Mountain Zebra National Park

The Mountain Zebra National Park (MZNP), 28,412 hectares in size, is situated in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa and is found in a transitional area between the Grassland, Nama Karoo and Albany Thicket biomes. The uniqueness of this transitional area means the MZNP conserves important ecological processes. It is one of four National Parks, including Addo Elephant, Camdeboo and Karoo, that forms part of the Frontier cluster of the South African National Parks. The MZNP has been inhabited by humans from as far back as 14 000 years ago and boasts examples of their ancient stone artefacts and rock art. In 1937 the MZNP was proclaimed to conserve a population of endangered Cape mountain zebra, subsequently contributing greatly towards the persistence of this species. The threats posed to the MZNP’s ability to conserve its fauna and flora include conflicting land uses, inappropriate management of large herbivores and fire.

Fauna

The habitats within Mountain Zebra National Park support a variety of large mammalian species, some of which were present when the park was proclaimed and others which have been reintroduced in accordance with the objective of restoring the diversity of mammals that occurred historically. For example, buffalo were reintroduced in 1998 followed by black rhinoceros and gemsbok in 2002. Caracal were the primary carnivores in the park until the first large carnivore introduction of four cheetahs in 2007. Brown hyenas were reintroduced as the primary scavengers in 2008. Three lions were introduced in 2013, but just over a year later the female lion was returned to Karoo National Park, leaving only the two male lions which were sourced from Welgevonden Game Reserve. Since the proclamation of the park, the herbivore guild has been effectively restored and any future reintroductions will be restricted to carnivores.

Flora

The three main vegetation types found in Mountain Zebra National Park are the Karoo Escarpment Grassland, Eastern Upper Karoo, and Eastern Cape Escarpment Thicket. The Eastern Upper Karoo is characterized by flat and gently sloping plains interspersed with hills and rocky areas where the dominant flora is dwarf shrubs. The Karoo Escarpment Grassland is characterized by low mountains and hills with wiry tussock grasslands and mountain wire grass being the dominant flora. The Eastern Cape Escarpment Thicket is characterized by steeply sloping escarpment and mountain slopes with medium-high and semi-open to closed thicket where the dominant flora is the olive tree.

Translocating the Brown Hyena

Translocations of large carnivores is a common phenomenon throughout Africa, however, post-release monitoring in order to determine the success and/or failure of the translocations has rarely occurred. The conversion of large areas of agricultural land into game farming and conservation areas in the Eastern Cape, South Africa led to a large number of predators being reintroduced into various fenced reserves. Brown hyenas are one of the predators which have been reintroduced into the Eastern Cape, and the earliest reintroduction was of three individuals in 1985 into the Great Fish River Complex. However, the brown hyena remains one of the least studied large carnivores in South Africa. The most recent reintroduction of brown hyenas into the Eastern Cape was that of three individuals in 2008 into the Mountain Zebra National Park. However, no research had been conducted on the success of the reintroduction of these brown hyenas into Mountain Zebra. Therefore, Mountain Zebra provided the perfect opportunity to broaden our understanding of the role that brown hyenas play in an enclosed system. We wanted to estimate the density of brown hyenas in an enclosed reserve and to provide information on their distribution and feeding ecology. This was achieved by conducting a comprehensive camera trapping survey and scat analysis.

Image attributions for species menu exemplars not collected from our camera traps can be accessed here.