Marking trees are important hotspots of communication for cheetahs: Here they exchange information with and about other cheetahs via scent marks, urine and scats. A team from the Cheetah Research Project of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) now showed that several mammalian species on farmland in Namibia maintain a network for intra- and interspecific communication at cheetah trees. Black-backed jackals, African wildcats and warthogs visited and sniffed the cheetahs' “places to be” more frequently than control trees, the team concluded from photos and videos recorded by wildlife camera traps in a paper in the scientific journal “Mammalian Biology”. A common prey species of the cheetahs, however, avoided these hotspots. A territorial cheetah male scent...
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Among the rambling herd painted onto the rocks of Namibia's Erongo mountains, some creatures are easy to spot - the long necks of giraffes, the spikes of antelopes' horns. Other animals have faded beyond recognition. Local guide Johannes Ikun Nani had only seen his ancestors' rock art in books, until a job took him to the country's central region, where the ancient rock paintings and engravings have become a growing tourist attraction over the years. Nani counts himself lucky to have witnessed his heritage firsthand - especially because archaeologists say climate change may be accelerating its disappearance. Johannes Ikun Nani stands in front of a boulder displaying ancient San rock at the Omandumba farm in the central region of Namibia, September 30, 2022. Thomson Reuters Founda...
Read MoreRhino and elephant poaching has declined significantly this year in Namibia, home to the only free-roaming black rhinos left in the world, government data showed on Monday. Nine rhinos have been illegally killed by hunters so far in 2021, the lowest number in eight years for the period, according to the figures from the ministry of environment and tourism. Four elephants have been killed this way, a five-year low. FILE PHOTO: Foreign tourists in safari riverboats observe elephants along the Chobe river bank near Botswana's northern border where Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia meet. REUTERS/Peter Apps The southern African nation is home to the second-largest white rhino population in the world after South Africa and also accounts for a third of the world's remaining black rhinos. ...
Read MoreIncidents of rhino poaching in Namibia have been dropping steadily as timely intelligence work has helped nab hunters before they shoot in known hotspots, the government said on Tuesday. Joint police and government task forces have proven “extremely successful”, the spokesman for the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism said, with intelligence enabling a proactive, rather than reactive, response. “Instead of the discovery of a dead rhino initiating an investigation, would-be poachers are now regularly arrested while they are still conspiring to kill a rhino,” Romeo Muyunda said in a statement celebrating World Rhino Day. It said just 22 rhinos have been poached in Namibia so far this year, down from 46 in 2019, 78 in 2018, 55 in 2017 and 61 in 2016. Of 88 arrests ...
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