Fire and grazers in the West African savanna. Leendert Frederik Klop

Transcription

1 Fire and grazers in the West African savanna Leendert Frederik Klop

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3 Fire and grazers in the West African savanna PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. P.F. van der Heijden, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op donderdag 3 september 2009 klokke uur door Leendert Frederik Klop geboren te Hellevoetsluis in 1975

4 Promotiecommissie : Promotores : Prof. dr. H.A. Udo de Haes Prof. dr. H.H.T. Prins (Wageningen Universiteit en Researchcentrum) Co-promotor : Dr. H.H. de Iongh Referent : Prof. dr. I.J. Gordon (CSIRO Davies Laboratory, Aitkenvale, Australia) Overige leden : Prof. dr. G.R. de Snoo

5 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Study area 21 Chapter 3 Fires and forage quality: the effects of burning regime on savanna regrowth quality 29 Chapter 4 Resource selection by grazing herbivores on post-fire regrowth in a West African woodland savanna 45 Chapter 5 Resource partitioning among African savanna herbivores: the importance of diet composition, food quality, and body mass 63 Chapter 6 Savanna fires govern community structure of ungulates in Bénoué National Park, Cameroon 95 Chapter 7 Diversity and species composition of West African ungulate assemblages: effects of fire, climate and soil 115 Chapter 8 Discussion 143

6 Summary 161 Samenvatting (Dutch summary) 165 Curriculum Vitae 169

7 .. Acknowledgements This thesis is the result of three years of field work which I carried out while working as Junior Expert Wildlife Management in Cameroon. The JEP -project was financed by the Directoraat Generaal Internationale Samenwerking (DGIS) of the Government of the Netherlands and the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) of Leiden University. Although this thesis focuses on the research, being a JEP involved much more than that. Significant parts of my time were spent on supervising students, writing reports, giving training, doing administrative tasks and dealing with hassles of various kinds. Spending years in the field working on fire and wildlife in an African savanna was interchangeably energizing and exhaustive, and truly an unforgettable experience. But it s not just the work part that made my time in Africa so valuable. I will never forget the wonderful African sense of humor, the impressive diversity of wildlife and birds, and the sometimes less wonderful food in one of the most diverse countries on the continent. When I returned to the Netherlands after five years in West Africa, the CML kindly provided one year of funding to write this thesis. This research was a major undertaking and it could not have been done without the help and support of many people, and I want to thank all friends, colleagues and students who one way or the other played a role in this project. As always in Acknowledgements, space here is too short to mention everyone. First of all I want to thank my wife Janneke van Goethem, with whom I carried out much of the field work and who provided company and support throughout. I am grateful to all colleagues at the CML, especially Hans de Iongh, Helias Udo de Haes, Paul Loth, Jan van der Ploeg, Merlijn van Weerd, Tessa Minter, Norbert Sonne, Gerard Persoon, Ruth Noorduyn, Maarten van t Zelfde, Annelies Oskam, Edith de Roos, Roswitha Adelaar, Wouter de Groot, Erik Kien and Jakkus van der Salm. In Wageningen, Herbert Prins, Arend Brunsting and Ignas Heitkönig provided valuable support, and Christine de Jong helped greatly by doing the dung sample analyses. Many people at the Centre for Environment and Development Studies in Cameroon (CEDC) provided invaluable support, most notably Jean Pierre Mvondo, Stephen van der Mark, Madi Ali, Francis Tarla, Eric Fotsing, Theodore Mayaka and Charles Njomaha. Assan Gomse and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MINEF) of the Republic of Cameroon provided much help by enabling me to do this research in Bénoué. I am especially grateful to the vii

8 .. people at Buffle Noir, whose help and support was indispensable in carrying out the field work and whose company was always a pleasure: Kadri, Bello, Moussa, Amadou, Tao, Audou, Monsieur Ibrahim, Jeremy, Hervé Madougou, and all people who helped by guiding, collecting dung samples, and sorting countless grass samples into leaves, stems, and living and dead parts. Several students participated in the research in Bénoué, and I want to thank Marjan van de Weg, Sergej Jansen, Roeland Koelewijn, Tom Peppink, Joost van Munster, Penny Elzinga, Lisette Leliveld, Paul Bakker, Nina van Moll, Anouk Janssens, Amar Nanda, Marjolein Bakx and of course the notorious trio Daniel Knoop, Jaap Mittendorff and Ente Rood (please don t burn down my house again, guys) for their excellent company and good work. viii