Stuart on Nature - Blog Post

The value of game

September 25, 2016
The only reason game ranching survives and grows is because of good financial returns - and we feel that is how it should be. We don't like the trend of breeding and marketing morphs - 'golden wildebeest', etc and feel it should be outlawed!
Now along comes the Savanna Buffalo bull Inala, that sold recently for R 168 million. We admit the market is obviously there but at this sort of pricing something is not right in the world of game ranching. Profits yes, these prices are becoming an obscenity. 

Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

The Kruger drought and cull!

September 25, 2016
Outrage over the announcement that SANParks in Kruger National Park is to cull 4,700 Savanna Buffalo and 750 Common Hippopotamus, because of the ongoing drought. Why?
Kruger is a fenced reserve, apart from some dropped sections of the international boundary with Mozambique; and as such despite exceeding 20,000 square kilometres it has to be managed. For decades there have been controlled burns, closure and opening of waterpoints, in the past culls of Elephant and Buffalo. The proposed cull wi...
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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

Uranium mining and fracking in the South African Karoo

August 12, 2016
We have noted the claims of 'victory' on the uranium mining front in the Karoo. This is not a victory, as it is the normal practice of mining companies to lay claim to vast tracts of land, followed by more intensive prospecting, that brings them closer to the 'mother lode'. The disruption, pollution and water extraction levels will still be there! How much of this depends on the 8 questionable nuclear power stations our government hopes to have built? An open question!

The same goes for fracki...
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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

The Feral/Domestic Cat Saga continued - nothing has changed

May 11, 2016
This article although published in 1991 is still relevant today. We raise the issue again because in our home village of Loxton, domestic and feral cats have reached pest proportions. Most are free-ranging and have no owner (does any cat?), a few have homes. Our feelings remain the same, in that domestic cats should be fitted with collars and bells to warn small potential prey animals (it really works) and feral cats should be trapped and euthanised. 
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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

Lions from South American captivity

May 10, 2016
Recently, more than 30 circus and zoo Lions were flown from South America to a facility in the north of South Africa. this has, in some quarters, been hailed as a great success for Lion conservation. Really?

These Lions have been held over several generations in captivity, and as a result are not good specimens, nor can they ever be released into the wild. Perhaps, yes, they will have more comfortable quarters, be better fed but in the long run would it not have been better to euthanize these ...
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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

Kenyan Ivory & Rhino Horn Burn! Will it help?

May 10, 2016
There have been several well publicized ivory and rhino horn burns in recent years, with the most massive in Nairobi NP, Kenya not long ago! These symbolic bonfires are spectacular and popular in some quarters but do they really help slow down poaching of Elephant and the two rhino species? We think not!

Until the demand is staunched in Asia and other parts of the world the poaching will continue. The wildlife trade is one of the largest illicit outlets and sources of income for the internatio...
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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

Conservation

January 22, 2016
Over the last few days we went through our scientific papers, scanning those still only in old paper format to keep and to put them all onto our webpage (you may have noticed already?). We came across a paper Chris read at the South African Museums Association Conference for Education Officers in Grahamstown in 1983 - some 33 years ago! We would like to share the first section of this paper with you - as nothing has changed (and not much has been achieved) in those 33 years. 

"Conservation Edu...

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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

Will the bubble burst? (Gambling with game!)

January 19, 2016

Up to 2014 game prices in South Africa soared, driven by a small number of wealthy buyers. Some game species saw prices at auctions soar by 5 times over the course of six years. In that year game ranching was valued at over 12 billion Rand. One saw the likes of billionaires Anton Rupert paying the obscene price of R 40 million for a single Buffalo bull, Cyril Ramaphosa joined the fray paying similar prices. Then along came the mutant colour forms, the ‘Golden Wildebeest’ (we have blogged ...


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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

Balance of Scale

October 31, 2015
It is already a while ago that Cecil the Lion was shot by an American dentist in Zimbabwe. The outcry, for a while, dominated the news, even rising to the level of the migrant crisis in Europe. Then a large Savanna Elephant tusker was shot by a trophy hunter in the south-east of the same country. Again, an outcry, because the Elephant had a name - a massive outcry against hunters, hunting outfitters and what they stand for. For a short time it pushed Nigeria's Boko Haram off the news headline...
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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 

The Mining Plague

March 9, 2015

The recent surge in the number of mining operations in and on the fringes of Southern African conservation areas is disturbing. This was hammered home to us on our recent trip to the Namib-Naukluft Park in the central Namib Desert. The area has experienced mining since German colonial times, with small mines exploiting deposits of mica and copper, amongst others, but this was long before the park was proclaimed.

 

Then in the 1970’s the Rossing Mine was opened on the park’s north-wester...


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Posted by Chris & Mathilde Stuart.

 
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