Systems approach towards surface water distribution in Kruger National Park, South Africa

Abstract

There was concerted effort, especially between the 1960s and 1990s, to increase the distribution of surface water in Kruger National Park (KNP). As a consequence, most of the park was within easy walking distance of a permanent water source for large, mobile herbivores during the peak of the water-for-game programme. This situation was unnatural and led to various unintended ecological effects. In reaction to this and in response to changing conservation and management paradigms, the water provision policy was revised in 1997. Since the policy change, about two-thirds of the more than 300 boreholes have been closed and many catchment dams have been breached in an ongoing process. This new approach towards water provision has a strong spatial focus and aims to recreate and mimic a more natural mosaic of spatio-temporal variability in surface water availability. KNP managers hope that the change in water provision will induce spatial and temporal variation in how elephants utilize landscapes, which is a key objective of the current KNP Elephant Management Plan. Although it seems unlikely that the reduced availability of water has had any numerical effects on the elephant population thus far, it did induce some spatial changes: elephants are now even more strongly attracted to the large river systems than before. More research is needed to ascertain whether surface water manipulation in KNP, where water is naturally relatively widely distributed, is effective in creating spatio-temporal refugia for biodiversity that are sensitive towards elephant impacts.