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Namibian Wildlife Surveys archive
This archive of reports of wildlife surveys in Namibia aims to:
- provide easy public access to published information and statistics
- enable easy stakeholder access to recent and historical data on wildlife populations
- provide a comprehensive archive of wildlife survey reports in Namibia
Public access to information is a vital component of ensuring community engagement in prevalent issues. Wildlife surveys are critical to determine the health of wildlife populations and determine trends over time to guide conservation and management actions.
Wildlife surveys are done for different species using methods that are suited to counting them (e.g. by air or road) in their natural habitats. Such surveys need to be repeated over time to detect long-term trends and inform conservation managers. The Namibian government, non-governmental organisations and private reserves all conduct regular surveys covering different parts of Namibia and targeting different species. This archive will thus serve as a repository of our collective knowledge of the trends and status of a variety of species occurring throughout Namibia.
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The desert-adapted lions (Panthera leo) of northwest Namibia inhabit arid and semi-arid habitats, primarily within communal conservancy lands, which they share with semi-nomadic pastoralists. Though of considerable conservation interest, no systematic population survey of these lions has previously been attempted. From 6 November 2022 to 6 January 2023, 45 trained surveyors covered approximately 40,000 km² of conservancy and government-managed lands, identifying individual lions by vibrissae (whisker-spot) patterns and other demographic indicators.
| Attachment | Size |
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| First systematic population survey of the desert_adapted lions_northwest Namibia.pdf | 1.13 MB |
The lions of Namibia's Kunene Region are sought after by tourists, but they are a local threat to livestock farming, and are still largely unresearched in terms of their ecology and ranging behaviour. Though lions in Kunene have been monitored for more than twenty years, it may come as a surprise that the population has not been systematically counted throughout its range - until now. It is less surprising when one realises that the lion range in Kunene covers more than 51,000 km² of mountainous desert landscape.
| Attachment | Size |
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| First_ever systematic lion population survey in northwest Namibia.pdf | 1.02 MB |
Estimating abundance of wildlife populations can be challenging and costly, especially for species that are difficult to detect and that live at low densities, such as cougars (Puma concolor). Remote, motion‐sensitive cameras are a relatively efficient monitoring tool, but most abundance estimation techniques using remote cameras rely on some or all of the population being uniquely identifiable. Recently developed methods estimate abundance from encounter rates with remote cameras and do not require identifiable individuals.
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| Estimating abundance of an unmarked_low_density species using cameras.pdf | 590.21 KB |
Robust abundance estimates of wild animal populations are needed to inform management policies and are often obtained through mark–recapture (MR) studies. Visual methods are commonly used, which limits data collection to daylight hours and good weather conditions. Passive acoustic monitoring offers an alternative, particularly if acoustic cues are naturally produced and individually distinctive. Here we investigate the potential of using individually distinctive signature whistles in a MR framework and evaluate different components of study design.