Abstract
Based on published and unpublished records, together with original data collected from regular field trips over a 15-year period, 68 mammal species have been reliably recorded from the Mountain Zebra National Park. I assessed the current status of all mammal species, in relation to park expansion and research effort over time (1937–2020). Although numerous large and charismatic mammal species have been reintroduced to the park since it was gazetted in 1937, both in an attempt to restore the historical diversity of the region and to attract tourists, research effort in the surveying of the smaller and more cryptic mammal species has been sorely lacking. I recommend that future survey work targets the small, mostly fossorial mammals (i.e. golden and rodent moles, elephant shrews and gerbils) and insectivorous bats.Conservation implications: This work provides critical presence data for several mammal species from an important protected area that straddles three biomes in South Africa.
Highlights
South Africa boasts a network of 20 national parks that are situated across a range of vegetation biomes
In its first 27 years of existence, it was estimated that a total of 60 mammalian species could have been present in MZNP (Table 1)
The 1999 to 2002 period saw the number of mammals supposedly present in the park decline to just 35 (Table 1). This is likely an artefact of a lack of sampling and/or documented fieldwork in the park during this period as the number of mammal species present in the park increased to 63 between 2003 and 2020 (Table 1) when dedicated fieldwork was being conducted by the Rhodes University Department of Zoology and Entomology
Summary
South Africa boasts a network of 20 national parks that are situated across a range of vegetation biomes. The primary function of these national parks is to protect the ecological integrity of these various natural ecosystems for current and future generations (Bezuidenhout & Brown 2008). To sustain the viability of the mountain zebra population, the park was extended in 1964 and 1996 by incorporating various farms adjacent to the park (Bezuidenhout & Brown 2008). The park was expanded again in 2002, but by this stage, the conservation and management focus had shifted more towards the conservation of biodiversity as a whole, rather than just the viability of the mountain zebra population (SANParks 2016)
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