Maddie Melton
Unveiling the Hidden Treasures of Etosha National Park
Etosha National Park’s diverse landscapes harbor some of the most elusive species across Africa. Fortunately, camera traps allow us to...
The Greater Etosha Landscape (GEL) in northern-central Namibia exemplifies global conservation challenges, especially those facing large conservation landscapes, such as South Africa’s Greater Kruger NP, Tanzania’s Serengeti NP, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the USA and Ranthambhore NP in India. The GEL comprises one of the world’s most renowned protected areas, the Etosha National Park, surrounded by a diverse matrix of land tenures and land uses, translating into different management approaches and challenges faced by both carnivores and their human neighbours.
While carnivore research has a long history in the Etosha landscape, changing land uses and increasing human-wildlife conflict requires a detailed understanding of the drivers of carnivore fitness. The major goal of the project is to arrive at a clear understanding of the factors that drive carnivore numbers and their distribution. Particular attention will be paid to the following questions:
1) How important is disease in limiting carnivores in the GEL?
2) How can humans coexist with carnivores?
3) How do animals living at low density communicate over long distances?
4) How do waterholes shape animal ecology in this semi-arid environment?
How these factors interact has received little attention and remains poorly understood. Considering increasing human pressures on land resources and the accelerating impacts of a changing climate, we can expect these factors and their interactions to become more important and complex.
Etosha National Park and a 40km buffer around it
Ongoing since 2021
Claudine Cloete, Etosha Ecological Institute
Bettina Watcher, Jörg Melzheimer & Rubén Portas, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Germany
Ortwin Aschenborn & Mark Jago, University of Namibia, Veterinary School
Tammy Hoth, Namibian Lion Trust
James Beasley & John Heydinger, University of Georgia, USA
Miha Krofel, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Kenneth Uiseb & Uakendisa Muzuma, Directorate of Scientific Services of the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, Namibia
Werner Kilian, Personal Capacity