Some lessons on the impact of cattle on wildlife from the Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment (KLEE), Laikipia Kenya

Savannas provide a key habitat for wildlife and have been a major source of livelihoods to many people, mainly through livestock production. Interactions between domestic and wild herbivores in these systems are particularly... [ view full abstract ]

Savannas provide a key habitat for wildlife and have been a major source of livelihoods to many people, mainly through livestock production. Interactions between domestic and wild herbivores in these systems are particularly important because livestock often share the same habitat resources with wildlife. Despite having been studied extensively, there is little consensus on the exact nature of these interactions, in part because of the rarity of controlled replicated experiments. Of particular interest is the extent to which cattle might compete with wildlife and the factors that might intensify or ameliorate this competition. Using a series of replicated herbivore exclosures to exclude different combination of cattle, megaherbivore, meso-herbivore wildlife, we tested how cattle influence habitat use by wild meso-herbivores. Between March 2002 and November 2014, we conducted a total of 18 dung surveys and counted 30,778 dung piles. We used the total dung per plot as a relative assay of herbivore use individual plots. Cattle competitively suppressed all the common species of meso-herbivores in our study system, including both grazers (zebra, oryx, hartebeest) and mixed feeders (eland, Grants gazelle), but did not have significant effect on megaherbivores (elephant and giraffe). However, the impact of cattle on most of these species was contingent on both the presence of megaherbivores and the amount of rainfall. Our results suggest that although cattle do competitively suppress most wild meso-herbivores, examination of the broader context of these interactions could reveal some interesting pathways for coexistence between livestock and wildlife.