The dynamics of crop-foraging by chacma baboons on commercial farms in South Africa

南非商业农场中查克玛狒狒的农作物觅食动态

• 批准号: 2182119
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Durham University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2182119
• 关键词: dynamics; crop; foraging; chacma; baboons

One of the most common conflicts between people and wildlife takes the form of crop raiding, which is widespread and an issue throughout the world. Crop raiding is a high-risk behaviour for wildlife, but it is also a high-gain foraging strategy - successful raiders derive substantial nutritional benefits from crops. Primates rank amongst the most problematic of species that forage on crops, and baboons are often cited as the most damaging of all primate crop raiding species. Being highly intelligent and adaptable, farmers often have little success preventing crop damage by primates. Raiding significantly impacts farmers' livelihoods and so reduces tolerance to wildlife and often results in lethal methods of retaliation. Mitigation can only be successful if the risk to animals of crop raiding is increased to outweigh its benefits, but this requires a detailed understanding of the dynamics of crop foraging by the baboons. Since baboons in farming areas are often highly wary of humans, observational methods are limited in their applicability. Innovative approaches are thus required to investigate this problem.Recently, GPS tracking collars with accelerometers have been used to explore the behavioural strategies of male chacma baboons used when raiding in the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa. The baboons spent almost all of their time at the urban edge, using short, high-activity forays into the urban areas to obtain anthropogenic food. Activity levels were also increased where the likelihood of deterrence by rangers was greater. Raiding baboons had thus dramatically altered their activity patterns compared to natural foraging populations to exploit the energy sources offered by human habitation while minimising the risks of persecution in these areas. Such an understanding allows management strategies to be appropriately targeted.The majority of research on crop raiding has focused on the conflict between wildlife and subsistence agriculturalists. However, wildlife damage to large-scale commercial agriculture is also a major facet of human-wildlife conflict and presents conservation challenges of its own, not least because of significant economic costs of primate damage to commercial farms. Further research in these commercial contexts is a priority. The primary objective of this project is to use sophisticated bio-loggers to understand baboon crop-foraging within a commercial farming region of South Africa that reports high levels of human-primate conflict. The results will be used to support the development of management plans to reduce human-wildlife conflict in the region.

人与野生动物之间最常见的冲突之一是作物掠夺，这是一个普遍存在的问题。对野生动物来说，掠夺作物是一种高风险的行为，但它也是一种高收益的觅食策略--成功的掠夺者从作物中获得了大量的营养利益。灵长类动物是以农作物为食的最有问题的物种之一，狒狒经常被认为是所有灵长类动物中最具破坏性的作物掠夺物种。由于高度聪明和适应性强，农民在防止灵长类动物破坏作物方面往往收效甚微。袭击严重影响了农民的生计，因此降低了对野生动物的容忍度，往往导致致命的报复手段。只有当作物掠夺对动物的风险增加到超过其好处时，缓解才能成功，但这需要详细了解狒狒觅食作物的动态。由于农业地区的狒狒通常对人类高度警惕，观察方法的适用性受到限制。因此，需要创新的方法来调查这个问题。最近，全球定位系统跟踪项圈加速度计已被用来探索的行为策略时，在南非的开普敦郊区袭击的雄性南美狒狒。狒狒几乎把所有的时间都花在城市边缘，利用短暂的、高活动性的突袭进入城市地区，以获得人类的食物。在护林员威慑的可能性更大的地方，活动水平也会增加。因此，与自然觅食种群相比，袭击狒狒极大地改变了它们的活动模式，以利用人类居住所提供的能源，同时最大限度地降低了这些地区受到迫害的风险。这种理解使得管理策略能够有适当的针对性。大多数关于作物掠夺的研究都集中在野生动物和自给农业者之间的冲突上。然而，野生动物对大规模商业农业的破坏也是人类与野生动物冲突的一个主要方面，并提出了其自身的保护挑战，尤其是因为灵长类动物对商业农场的破坏造成了巨大的经济成本。在这些商业背景下的进一步研究是一个优先事项。该项目的主要目标是使用先进的生物记录器来了解南非商业农业地区的狒狒作物觅食，该地区报告了高水平的人灵长类动物冲突。研究结果将用于支持管理计划的制定，以减少该地区的人与野生动物冲突。