News
Ingrid Wiesel Dissertation
Predatory and Foraging Behaviour
of Brown Hyenas (Parahyaena brunnea (Thunberg, 1820)) at Cape Fur Seal
(Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus Schreber, 1776) Colonies Complete Dissertation |
NEWSLETTER SEPT 2008
Well, we finally know what was happening to Ray: he was getting old, blind and eventually died of natural causes at the end of June. Needless to say, I was really sad,
but he had a long life and fortunately did not meet the fate of so many other hyenas that are killed on the roads. However, he had an encounter with a vehicle just a day
before he died.MORE |
NEWSLETTER JUNE 2008
We last tracked Minerva at the beginning of December when Gino was here for our usual tracking flights. Her collar worked fine, but we knew that we had to drop the
collar off during Gino’s next visit, which was planned for February. We finally managed to fly and track Minerva in April. The collar was already sending a recovery
signal, as the battery voltage was already low.MORE |
NEWSLETTER MARCH 2008
After our first successful data download, we more or less knew where to search for the spotted hyena “Oona” for the next download. However, many of the areas where
she spends time are inaccessible, so one needs a lot of luck to actually find her. There is also only one road in the area and it is often many kilometres away from
Oona’s preferred resting sites. Nevertheless, Jessica and I decided to try and find Oona in the Koichab pan in the middle of December.MORE |
NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2007
We ventured onto new territory: we collared our first spotted hyena at the Wild Horse trough near Aus. The collaring is part of our first human-wildlife conflict study
around the eastern boundaries of the Sperrgebiet and Namib Naukluft National Parks. One of the results of our carnivore questionnaire from 2004 was that farmers
regarded spotted hyenas as a medium to high risk conflict species. MORE |
NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2007
Four hyenas are fitted with GPS collars with the option to download data remotelty. The initial plan was
to locate the animals by air and to drive afterwards close to the recorded GPS position to do the
download. However, we had to realise that the hyenas often rest many kilometres away from any road
and that the distances between the hyenas are too far to be able to do more than one download per day. MORE |
NEWSLETTER JUNE 2007
The research station at Van Reenen Bay, just north of Bogenfels, became our second home in March. We spent ten nights either in our bedrolls or in the vehicle, staring
at our cowhead bait, waiting for hyenas to come feeding. As usual, we saw many hyenas, but none of them approached the bait. The problem this time were the jackals.
A family group of jackals claimed the bait as their own shortly after our arrival and protected “their” food not only against other jackals, but also against approaching
hyenas. MORE |
NEWSLETTER MARCH 2007
The Gabusib hyena that we fitted with a GPS collar in December last year has been named Caspar in the meantime. The first data download was due at the beginning of
January. I was lucky enough to be invited by Trygve Cooper to participate on a trip through the southern part of the Sperrgebiet, which would bring us through the
areas, where we collared Caspar. I took the equipment with me and, to my surprise, found Caspar resting in the Klinghardt Mountains. MORE |
NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2006
It was finally time again to try and fit the GPS collar to one of the Hottentotbay hyenas. Our target animal “Remus” was unfortunately hit by a vehicle on the road (see
below) and we had to start from square one. However, our camera trap images and observations at the den near Anigab confirmed that there are at least four animals in
the group MORE |
NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2006
It’s been a long time since we monitored the Peninsula Clan. There were too many other projects to think of and we only followed the lives of Emma and Gypsy II on
an irregular basis. Then in May of this year we realised that something strange is happening with this clan. MORE |
NEWSLETTER JUNE 2006
Floggy, our Bogenfels hyena possibly died of old age and heat exhaustion just four weeks after we fitted him with a GPS collar. Gino and I wanted to locate him to do
the first remote data download. We first flew towards Van Reenen Bay, where we had darted him, down to Baker’s Bay and then inland towards the Klinghardt
Mountains. That’s were we received the collars mortality signal. We finally found Floggy west of the Kaukasib fountain, where he was lying in the middle of nowhere. MORE |
NEWSLETTER MARCH 2006
Fitting brown hyenas at Bogenfels with GPS collars seems to be a never-ending story. But as I reported before, we won’t give up. This time we asked H.-O. Reuter
from Windhoek to help us darting the animals. We arrived at Van Reenen Bay late in the afternoon and Trygve was already waiting for us at the research station. MORE |
NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2005
Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. As reported in the last newsletter, it took us quite some time to finally dart one of the Bogenfels hyenas to fit a GPS collar
for our pre to post impact study in the new mining area. We finally managed to fit the first of five collars to Django, a healthy male, while he was foraging at the Van
Reenen Bay seal colony. MORE |
NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2005
We did it – we retrieved Aflie’s GPS collar. In the last newsletter we reported, that we had difficulties locating our inland brown hyenas and that we therefore decided
to use the remote drop off device for Alfie’s GPS collar to drop it off before the scheduled time to ensure that we get the necessary data for our sponsor’s progress
report (Namibia Environment Fund) and to possibly get information about Vicky’s whereabouts.MORE |
NEWSLETTER JUNE 2005
After our favourite brown hyena Dollar was hit and killed on the tar road near Haalenberg in December last year, we applied with the
Namibian Roads Authority to have brown hyena warning signs mounted next to the road. First the representatives were not sure,
whether a new animal image on a warning sign would find approval, but after two months of anticipated waiting, they decided in our
favour and even accepted our design of a walking brown hyena. The signs were ordered and ready by the middle of May. We
arranged to meet Mr. Wolfgang Hartmann and Mr. Deon Maritz from the Keetmanshoop Roads Authority office at Haalenberg at the
27th of May to erect the signs. Smit Electro from Bethanie was contracted to mount them at our previously identified spots.
Brown hyena warning sign at Haalenberg. MORE |
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NEWSLETTER MARCH 2005
We mounted three sets of camera traps between December
2004 and February 2005. The first set served as a trial set near
Wolf Bay, approximately 20 km south of Lüderitz. We found a
very nice site with lots of hyena activity and waited in
anticipation for the first animals to walk through nothing.
The hyenas didn’t seem to like the weird structure suddenly
appearing next to their trail and decided to move around it. We
actually thought they would be rather inquisitive and try to
nibble at the equipment, so that we spent weeks beforehand
making it “hyena-proof. But the hyenas were not the problem.
They just avoided the trap and moved happily around it. Our
problem turned out to be the harsh and moist climate.MORE
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NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2004
Brown hyena "Dollar" was one of our favourite and most well known animals at the Wolf Bay
study site, just 10 km south of Lüderitz. We knew him since
1999 and he was fitted with a visual collar, a radio collar and
finally last year with a GPS collar. He gave us many insights into
his life and many visitors to the Brown Hyena Research Project got
to know him “personally” over the years. Dollar lived
mainly of seal pups born at the Wolf and Atlas Bay seal colonies
and lived in a home range of approximately 200 km² of size.MORE |
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NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2004
When it rains outside in the
desert one should not camp outside. At least that was the general
opinion of the Raleigh International ventures, which spent the
last days of their last phase with the Brown Hyena Research
Project at Baker’s Bay. On the day of our arrival, we found
a very nice camp-site close to the Baker’s Bay seal colony
from where we planned to map areas south of it the following day.
It started drizzling late in the afternoon, but hopes were up,
that it would pass soon, but it happened otherwise: after we all
went to bed early, the rain started to its fullest including
strong north winds, so that all of us were forced to tie our tents
down to avoid being blown away.MORE |
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NEWSLETTER JUNE 2004
Beginning of May a couple of hundred
questionnaires were sent to farmers in the southern part of the
Karas region. These questionnaires include a wide range of
questions such as carnivore occurrence and numbers or carnivore
related problems regarding livestock and other wildlife. We mainly
want to g...MORE |
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NEWSLETTER MARCH 2004
Last year some hyenas were fitted
with GPS collars to determine their home range sizes and habitat
use. The collars were equipped with a drop off device triggered by
a remote control. We knew that the collars’ batteries would
be drained by the end of February and therefore we needed to
retrieve them...MORE
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NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2003
We decided to extend our study
areas further north and included the area around Sylvia Hill into
our brown hyena monitoring programme to estimate brown hyena
population size along the coast between the ports of Luderitz and
Walvis Bay. Our first research trip took place in March 2003,
where we join...MORE |
