Assist In Employer-Community Interactions In Addressing Problem Animal Incidents Adjacent To Protected Areas

Environmental protection requires that farmers and communities avoid destroying predators where possible and rather find alternative solutions to harming, hunting and poisoning these predators.

Where cattle farms are adjacent to wildlife sanctuaries and game farms, the farms must be sufficiently fenced off from one another, making use of e.g. electronic fences, game fences, razor wire, etc. It is important that the cattle farmer be alert to the dangers that these fences hold for his cattle and prevent them from electrical shock, cuts and strangulation near fences by keeping the heard away from such fences.

For farmers in areas with predators such as Lion, leopards, hyenas and cheetah, one of the biggest problems is the loss of livestock to the predators. There are however a number of measures that can be taken by farmers to reduce the scale of the problem.

The first step is to identify the predators present on the farm or in the local area. There is little point in building expensive protection against lions for instance if there are no lions around. Spoor is a good way to identify what animals are in an area, as predators are often hard to spot.

The second step is to implement good livestock management techniques to reduce the risks from predators.

Good Livestock Management

One problem is that when a farmer finds a predator eating one of his livestock, then the automatic assumption is that the predator has just killed the cow, sheep or goat. In practice, if the farmer doesn't look after his livestock well and doesn't check for disease and get it treated, then animals will die from the disease. If a goat for instance dies from illness and a hyena finds it, it will eat the carcass. The farmer who sees this or sees Hyena spoor near the carcass will assume the Hyena killed the goat, when in fact the Hyena is innocent. This means that farmers sometimes see predators as a bigger problem than they actually are. It is always easier for a farmer or farmworker to blame a predator than it is to admit that they didn't look after the livestock properly e.g. by checking for disease or bringing the livestock into the kraal at night.

Working with Nature, not Against It

When raising livestock, it is easy to look at wildlife such as impala, kudu, and other herbivores as competition - after all, they eat the same grass or bushes that the cattle and goats eat. There is then a temptation to try and get rid of the competition by either shooting the wildlife or driving it away. One problem with this is that predators will usually prey on wildlife species, but if these are not present then they are forced to turn to the farmer’s livestock as an alternative food source. Tolerating the presence of wildlife means the predators have food sources that don't involve them attacking livestock.

Click here to view a video that explains ways livestock and predators can coexist.