Markus Borner

Effective enforcement in a conservation area.

Wildlife within protected areas is under increasing threat from bushmeat and illegal trophy trades, and many argue that enforcement within protected areas is not sufficient to protect wildlife. We examined 50 years of records from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and calculated the history of illegal harvest and enforcement by park authorities. We show that a precipitous decline in enforcement in 1977 resulted in a large increase in poaching and decline of many species. Conversely, expanded budgets and antipoaching patrols since the mid-1980s have greatly reduced poaching and allowed populations of buffalo, elephants, and rhinoceros to rebuild.

Can parks protect migratory ungulates? The case of the Serengeti wildebeest

The conservation of migratory species can be problematic because of their requirements for large protected areas. We investigated this issue by examining the annual movements of the migratory wildebeest, Connochaetes taurinus, in the 25000 km2 Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem of Tanzania and Kenya. We used Global Positioning System telemetry to track eight wildebeest during 1999–2000 in relation to protected area status in different parts of the ecosystem. The collared wildebeest spent 90% of their time within well-protected core areas. However, two sections of the wildebeest migration route – the Ikoma Open Area and the Mara Group Ranches – currently receive limited protection and are threatened by poaching or agriculture. Comparison of current wildebeest migration routes to those recorded during 1971–73 indicates that the western buffer zones appear to be used more extensively than in the past. This tentative conclusion has important repercussions for management and needs further study. The current development of community-run Wildlife Management Areas as additional buffer zones around the Serengeti represents an important step in the conservation of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. This study demonstrates that detailed knowledge of movement of migratory species is required to plan effective conservation action.

Population regulation of Serengeti Wildebeeest: a test of the food hypothesis

SummaryThe food hypothesis proposes that density dependent mortality regulates populations through food shortage. For Serengeti wildebeest, we found an empirical relationship between dry season adult mortality rate, density and food supply. This relationship predicted that: (1) the population would stabilize between 1.0 and 1.5 million animals, (2) dry season mortality would be density dependent and sufficient to account for the levelling off of this large ungulate population. Recent observations have tested and confirmed these predictions.

Continuous Administration of Sorafenib in Combination with Transarterial Chemoembolization in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Results of a Phase I Study

BACKGROUND AND AIM It is unknown whether sorafenib can be combined with transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. This study assesses the safety and tolerability of a continuous regimen of sorafenib combined with TACE. METHODS This was an open-label phase I study testing a continuous administration of sorafenib (dose escalation from 200 mg twice daily [bid] to 400 mg bid) starting 7 days prior to TACE with doxorubicin (50 mg). RESULTS Twenty-one patients were screened and 14 received sorafenib combined with TACE. Because there were no dose-limiting toxicities in the first three patients who received sorafenib at a dose of 200 mg bid, subsequent patients received 400 mg bid. Twenty-seven procedures were performed (median, two per patient) and two local therapy-related severe adverse events occurred. The median duration of sorafenib therapy was 246 days (range, 14-547 days). Sorafenib-related adverse events of grade ≥3 were hand-foot skin reaction (n = 3), weight loss (n = 2), diarrhea (n = 1), abdominal pain (n = 1), and thrombocytopenia (n = 3). After treatment with sorafenib and TACE, there was a significant decrease in the concentration of plasma vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) from 93 ng/l to 67 ng/l. CONCLUSIONS Continuous administration of sorafenib at a dose of 400 mg bid combined with TACE was tolerable. The adverse event profile of this regimen was comparable with that of sorafenib monotherapy with the exception of thrombocytopenia, which may be more frequent. There were no increases in the circulating VEGF levels after TACE with this combined regimen. (Swiss Association for the Study of the Liver study number 25; ClinicalTrials.gov trial identifier, NCT00478374).

Road will ruin Serengeti

Tanzanias iconic national park must not be divided by a highway, say Andrew Dobson, Markus Borner, Tony Sinclair and 24 others. A route farther south would bring greater benefits to development and the environment.

The decline of the Serengeti Thomson's gazelle population

SummaryThe population of Thomsons gazelles in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania has declined by almost two thirds over a 13 year period. In the early 1970s, numbers stood at 0.66 million animals but had decreased to less than 0.25 million animals in 1985 as estimated by 5 different censuses using two different counting techniques. Predation, interspecific competition and disease are all factors that could have contributed to this decline, and at least one of these factors, predation, could now prevent the Thomsons gazelle population from increasing.

Competition, predation, and migration: Individual choice patterns of Serengeti migrants captured by hierarchical models

Large-herbivore migrations occur across gradients of food quality or food abundance that are generally determined by underlying geographic patterns in rainfall, elevation, or latitude, in turn causing variation in the degree of interspecific competition and the exposure to predators. However, the role of top-down effects of predation as opposed to the bottom-up effects of competition for resources in shaping migrations is not well understood. We studied 30 GPS radio-collared wildebeest and zebra migrating seasonally in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem to ask how predation and food availability differentially affect the individual movement patterns of these co-migrating species. A hierarchical analysis of movement trajectories (directions and distances) in relation to grass biomass, high-quality food patches, and predation risk show that wildebeest tend to move in response to food quality, with little attention to predation risk. In contrast, individual zebra movements reflect a balance between the risk of predation and the access to high-quality food of sufficient biomass. Our analysis shows how two migratory species move in response to different attributes of the same landscape. Counterintuitively and in contrast to most other animal movement studies, we find that both species move farther each day when resources are locally abundant than when they are scarce. During the wet season when the quality of grazing is at its peak, both wildebeest and zebra move the greatest distances and do not settle in localized areas to graze for extended periods. We propose that this punctuated movement in high-quality patches is explained by density dependency, whereby large groups of competing individuals (up to 1.65 million grazers) rapidly deplete the localized grazing opportunities. These findings capture the roles of predation and competition in shaping animal migrations, which are often claimed but rarely measured.

Black Rhino Disaster in Tanzania

The PDF is reproduced with permission from the CD version of The Centenary Archive 1903-2003, a fully searchable database of 100 years of the publications of Fauna and Flora International. More information on: http://www.fauna-flora.org/ The Society was founded in 1903 as the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire, and subsequently named the Fauna and Flora Preservation Society. Fauna & Flora International is conserving the planet’s threatened species and ecosystems – with the people and communities who depend on them.

Leopards in Western Turkey

The leopard Panthera pardus tulliana survives in south-west Turkey, but after a two-month survey there for the World Wildlife Fund, the author shows that numbers are so small and the peoples attitudes so hostile that this subspecies is probably doomed to extinction; leopards found in eastern Turkey are the Persian subspecies saxicolor . Other large predators are disappearing too, and the author urges the need to establish several large reserves, for which the Turkish Governments planned wildlife survey will provide the data.

Conservation and economic benefits of a road around the Serengeti

J. Grant C. Hopcraft,∗† ¶ Simon A. R. Mduma,‡ Markus Borner,∗† Gerald Bigurube,† Alain Kijazi,§ Daniel T. Haydon,∗ William Wakilema,§ Dennis Rentsch,† A.R.E. Sinclair,∗∗ Andrew Dobson,†† and James Daudi Lembeli‡‡ ∗Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom †Frankfurt Zoological Society, P.O. Box 14935, Arusha, Tanzania ‡Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, P.O. Box 661, Arusha, Tanzania §Tanzania National Parks, P.O. Box 3134, Arusha, Tanzania ∗∗Centre for Biodiversity Research, University of British Columbia, 6270 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada ††Eno Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1003, U.S.A. ‡‡Parliamentary Committee on Land, Natural Resources and Environment, Tanzania, P.O. Box 1065, Kahama, Tanzania