Evidence for local declines in Tanzania’s puku antelope (Kobus vardoni Livingstone, 1857) population between 1999 and 2003

Introduction The Kilombero Valley in Tanzania holds c. 75% of the world’s puku antelope (Kobus vardoni), which is an estimated 50,000–60,000 individuals (East, 1998; Jenkins, Maliti & Corti, 2003). Globally, survival of this species is closely related to this population (Rodgers, 1984; Tanzania Wildlife Conservation Monitoring, 1999), and therefore studies investigating changes in puku number in the valley are important for developing conservation management strategies for this species. Puku is a ‘Near Threatened’ species (IUCN SSC Antelope Specialist Group, 2008), which is habitat specific, occupying grasslands near permanent water within savannah floodplains (East, 1998). In the Kilombero Valley, following seasonal inundation of the floodplain during the long rainy season (March–May), puku move into habitat on the floodplain periphery, such as miombo woodland (Jenkins et al., 2002). A number of human activities, including livestock husbandry (Corti et al., 2002; Bonnington, Weaver & Fanning, 2007) and settlement (Haule, 1997), are encroaching on these favoured floodplain grasslands in the Kilombero Valley, and other activities such as poaching (Jenkins et al., 2002), negatively impact the puku population of the valley directly. Starkey et al. (2002) stated that there is an urgent need for surveys to be conducted in the Kilombero Valley in open areas of suitable foraging habitat and also in suitable peripheral habitat near human settlement to assess fluctuations in puku number in areas experiencing different levels of human impacts. In this paper, we describe the first ground-based study of puku in the Kilombero Valley assessing annual changes in the abundance of this species at two such localities. We report a significant decline in the relative abundance of puku at both locations over a 5-year period and discuss the possible implications for the conservation of this species in this stronghold.