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pans, where an estimated 500,000 kg are harvested annually, sustaining cultural traditions such as fonya basket fishing. Ndumo is also an Important Bird Area, with over 400
species. Hippopotamuses breed there, and it is one of only three sanctuaries for wild Nile crocodiles Crocodylus niloti- cus in South Africa. The main crocodile nesting area is now disrupted by farming and gill-netting. This area formerly provided winter grazing for antelope species, the rhinoceros (now all gone) and hippopotamus, and also protects rare plants, including sand forest endemics on its fringes. Reasons why the Mbangweni/Bhekabantu communities
cut Reserve fences in 2008, and perhaps for the farming since then, revolve around a disputed land claim dating from 2000. There are allegedly two agreements: one confers co-management with benefits but no occupation, the other (which cannot be located) allegedly grants right to occupy Reserve land. Apparently, compensation remains unpaid. Exacerbated by poor relations between conservation author- ities and communities—causes of which include historical evictions and violent encounters in poaching incidents— agreement on co-management has proved elusive. Dispute resolution efforts have been made, and plans devel-
oped to support local livelihoods outside
theReserve.However, failure of one funded plan, continuing lack of resources, local disagreements, and political interference with re-establishing the fence mean conflict persists. There is a danger this long- running occupation will become accepted as the status quo. In the face of political instability, apparent immunity for
expanding illegal land conversion, local poverty and an un- tenable conservation management situation, the Reserve’s future is threatened, with potentially negative consequences for other protected areas in KwaZulu-Natal Province. The conservation authority Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife has indi- cated these complex issues of encroachment require multi- agency intervention, and as such Ezemvelo has requested that Ndumo Game Reserve be identified as a priority for a national support and intervention programme.
SIMON POOLEY (
orcid.org/ 0000-0002-0260-6159) Department of Geography, Birkbeck University of London, London UK, and School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa E-mail
s.pooley@bbk.ac.uk
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC BY NC SA 4.0.
preceding the fires had placed plant and animal populations under duress for several years. Across this period, we have monitored two nationally Endangered carnivorous marsupial species that occur patchily in restricted high-elevation wet forests of eastern Australia (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Con- servation Act 1999; undergoing IUCN Red List assess- ment). The black-tailed dusky antechinus Antechinus arktos has beenseverely affected by
drought.The silver-headed ante- chinusAntechinus argentus has beenbothaffectedbydrought and directly impacted by the megafires.We found both ante- chinus species persisting inmid 2020, after themegafires, but populations of each have suffered in different ways. Although only limited known habitat of A. arktos was
burned, our annual monitoring since 2014 shows this spe- cies has suffered major declines since 2019 at its type local- ity and former stronghold of Springbrook National Park, Queensland. Not only have we failed to catch A. arktos there in the past 3 years (in 2015, we had 30 captures), but our captures of co-occurring once common species, such as the brown antechinus Antechinus stuartii and native ro- dents, have declined by up to 10-fold. However, as well as live capture and camera traps, we have employed a canine de- tection team to help study this population. Although general findings indicate detections have diminished since 2017, the dog team found A. arktos at Springbrook in 2019 and 2020; unfortunately, most of the 2021 surveys were cancelled be- cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Antechinus argentus has sufferedmajor impacts to its habi-
tat from the extensive bushfires of 2018 and the 2019–2020 megafires. In Queensland’s Bulburin National Park, which may support the largest population, over 3,000 ha of rainforest and wet eucalypt forest burned in 2019 (Melzer et al. (2020) Post-Fire Assessment Report — Natural Values: 2019/2020 Bushfire, Bulburin National Park, South East Queensland Region. Department of Environment and Science, Queens- land Government, Brisbane, Australia), c. one-third of suit- able A. argentus habitat in Bulburin. Dog and trapping surveys in 2020 and 2021 found A. argen-
tus at several regenerating burnt sites at Bulburin. We had hoped for recovery of the A. arktos population after the return of rain this past summer, but three rounds of trapping in June– August 2021 at Springbrook failed to capture any individuals.
Endangered Australian marsupial species survive recent drought and megafires
The 2019–2020 megafires burned vast swathes of south- eastern Australia—almost 12.6 million ha (Wintle et al., 2020, TREE, 35, 753–757). For some areas on Australia’s east coast that escaped burning, prolonged drought
This research is supported by the Australian Government’s Bushfire Recovery forWildlifeand theirHabitatsprogramme, the National Environmental Science Programme, the New South Wales Government’s Saving our Species programme, andWWF-Australia.
ANDREW M. BAKER (
orcid.org/0000-0001-8825-1522) Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia,& Biodiversity and Geosciences Program, Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia. E-mail
am.baker@
qut.edu.au
Oryx, 2021, 55(6), 809–817 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321001149
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