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To provide a preliminary guideline on carrying capacities for game species suited to the Little Karoo. These are expressed as the estimated area (hectares) required per animal for the major habitat types present.

It is a guideline for assisting landowners to utilize their veld at sustainable levels. There is no specific combination of game animals that will be suitable for introduction to all of the farms in the Little Karoo. The mix of animals introduced must be in accordance with the variety and extent of the habitats on a particular farm.

Capture Source: Jan Vlok (Regalis Environmental Services) and Ken Coetzee (Conservation Management Services)

The carrying capacities for game were based on the current recommendations from the Department of Agriculture for large domestic stock (hectares / large stock unit) for pristine examples of 32 habitat types in the Little Karoo. This was done by overlaying the carrying capacity recommendation map of the Department of Agriculture with those of the habitat map prepared by Vlok et al. (2005) for the Little Karoo.

Unfortunately the Department of Agriculture’s map is not very detailed and does not cover all 56 Little Karoo habitat types. However it does provide clear recommendations for the two extremes (Valley Thicket with Spekboom with highest and Proteoid Fynbos with lowest carrying capacities) as well as several others such as Apronveld, Gannaveld and Sandolienveld. Carrying capacity recommendations for habitat units not recognized by the Department of Agriculture map were interpolated for pristine examples of such veld. This was done by estimating the degree to which plants palatable to domestic stock will decrease or increase in the habitat type in relation to the Department of Agriculture’s recommendation for the most similar habitat type.

Once confident that the carrying capacity for pristine examples of the 32 habitat types had been adjusted reasonably well within the variance of current recommendations, they were adjusted for the transformed conditions of these habitat types. These were determined by the degree of reduction of palatable plants that one can expect for each habitat type for the two levels of transformation (Note that this process still needs to be edited by agricultural experts). There is no easy sliding scale to predict the outcomes, as certain habitat types are more vulnerable to the impacts of transformation than others. Severe grazing may, for instance, rapidly result in the loss of sensitive topsoil in certain habitat types, but not in others with hard surfaces. Severe transformation in soft soils will result in a severe reduction in carrying capacity, but moderate transformation may have a far less impact on carrying capacity as veld can recover rapidly.

Available documentation:

Vlok, J. H. J., R. M. Cowling, R.M. and Wolf, T. 2005. A vegetation map for the Little Karoo. Unpublished maps and report for a SKEP project supported by Grant No 1064410304. (Cape Town, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund) [online] URL: http://bgis.sanbi.org/littlekaroo/index.asp.

Vlok, J.H.J. and Coetzee, K. 2008. Ecological Capacity of the Little Karoo for Larger Wildlife - Matching game species to habitat and recommended

SANS 1878

FGDC-STD-001-1998