| 2010-02-06 | Les Underhill | | 35 years of Langebaan Lagoon counts |
In 1974, Ron Summers arrived as a postdoc to study waders at Langebaan Lagoon. He was from Dundee and a member of the Tay Ringing Group. He brought with him this crazy Scottish idea that waders should not only be ringed, they should also be counted. Starting with a midwinter count in June 1975, he persuaded the members of the Western Cape Wader Study Group to attempt a complete census of all the waders (and other waterbirds) at Langebaan Lagoon. It took a while to work out the best strategy for dividing the lagoon into sections that could be covered on foot in about three hours each. Currently, the lagoon is divided into 10 count sections.
The CWAC count at Langebaan Lagoon today marked the completion of 35 years of midsummer and midwinter surveys of all the waterbirds at Langebaan Lagoon. At the time the surveys started, most of Langebaan Lagoon was private property, but all landowners except one, allowed the counts to go ahead. The results of the early counts were a large component of the motivation that lead to the proclamation of the West Coast National Park in 1986, with the lagoon as its key component.
The 35 years of waterbird counts at Langebaan Lagoon make it the wetland with the longest time series of counts in the southern hemisphere. Sadly, in spite of the extra level of protection that the national park has brought to the lagoon, numbers of waders have decreased over the decades. Curlew Sandpipers, which breed in the northern zone of the tundra in Siberia, have shown the largest decrease. This is more likely to be a consequence of global change impacts on the tundra and the loss of habitat at stopover sites on migration routes than an impact of any changes at Langebaan Lagoon itself, or the general area.
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| | 2010-02-05 | Les Underhill | | Post-doctoral position: Marine Important Bird Areas |
The Percy FitzPatrick Institute (PFI), in collaboration with BirdLife
South Africa, has a 12-month post-doctoral position available starting 2010, working on seabird foraging ranges and establishing marine Important Bird Areas in South Africa.
Research will be conducted under supervision of Prof Peter Ryan (PFI)
and Dr Ross Wanless (BirdLife South Africa). The successful applicant will be
required to establish collaborations with data owners, and collate numerous datasets on seabird foraging ranges, tracking and other distributional data. High-seas and pelagic Marine Protected Areas is a research field of particular interest and is undergoing conceptual development: this position holds great potential for the suitable candidate to help develop criteria for defining and managing MPAs, using BirdLife International's marine IBA criteria as a test
case.
Closing date for applications: 21 February 2010. A PDF description can be downloaded directly from the BirdLife South Africa website.
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| | 2010-02-04 | Les Underhill | | Conference presentation: Alison Towner at the International White Shark Symposium in Hawaii |
Newly-registered MSc student, Alison Towner, will be presenting a poster at the International White Shark Symposium, being held from 7–10 February 2010, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The theme of the conference is "Re-setting Research and Conservation Objectives" for the Great White Shark Carcharodon carcharias – this defines purpose of this meeting: a gathering of leading white shark researchers from around the world to share the latest findings and discuss how they should influence modern research and conservation goals. So it represents a fantastic opportunity for Alison to attend a meeting like this right at the outset of her postgraduate studies, and we are grateful to the Dyer Island Conservation Trust for sponsoring her attendance at the meeting (and for sponsorship of her research project over the next couple of years).
Alisons's poster is entitled "Boat strike wound healing in Carcharodon carcharias" and makes the point that injuries to marine animals caused by boat strikes are problematic worldwide and the ability to survive such injuries varies markedly between species. This study reports on the near-complete healing, over a period of 10 months, of a very large gash inflicted on a Great White Shark which was struck by the propeller of a boat near Gansbaai. | | |
| | 2010-02-04 | Les Underhill | | Marta de Ponte Machado awarded PhD |
We have just heard the good news that Marta de Ponte has been informed by the Doctoral Degrees Board at UCT that she has been awarded the degree of PhD. We congratulate Marta. The thesis is entitled: Population dynamics of Great White Pelicans: causative factors and impact on other seabirds.
Marta de Ponte Machado's interest in the impact of human activities on ecosystems and her desire to understand and manage the consequences of these activities brought her to South Africa. She graduated with an MSc in Conservation Biology at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology in 2003. Her thesis examined the impact of harvesting buchu (a local endemic plant) in the wild and provided recommendations for managing the resource. Previously she had worked in the Cape Verde Islands designing a network of protected areas and drawing environmental and socio-economic management plans. Having grown up in the Canary Islands she is well aware of the complexity and fragility of ecosystem interactions, especially in the light of global change.
Her thesis examines the exponential growth of the Western Cape Great White Pelican population during the 20th century, induced by the increased availability of agricultural waste. This superabundance triggered changes in the trophic webs, strikingly the development of a new feeding behaviour by pelicans, which have become predators of seabirds on the islands off the coast of the Western Cape, adapting cooperative hunting techniques used to capture aquatic prey to the land, and causing concern for the conservation of declining populations of local breeding seabirds. With the objective of curbing the impact of pelican predation on seabird populations, a management intervention was implemented on two islands of the West Coast National Park and proved successful to reduce predation. In addition, the Western Cape pelican population was found to be genetically less variable than other southern African breeding colonies, possibly due to the demographic bottleneck experienced during the early part of the 20th century and to the low frequency of immigration into this population. However, pelicans from the Western Cape dispersed and some individuals entered into contact with pelicans further north, indicating that cooperative seabird-eating behaviour could be exported to other populations. Her thesis amalgamates concepts and methodologies from the fields of Population Ecology, Life-History, Population Genetics, Behavioural Ecology, Avian Disease Ecology, Adaptive Management and Conservation, in order to investigate the complex ecological interactions among Great White Pelicans, human landscapes and locally breeding seabird species.
Supervisor: Professor Les G Underhill (Animal Demography Unit, Zoology Department). Co-supervisors: Professor Peter G Ryan (Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, Zoology Department), Dr Rob JM Crawford (Marine and Coastal Management, Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism, South Africa) and Dr Rauri Bowie (University of California at Berkeley).
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| | 2010-02-02 | Les Underhill | | Report from Barberspan, and the SAFRING Ringers' Conference |
ADU postdoc Magda Remisiewicz is currently at Barberspan Nature Reserve doing fieldwork. This is the site of the SAFRING Ringers' Conference next month.
Magda reports:
"We are having very good catches of waders – more than 60 in less than a week. Little Stints and Kittlitz's Plover are abundant, and there are also having more Ringed Plovers and Common Sandpipers than usual. There are lots of ducks and we trapped a few Yellow-billed Ducks in our walk-in traps for waders. There is also a
mixed flock Lesser and Greater Flamingos containing about 3000 birds.
"We are also making some local arrangements for the Ringers' Conference. There is enthusiasm here for all ringers attending to participate in a large quelea ringing project during that weekend.
"This past weekend the waterbird count was done for CWAC, coordinated by Mafeking Bird Club and the Westvaal Bird Club."
The dates of the Ringers Conference are 12–15 March. Dieter Oschadleus, SAFRING coordinator, says:
"Registrations for Barberspan are rolling in at a steady pace.
There are still quite a few places open but don't wait too long to
register, to ensure you get the type of accommodation you would like.
This conference is open to anyone interested in
ringing in particular, and the study of birds in general."
Details are on the SAFRING website
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