logo
SA organisation uses dogs to sniff out endangered tortoises

SA organisation uses dogs to sniff out endangered tortoises

The Citizen4 days ago
The species' natural habitat shrinking due to agriculture and urban expansion.
Collie dog, Delta, working as part of the Endangered Wildlife Trust's Dryland Conservation Project, sniffs at a critically endangered Geometric tortoise, that he helped locate on a private reserve in the Boland district of the Western Cape on June 30, 2025. (Photo by RODGER BOSCH / AFP)
Snout pressed to the ground, a border collie named Delta zigzagged through the shrubs on a private nature reserve near Cape Town, frantically sniffing for critically endangered tortoises.
The dog stopped abruptly in front of a small bush and lay down, signalling a find as Delta's handler moved in to search the surrounding area.
Hidden in the tall grass was a tiny reptile, its shell marked with yellow star-like patterns — a clear sign it was a geometric tortoise, a species found only at the southern tip of Africa.
'It's an adult female, you can tell by its flat belly,' said Esther Matthew, the dog's handler and a conservation officer for South Africa's Endangered Wildlife Trust.
ALSO READ: South Africa's oldest Giant Aldabra tortoise turns 120
She explained that the organisation uses canines to sniff out the endangered species by 'building positive association with the tortoises' odour', throwing Delta a foam frisbee as a reward.
Dogs are five times more effective than humans at this type of search and 'also help us find the smaller tortoises which are often overlooked, the hatchlings and the juveniles', Matthew said.
'We've seen a dramatic increase in the number of finds with the dogs.
Shrinking numbers
Their help has become crucial in studying and protecting the geometric tortoise, found only in South Africa's Western Cape province and on the verge of extinction.
The species' population was already as low as 1,500 individuals in the wild in the early 1990s, according to biologist Andrew Turner, who works for the conservation authority Cape Nature.
It is now estimated at only several hundred animals with 'declines pretty much across the entire remaining range of this species', he told AFP.
ALSO READ: Shell-ebrity: world's oldest tortoise turns 190 (ish)
On the nature reserve, Delta and Matthew — helped by colleagues searching the bushes with sticks — found a dozen of the hardy reptiles.
'We record all the tortoises we can find, all the data, measurements and weight,' Delta's handler explained.
'Creating corridors'
With the species' natural habitat shrinking due to agriculture and urban expansion, these surveys have become all the more critical, Turner said.
'There are very few places left in the Western Cape that still support these tortoises. It's really just a couple of nature reserves and pieces of good habitat left on people's private property,' he added.
'The remaining patches of vegetation are not really connected to each other anymore. There are farmlands in between, roads, towns and industries, so there is limited ability for the tortoises to disperse and rescue other populations.'
This fragmentation makes them all the more vulnerable to droughts, predation and fires, which scientists argue have become more frequent and intense thanks to climate change.
Poaching — of the tortoises and the plants they feed on — is also a threat, Turner said.
ALSO READ: Hawks bust 2 for dealing in tortoises and lizards
'They are down to such small levels that they actually need as much assistance as they can get,' he said.
To save the species, the Endangered Wildlife Trust has looked at building 'partnerships' with landowners and communities living in the animals' habitat.
'The biggest thing is… creating corridors where species can work through,' explained Zanne Brink, who leads the organisation's dry lands conservation programme.
'Our biggest challenge is to get enough information to prevent critical biodiversity areas from being lost to unsustainable land use.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice

eNCA

time3 days ago

  • eNCA

From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice

BRUSSELS - In a small, refrigerated room at a Brussels university, parka-wearing scientists chop up Antarctic ice cores tens of thousands of years old in search of clues to our planet's changing climate. Trapped inside the cylindrical icicles are tiny air bubbles that can provide a snapshot of what the earth's atmosphere looked like back then. "We want to know a lot about the climates of the past because we can use it as an analogy for what can happen in the future," said Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Zekollari was part of a team of four that headed to the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the world's oldest ice -- without breaking the bank. Ice dating back millions of years can be found deep inside Antarctica, close to the South Pole, buried under kilometres of fresher ice and snow. But that's hard to reach and expeditions to drill it out are expensive. A recent EU-funded mission that brought back some 1.2-million-year-old samples came with a total price tag of around 11 million euros (around $12.8 million). To cut costs, the team from VUB and the nearby Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where ancient ice might be more accessible. - Blue ice - AFP | Nicolas TUCAT Just like the water it is made of, ice flows towards the coast -- albeit slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a remote sensing specialist at VUB. And when the flow hits an obstacle, say a ridge or mountain, bottom layers can be pushed up closer to the surface. In a few rare spots, weather conditions like heavy winds prevent the formation of snow cover -- leaving thick layers of ice exposed. Named after their colouration, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these account for only about one percent of Antarctica territory. "Blue ice areas are very special," said Izeboud. Her team zeroed in on a blue ice stretch lying about 2,300 meters above sea level, around 60 kilometres from Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station. Some old meteorites had been previously found there -- a hint that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained. A container camp was set up and after a few weeks of measurements, drilling, and frozen meals, in January the team came back with 15 ice cores totalling about 60 meters in length. These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived in late June. Inside a stocky cement ULB building in the Belgian capital, they are now being cut into smaller pieces to then be shipped to specialised labs in France and China for dating. Zekollari said the team hopes some of the samples, which were taken at shallow depths of about 10 meters, will be confirmed to be about 100,000 years old. - Climate 'treasure hunt' - This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same spot for the big prize. AFP | Nicolas TUCAT "It's like a treasure hunt," Zekollari, 36, said, comparing their work to drawing a map for "Indiana Jones". "We're trying to cross the good spot on the map... and in one and a half years, we'll go back and we'll drill there," he said. "We're dreaming a bit, but we hope to get maybe three, four, five-million-year-old ice." Such ice could provide crucial input to climatologists studying the effects of global warming. Climate projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- but the puzzle has some missing pieces. By the end of the century temperatures could reach levels similar to those the planet last experienced between 2.6 and 3.3 million years ago, said Etienne Legrain, 29, a paleo-climatologist at ULB. But currently there is little data on what CO2 levels were back then -- a key metric to understand how much further warming we could expect. "We don't know the link between CO2 concentration and temperature in a climate warmer than that of today," Legrain said. His team hopes to find it trapped inside some very old ice. "The air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past," he said. "It's really like magic when you feel it."

SA organisation uses dogs to sniff out endangered tortoises
SA organisation uses dogs to sniff out endangered tortoises

The Citizen

time4 days ago

  • The Citizen

SA organisation uses dogs to sniff out endangered tortoises

The species' natural habitat shrinking due to agriculture and urban expansion. Collie dog, Delta, working as part of the Endangered Wildlife Trust's Dryland Conservation Project, sniffs at a critically endangered Geometric tortoise, that he helped locate on a private reserve in the Boland district of the Western Cape on June 30, 2025. (Photo by RODGER BOSCH / AFP) Snout pressed to the ground, a border collie named Delta zigzagged through the shrubs on a private nature reserve near Cape Town, frantically sniffing for critically endangered tortoises. The dog stopped abruptly in front of a small bush and lay down, signalling a find as Delta's handler moved in to search the surrounding area. Hidden in the tall grass was a tiny reptile, its shell marked with yellow star-like patterns — a clear sign it was a geometric tortoise, a species found only at the southern tip of Africa. 'It's an adult female, you can tell by its flat belly,' said Esther Matthew, the dog's handler and a conservation officer for South Africa's Endangered Wildlife Trust. ALSO READ: South Africa's oldest Giant Aldabra tortoise turns 120 She explained that the organisation uses canines to sniff out the endangered species by 'building positive association with the tortoises' odour', throwing Delta a foam frisbee as a reward. Dogs are five times more effective than humans at this type of search and 'also help us find the smaller tortoises which are often overlooked, the hatchlings and the juveniles', Matthew said. 'We've seen a dramatic increase in the number of finds with the dogs. Shrinking numbers Their help has become crucial in studying and protecting the geometric tortoise, found only in South Africa's Western Cape province and on the verge of extinction. The species' population was already as low as 1,500 individuals in the wild in the early 1990s, according to biologist Andrew Turner, who works for the conservation authority Cape Nature. It is now estimated at only several hundred animals with 'declines pretty much across the entire remaining range of this species', he told AFP. ALSO READ: Shell-ebrity: world's oldest tortoise turns 190 (ish) On the nature reserve, Delta and Matthew — helped by colleagues searching the bushes with sticks — found a dozen of the hardy reptiles. 'We record all the tortoises we can find, all the data, measurements and weight,' Delta's handler explained. 'Creating corridors' With the species' natural habitat shrinking due to agriculture and urban expansion, these surveys have become all the more critical, Turner said. 'There are very few places left in the Western Cape that still support these tortoises. It's really just a couple of nature reserves and pieces of good habitat left on people's private property,' he added. 'The remaining patches of vegetation are not really connected to each other anymore. There are farmlands in between, roads, towns and industries, so there is limited ability for the tortoises to disperse and rescue other populations.' This fragmentation makes them all the more vulnerable to droughts, predation and fires, which scientists argue have become more frequent and intense thanks to climate change. Poaching — of the tortoises and the plants they feed on — is also a threat, Turner said. ALSO READ: Hawks bust 2 for dealing in tortoises and lizards 'They are down to such small levels that they actually need as much assistance as they can get,' he said. To save the species, the Endangered Wildlife Trust has looked at building 'partnerships' with landowners and communities living in the animals' habitat. 'The biggest thing is… creating corridors where species can work through,' explained Zanne Brink, who leads the organisation's dry lands conservation programme. 'Our biggest challenge is to get enough information to prevent critical biodiversity areas from being lost to unsustainable land use.'

Wildlife biotech researcher leaves cutting-edge legacy
Wildlife biotech researcher leaves cutting-edge legacy

The Citizen

time15-07-2025

  • The Citizen

Wildlife biotech researcher leaves cutting-edge legacy

The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) is saddened by the sudden passing of a former colleague and a leader in the use of assisted reproductive technology for wildlife conservation, Dr Paul Bartels. Bartels was born on February 22 in 1956, and passed away on July 9. Bartels' research work was considered of strategic importance, resulting in the Wildlife Biological Research Centre moving from the EWT to the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria under the National Research Foundation. It later became the National Wildlife Biobank under the South African National Biodiversity Institute in Pretoria. Based at the National Zoological Gardens campus in Pretoria, SANBI Biobank is an international institution with samples from over 40 countries. He initiated the Save Magaliesberg Species Project in partnership with the Wildlife and Environment Society of SA, and volunteers and students of the Tshwane University of Technology's Department of Nature Conservation. Eleanor Momberg, spokesperson for the Trust, said that Bartels was a pioneer in this cutting-edge field, that merges science and conservation by aiming to futureproof the genetic composition of captive and wild gene pools when wildlife populations may not be able to do this naturally. 'His vision led to the establishment of the first wildlife biobank in Africa. The Wildlife Biological Resource Centre was established in 1996 as a working group within the trust. The centre was dedicated to the collection, processing, banking, use, and distribution of wildlife biomaterials for biodiversity conservation and biotechnology development.' Starting from humble beginnings as a small research project based out of the Tompi Seleka Agricultural College in the former Lebowa (Limpopo), where he worked as a wildlife veterinarian and lecturer in animal health, the project quickly grew. The project provided a learning platform for students from across the globe and spearheaded the development of biotech to safely and effectively collect, store and potentially reuse the reproductive materials of wildlife species such as lions, buffalo, eland, bontebok, blesbok, elephant and rhino. In 1998, the centre made global history with the birth of the world's first artificially inseminated wildlife baby, an eland female called Graca, after South Africa's then first lady. Graca was conceived via artificial insemination using the sperm that had been collected post-mortem from an eland bull that had died four hours before semen collection. The semen was then frozen and used over a year later to inseminate an eland cow at the Johannesburg Zoo. Graca made history by showing the world that the genetics from wild species can still play a role in maintaining genetic diversity, even after the donor animal has died before collection. He also used his 25 years' experience in wildlife tissue banking to found a company to produce meat in a laboratory that would contribute to food security. As an avid entrepreneur, he founded WildBio Co, which uses cutting-edge scientific research and innovation to produce cell lines for wildlife conservation, food security and novel product development; and later CryoWild, a non-profit organisation. WildBio developed the world's largest African species biobank for accelerating the development of the biomedical, food tech and biotech industries. He was recently appointed as a research fellow at Stellenbosch University's Department of Animal Science, where he led cutting-edge work in cellular agriculture biobanking, as well as serving as a lecturer in wildlife management at the Tshwane University of Technology. 'Paul worked for the EWT for more than a decade, and we are deeply saddened by the loss of this visionary leader in biotech and wildlife conservation. 'We are, however, eternally grateful for the legacy he leaves in the form of cutting-edge science, dozens of empowered and highly trained scientists, an African wildlife biobank and leading science. 'All of this can be used to save wildlife, support ethically and sustainably food security and secure the genetic diversity and future of dozens of threatened African wildlife species,' closed Momberg. ALSO READ: WATCH: Raw sewage continues to pollute Moreleta Spruit, no action from metro Do you have more information about the story? Please send us an email to [email protected] or phone us on 083 625 4114. For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord's websites: Rekord East For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store