21 August 2008
Conservationists are now hoping to have all the exotic fallow deer off Robben Island by the end of september.
If this happens, it will bring forward capture plans so as to remove these animals ahead of the summer and accompanying reduced grazing availability in the already severely damaged island ecosystem.
But the interim chief executive officer of the Robben Island Museum, Seelan Naidoo, is working to resolve this and other management problems on the island and has told conservationists he will not make any firm decisions on the animal issue before crucial one-on-one meetings with the SPCA and CapeNature, to be followed by a round-table meeting with all players. This joint meeting could be held within the next three weeks.
A critical decision to be made there will be what to do with the thousands of exotic rabbits on the island - originally estimated at 5 000 but possibly now many more.
Animal lovers want to rescue as many rabbits as they can, but the province's conservation authority, CapeNature, is adamant that rabbits constitute too big an ecological threat, they point to devastation in Australia as an example, to be allowed to be taken off the island alive.
Naidoo has been appointed to sort out the management issues, following the suspension and pending disciplinary hearings of chief executive Paul Langa, chief operating officer Denmark Tungwana, and chief finance officer Lesetja Masekwameng on charges of gross negligence and mismanagement relating to an income shortfall of R25-million in the previous financial year.
Langa was still in charge in April when the Cape Argus broke the story of an ecological catastrophe on the island, caused partly by the long dry summer but also by the explosion of rabbits which stripped all the palatable vegetation, even climbing 2-mitres into thorn trees to get at green leaves.
A number of antelope starved to death or succumbed because of their weakened statel, including the small bontebok herd, leaving about 200-plus deer, a small herd of springbok and one reported remaining eland in a pitiful condition.
When the story broke, Searl Derman, owner of a private game farm, Aquila, near Touws River, stepped in and was given permission by the museum authorities to feed the animals and make plans to remove the exotic species.
Using mostly his own re-sources but helped by some donations, Derman and his team have been going out to the island once a week to feed the animals, taking anything from 40 to 140 bales of lucerne at a time, as well as vegetables like sweet potatoes, carrots, cabbages and butternut, and fruit like pears and apples.
The deer have recovered well because of the feeding, but the springbok tend not to take artificial feed and are surviving, although not in a good condition, because of the vegetation growth following the good winter rains.
However, the rabbits are still everywhere on the island.
On Wednesday the Cape Argus went to Robben Island with Derman, his small team and former Sanccob manager Estelle van der Merwe, who has extensive experience of working with seabirds on the island, to watch the feeding operation.
Neither of the pair was willing to say too much on the record before the meeting being called by Naidoo.
However, Derman, who had planned to habituate the animals to four feeding points ahead of long-term capture plans over six months or more, has now adjusted his proposed capture method.
Instead, he wants to use a helicopter to chase the deer into capture bomas and bring them off in individual crates soon.
"We can do it by the end of September," he said, while stressing that this depended on the go-ahead from Naidoo after the joint meeting.
Derman, who is spending a considerable amount on the feeding, did not want to comment on a possible solution to the rabbit problem, but did say he was not prepared to fund the shooting of the animals, should this be the final decision.
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