Page 16 - Professorial Lecture - Professor Mapaure

Habitat modification by elephants (in particular) at high densities (popularly known
as ‘the elephant problem’), coupled by fire, generally has negative impacts on the
functional diversity of these ecosystems. Thus, long-term monitoring of fire,
vegetation and elephant populations for the formulation of proper management
strategies is essential. Many protected areas in Africa lack such programmes and,
often, management plans are based on extrapolations from experiences and
findings from non-comparable environments from elsewhere. Interactions
between elephants and fire in causing vegetation change have been widely
documented in East and Southern Africa, including the case study we did in North-
western Zimbabwe summarised below (Mapaure & Moe, 2009) where a
programme designed to monitor long-term vegetation dynamics was established
in 1972 by Anderson (1973). Our studies of the interactive processes and dynamics
in miombo woodland indicate that:

1. Elephants (alone) at high densities destroy trees and reduce woody cover. This
opens up the woodland for more grass growth (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Individual effects of elephants on woodland structure and functioning.

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