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THE TEXAN SAVING CAPE TOWN'S WILDCATS

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SourceEva Rodriguez/OZY
News + Politics


THE TEXAN SAVING CAPE TOWN'S WILDCATS

By Nick Dall

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WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Because urbanization could be the death knell for biodiversity on the continent.

By Nick Dall

Confronting creatures — the South African way. Read more.All the animals come
out at night. And during the day. Confronting creatures — the South African way.
Read more.

Last June and July, more than 30 endangered African penguins from a colony at
Cape Town’s Boulders Beach were killed by a caracal, the heaviest of Africa’s
small cats. Laurel Serieys, the 37-year-old Texan behind the Urban Caracal
Project, was called in to help. Serieys duly caught and collared the offending
animal before naming her Disa, after the red flowers adorning Table Mountain,
South Africa’s iconic landmark. Disa was relocated to another part of the city,
far from the penguins, and later gave birth to kittens on, of all places, the
precipitous cliffs of Karbonkelberg. “Disa was full of surprises,” says Serieys.
“When her collar fell off … we had to call in rock climbers to retrieve it.”

Disa was capture No. 27 in a project whose mission is to evaluate the effects of
urbanization on the behavior, movement patterns, diet and genetic health of
caracals in the Cape Peninsula — a project that should never have gotten off the
ground. Serieys, whose first word was “Leo” and says she knew she’d get a Ph.D.
from the age of 10, could have called it quits on at least a dozen occasions.
After completing her doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA, she
was determined to use her skill set overseas (“In the U.S., I’m a dime a
dozen”), and there was only one place her surfer husband would agree to move:
Cape Town, South Africa. But it was also a city with no existing infrastructure
for the study of mesocarnivores, the oft-overlooked medium-size predators that
are Serieys’ passion because of how much they tell us about the health of
ecosystems. “My Ph.D. supervisor said it was career suicide,” she recalls.

 
        

Laurel Serieys, tending to one of her caracals.

Source Bryan Havemann/Courtesy of Urban Caracal Project

> Cape Town … is an ideal place to test whether conservation is even possible
> when there are impoverished communities competing for resources.

And there was more: Soon after arriving in Cape Town in 2015, thieves stole her
equipment, her lone staff member quit, and massive fires consumed 29,000 acres
in her study area. Then Serieys’ marriage collapsed — her husband announcing he
was no longer prepared to join her in Cape Town — and her health was rocked by
severe complications from the thyroid cancer she had battled when she was 23.

Professor Justin O’Riain, from the Institute for Communities and Wildlife in
Africa, a partner in the Urban Caracal Project, confesses to being dumbstruck by
what Serieys has achieved in three years: “To call her driven is an
understatement,” he says. He goes on to describe her as the face of new young
science. “She’s very principled in terms of scientific rigor, but she has also
completely grasped social media and bringing the public on board. We dinosaurs
have all learned a huge deal from her.”

 
        

Savannah was a young adult female caracal radio-collared in December 2014. Three
weeks later, she was found dead — most likely hit by a car.

Source Courtesy of Urban Caracal Project

 

All very well, but why should anyone care about an urban population of caracals,
one of South Africa’s most common cats and considered by many to be pests? To
listen to Gregg Oelofse, manager of the City of Cape Town’s Coastal Management
Department, caracals are “an important indicator species” that can be used to
identify which green corridors (parks, golf courses, greenbelts) are vital in
maintaining animal populations.



What’s more, Serieys hopes to export the results of her work on bobcats in
California to South Africa: In 2014, evidence she gave as an expert
witness helped to change the legislation surrounding consumer availability of
rat poison in the Golden State, and she has similar dreams for limiting its use
in the rainbow nation. Her “ultimate goal” is to permanently change the law,
though she is aware that just getting residents and businesses to stop using
poisons and improve waste management would make a marked difference in the lives
of caracals, otters, owls and genets.

But Serieys’ work has even broader implications. Urbanization is the principal
threat to biodiversity because of habitat loss and other factors, but most
studies examining its effects have been conducted in North America and Europe —
despite the fact that the majority of the world’s human population is found in
developing nations. Plus, cities in the developing world tend to be
high-biodiversity hot spots and have fewer resources to deploy toward conserving
biodiversity. Cape Town, a popular tourist destination with gorgeous beaches and
mountains, is an ideal place to test whether conservation is even possible when
there are impoverished communities competing for resources. 

 
        
  

Laduma, an adult male, was the first caracal humanely captured and
radio-collared as part of the Urban Caracal Project.

Source Kevin Shields/Courtesy of Urban Caracal Project

For now, though, Serieys says she’s intent on making a real difference in
“human-impacted landscapes in Africa.” But several obstacles stand between
Serieys and her dream of preserving biodiversity on the continent, not least her
health and securing funding for her work — drumming up financial support for
stand-alone scientific projects is notoriously tricky. So far, she has declined
offers of tenured positions at American universities (she’s turned down several
“without hesitation”), as it would limit her time in the field to just three or
four months per year.

But according to O’Riain, there’s an even bigger challenge around the corner.
Cape Town is essentially a first world city, and — with the exception of a few
suburbs — the study area for the Urban Caracal Project “isn’t that different
from California.” He predicts Serieys will encounter far greater hardships —
from logistics to security and endless red tape — in other parts of Africa.
Still, he’s quick to add: “If anyone can handle it, it’s Laurel.”

When I put these concerns to Serieys, she is unperturbed: “I’m passionate
about mitigating the catastrophic environmental impact us humans are having on
this planet. And I’ve got more chance of achieving that in Africa.”

 * Nick Dall, OZY Author Contact Nick Dall


July 3, 2017

TOPICS

 * AFRICA
 * Animals
 * Cities
 * Conservation
 * Environment
 * SCIENCE
 * South Africa
 * Southern Africa
 * Urban Beasts
 * Wildlife



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