Augrabies Falls National Park

Conservation and Projects at Augrabies

General

The ranger section of the park is mainly concerned with safety and security. This entails area integrity patrols and law enforcement. Fence patrolling forms a major part of the work rangers exercise and also do maintenance work of fences that have been damaged. The rangers further also do alien plant mapping, the maintenance of trails & overnight huts and on the odd occasion, whenever necessary, fire fighting.

National Projects

The Augrabies ranger team is making valuable contributions to various existing National Projects e.g. SA Reptile Conservation Assessment (SARCA); Birds On Reserves (BIRP) & SAN Survey for Arachnids (SANSA). The diploma students and section ranger of the park have already made 42 photographic contributions to the SARCA virtual museum including 25 different species. This means that no reptiles are being disturbed in any way during these surveys. The Augrabies ranger section has also sent away more than 70 specimens of arachnids to the SANSA project for identification. Furthermore, weekly BIRP forms are sent away at the end of every month to the Avian Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town. The Augrabies team has recently started a Co-ordinated Avifaunal Roadcount, also for the AVU where they searched for the larger terrestrial birds inside the park by means of a vehicle patrol. The Augrabies National Park is also busy with the Working for Water poverty relief project in which the rangers are responsible for the quality control of work completed by the contract team on the park.

Student Projects

A habitat assessment for the introduction of Black Rhino’s to AFNP is being carried out. The aim of the project is to determine how suitable the south-western section of the park would be to black rhino’s. There are a number of variables that would decide how suitable the habitat is e.g.: safety, available browse and the suitability of that browse, water availability, rockiness and rainfall. The project will focus on comparing the proposed area for the Black rhino introduction, to the habitat requirements of Black rhino’s.

The management of damage causing Baboons in AFNP entails the assessment of the reasons why the baboons are a problem in AFNP and determining the best solution to prevent or control the problem. The SANParks policy on damage causing animals is based on the principle that prevention is better than cure.

The Quiver tree (Aloe dichotoma) research is an on-going project. It entails the recording the GPS position of all quiver trees on the park in order to compile a spatial database. Other information recorded includes length of each tree, whether it is dead or alive, rate of damage inflicted by different taxa and notes if the tree is flowering. This research is being conducted to guide management about taking decisions on game numbers.

Hartmann’s Mountain Zebra

The park is busy compiling a studbook for the endangered mountain zebra population on the park. Whenever zebras are found the student takes photos of the individuals on the left and right side in order to identify each individual animal. Presently, eight individuals have been given codes in the park. The behaviour of the zebras is also recorded on quarterly zebra monitoring excursions by the rangers. From information gathered, a management document will be compiled for the zebra population.

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