News & Blog


2022-04-10
More on Marloth Park Lions - story continued by Dawie Fourie on Facebook


This is the second story on Lions by Dawie Fourie which I share with his permission on this website.

Story number 1 ( Link to previous blog entry)


As mentioned yesterday that Lionspruit was now a vacant territorium. Or is it?


To get to my argument about Lionspruit and its suitability for lions lets, for those of us getting older and who don't remember all that well anymore ( [????] ), briefly remind ourselves how the ecological pyramid works! It is important for understanding my next piece...


At the bottom of the pyramid we have our producers. That is all the plants, including things like algae (and in the Northern hemisphere even lichens). Above them we have your primary consumers. All the things that eat the plants and other producers. In Marloth Park it is everything from locusts eating your plants in the garden to the kudus and bushbuck to giraffes and everything inbetween.


The next level is your secondary consumers or predators. That includes everything from the antlions in your driveway to the genet in your roof to the banded mongoose etc. In other words, everything that eats another live thing. Then there are the super predators. Typically we will think of things such as leopards, hyenas and lions but one can even include things such as the snouted cobra. And then, working at all levels of the food pyramid are the decomposers that break down organic material, from dead animals and plants to bones and hair.


In biology all teachers are idealists. They always teach the "perfect" scenario but in real life there are a million things that can go wrong or that can stir up the mix and plunge everything in disarray. For one. In a perfect ecosystem there is a flow of energy from the producers to the primary consumers to secondary consumers to decomposers and back to tge soil tgat feeds tge plants. Unfortunately modern life has left us with ecosystem that look like broken puzzles.


Back to the perfect pyramid of hierarchy. The thing looks like a pyramid for a reason. At the bottom you have a very wide base with lots and lots of producers. Then you have a lot fewer consumers and even fewer predators preying on the consumers. Then at the very top you have only a small number of super predators.


To give an example: in the Kruger Park you have 10's of 1000's of square kilometres of bush - everything from the tall grasses at Pretoriuskop to the tall mopani veld round Punda Maria to the riverine forests along the Levubu River or the Sabie River. Everything from grasses to forbes and herbs to algae in our river systems.


At primary consumer level we have everything from, probably billions of insects and "goggas" that eat the trees and the grass and whatever else that is, or was once green, to the "bokkies" we can easily see.


In Kruger (at least the old, original 19000km2 Kruger Park)(nowadays there is about an extra 15000 km2 of land that form part of the Greater Kruger/Limpopo conservation area), there are, in good years, up to 160000 impalas, more than 30000 buffel, and about 35000 zebras to mention just a few (o yes, and don't forget my favourate animals - the 20000 plus elephants! [????] ). (If you think of primary consumers it includes millions of individual birds that depend on seeds and other plant-based foods).


Now at secondary consumer level you have a whole lot less animals. Compared to for instance the billions of rodents that live in Kruger there are relatively few mongoose, gennets, birds of prey etc. Obviously the average person visiting the Kruger Park is not interested in rodents at all (actually a whole lot of people are scared if them), but if we look at the bigger animals the chance is you're, on an average trip to Kruger see a couple of hundred impalas - maybe thousands (at least, some days it feels like 1000's), but you will only see a few lions (if you're lucky).
The thing is - and it is a very important principle - in the pyramid of hierarchy you will lose energy at every new trophic level. Say you have 100000 trees. They can perhaps sustain 100 kudu but the kudu can only sustain 2 lions. The higher you go up in the pyramid the less energy is available and the Greater the loss of energy.
So, back to Lionspruit! It is just about 1500ha or 15km2 . Is it ecologicaly suitable for lions? (How many of you have driven through Lionspruit and had seen virtually no animals? Just that alone should make you wonder...).
But more about Lionspruit specifically, and it's suitability to stock lions as well as Statute and Common Law principles that govern the keeping of lions next time! 


 

Dawie Fourie is a long time resident in Marloth Park and is known for his paintings, especially large realistic elephant paintings. His work has been sold and is displayed worldwide. 

Photo above: Dawie also shared this picture on Facebook of a Lion who was killed in 1999 in Marloth Park after he and his coalition brothers killed a Mozambique "entrepreneur" who stole solar panels from a house in Marloth Park.