I have to prove myself though.
Yesterday I was made to sit an examination to make sure I was qualified to stand in for her. I have to sit one of these each time she goes away. Which is how I find myself, years after my own Finals, facing a pen and an examination script laid out on the table before me.
My 12-year-old examiner peers over my shoulder to make sure I am not cheating by looking up answers on my phone. Questions include: what do you do if a dormouse is displaying signs of torpor; what do you do if one of them needs calming down; name three examples of food that dormice need to eat?
I’m pleased to report I did fairly well. I glimpsed gradings that ranged from “outstanding”, to “poor”, “dreadful” and “troll”.
I thankfully avoided the latter three. It is, however, going to be a long week!
