Estimating the effects of land abandonment on mammal communities in the Karoo region of South Africa

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Small livestock production has significantly transformed natural land within South Africa, but the extent and nature of the impacts of this land use on wildlife remains poorly understood. The establishment of a formal protected area (PA) within a well-established small livestock farming area in the Karoo provided a unique opportunity to investigate the response of mammal communities to both sustained farming impacts and how the cessation of farming activities across a large area may impact the persistence and colonisation of highly mobile species. Through extensive camera trapping and a dynamic multi-species occurrence model within a (Before-After-Control-Intervention) BACI design, we investigated the community diversity and structure of medium and large mammals in addition to changes in their persistence and colonisation following this land use change. Camera traps detected 25 species, from 14 families, within the combined study area. Community-level and species-specific probability of colonisation and persistence did not differ significantly between land that remained in use for commercial livestock farming and that which was abandoned to form a new protected area. Farmer concerns that predators would leave the PA and colonise their farms were not supported. Long term monitoring of these sites will prove important to our understanding of the potential of land, subject to prolonged livestock farming, to recover and support higher levels of species richness and wildlife abundance.