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Terrestrial Megafauna Response to Drone Noise Levels in Ex Situ Areas

Drone use has significantly grown in recent years, and there is a knowledge gap on how the noise produced by these systems may affect animals. We investigated how 12 species of megafauna reacted to drone sound pressure levels at different frequencies. The sound pressure level on the low frequency generated by the drone did not change species’ behavior, except for the Asian elephant. All other studied species showed higher noise sensitivity at medium and high frequencies. The Asian elephant was

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Ecology Of African Grazing And Browsing Mammals

Africa is the earth’s second largest continent, comprising 20% of its surface. Largely tropical, Africa extends as well into temperate zones to 37°N and 35°S. Eastern and southern Africa display steep elevation gradients due to the prevalence there of volcanic orogeny and rifting (29). Local landscapes are distinguished by substantial geological heterogeneity, dissected land forms, and resultant steep gradients of precipitation and vegetation. The consequent pronounced fragmentation of habitats and sharp juxtaposition of distinct vegetation types, combined with climatic oscillations

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Persistence Of Large Mammal Faunas As Indicators Of Global Human Impacts

Large mammals often play critical roles within ecosystems by affecting either prey populations or the structure and species composition of surrounding vegetation. However, large mammals are highly vulnerable to extirpation by humans and consequently, severe contractions of species ranges result in intact large mammal faunas becoming increasingly rare. We compared historical (AD 1500) range maps of large mammals with their current distributions to determine which areas today retain complete assemblages of large mammals. We estimate that less than 21% of

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Dependence of large mammals in sub-Saharan Africa on water and water management : a literature review : report to the WWF

Water is essential for life: for plants, for wildlife, for humans. Unfortunately water of good quality is in even greater demand, largely because of increasing human activities. In large parts of the world this demand is expected to continuing growing over the coming decades, as human populations and development continue to increase. At the same time it is predicted that water availability will decrease in large parts of the world because of climate change. WWF – The Netherlands is concerned

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Landscape-level changes to large mammal space use in response to a pastoralist incursion.

Pastoralists and their livestock have long competed with wildlife over access to grazing on shared rangelands. In the dynamic 21st century however, the configuration and quality of these rangelands is changing rapidly. Climate change processes, human range expansion, and the fragmentation and degradation of rangeland habitat have increased competition between pastoralist livestock and wildlife. Interactions of this type are particularly apparent in East Africa, and perhaps most obvious in northern Kenya. In 2017, following months of intense drought, a pastoralist

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Towards understanding large mammal population declines in Africa’s protected areas: A West-Central African perspective

A raft of recent studies has highlighted a major decline in large mammal populations in many of Africa’s protected areas. A recent continent-wide assessment represented a major step forward also in terms of quantifying the decline on a regional basis, but fell short in its sampling and analysis. In this paper, a way out of the “black box” of large mammal declines in Africa’s protected areas is formulated, with the aim of assisting in the preparation of further assessments in

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Modeling the dynamics of migrations for large herbivore populations in the Amboseli National Park, Kenya

The spread of human activity, settlement and land fragmentation threatens the migrations of large migratory ungulates in Africa. Modelling the migrations gives conservationists a tool for building scenarios of the threats and containment options. We propose a simple spatially explicit mathematical model of ungulate migrations based on the seasonal distribution of vegetation quantity and quality and allometric models of diet. We use the seasonal movements of selected migrants in relation to vegetation in the Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya. Parameters estimation was

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