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Scurry to ease plight of Island animals
Date Posted: Thursday 01-May-2008A flurry of activity that includes an offer of 100 free bales of feed by a concerned West Coast farmer is under way to relieve the plight of wild animals starving on Robben Island.
On Wednesday, the SPCA sent its wildlife inspector to check the situation after receiving a complaint last week and being sent a copy of the Cape Argus report highlighting the animals' plight, caused mainly by the exploding rabbit population denuding the natural vegetation.
A first load of feed was dropped last week and more feed, salt licks and deworming medicine are expected to be taken to the island today. But there is still major concern about the two surviving bontebok, a species that will not take artificial feed.
Peter Pentz, whose family owns the historic 18th-century farm Groote Post near Darling, sent the offer of 100 free bales of oaten hay grown on the farm, in an e-mail to the Cape Argus.
"I am saddened to read about the crisis on Robben Island," he wrote. "The hay will alleviate the feed problem for the antelope for a few days."
The offer was forwarded to the Robben Island Museum authorities and to the SPCA, whose chief inspector, Andries Venter, said it had been "welcomed with great relief".
Senior wildlife inspector Kira Joshua, who went to the island to do a preliminary assessment yesterday, said afterwards that those antelope that she'd seen had appeared to be in a reasonable condition and were now being fed.
"They (the island's management) know there's a problem and they have a plan of action."
Management had not attempted to explain the recent drop in antelope numbers and she still needed to investigate the bonteboks' situation, Joshua added.
She planned to visit the island again next week and the SPCA would also send a vet to check the animals.
Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Rejoice Mabudafhasi told concerned conservationists yesterday that she intended visiting the island on Tuesday.
Her department has political responsibility for managing World Heritage Sites. The Island was one of the first three such sites declared in South Africa in 1999. However the island's management authority, the Robben Island Museum, falls under the department of Arts and Culture.
Minister Pallo Jordan's spokesman, Sandile Memela, did not respond to messages left yesterday.
The artificial feed will assist the small number of springbok, about 12 (half of last year's numbers), and the bigger fallow deer population, of which there are still about 90 on the island.
About 50 bontebok were removed from the island in July last year, with observers saying they were in a "terrible" condition.
At a meeting last year, the island authorities said they wanted to keep a small herd of about 15 of the alien deer for cultural-historical reasons.
The scientific community is split over the wisdom of this, as such a small number is not genetically viable. There are signs of inbreeding in some of the animals and some conservationists say it is essential to remove all the deer.
According to the 2004 re-port of a monitoring mission to assess the state of conservation on the island for the World Heritage Committee, threats included the "presence of unsuitable large herbivores" and the "presence of feral cats, European rabbits and black rats".
Referring to the herbivores, the report noted: "Population sizes of these herbivores have increased beyond the carrying capacity of the environment to sustain them, necessitating the provision of artificial fodder and watering points.
"Although the presence of representative examples of some of these herbivores would contribute to the illustration of the island's rich and layered history, there is a need to manage populations at levels where their impact on natural ecosystems is minimised."
The island's environmental management plan recommends the removal of the deer, springbok, ostrich, eland and bontebok, more radical than its cultural management plan.
The World Heritage Site report states: "The maintenance of high-population densities of large herbivores on the island contradicts the vegetation management goals. It appears that management has been unable to formulate and implement a decisive stance on this matter."