What Prowls our Urban Jungle?

What Prowls our Urban Jungle?
Shaun Smillie
It is sandy coloured, about the size of a German Shepherd and has pointed ears and has been spotted lurking in one of Johannesburg’s more affluent suburbs.
A sighting of such a predator, prowling suburbia should have created a frenzy with the world’s cyptozoologists.
But the experts do not feel there is much unusual about a caracal cropping up in the urban jungle. The phenomena of seeing wild animals near a city suggests that they are either looking for a better living, or are a victim of rapid urbanisation.
But trying to get a handle on just what lurks in the gardens and even streets of Gauteng can be difficult; no scientific studies have been done, and drawing up a checklist means relying on odd sightings.
One woman however, comes face to face with our more exotic inhabitants on a daily basis and probably has the best idea of what exactly prowls our concrete jungle.
She is Nicci Wright and she runs the animal rescue organisation FreeMe. Over several years Wright and her colleagues have rescued a motley crew of wild animals.
They have wrestled crocodiles in Benoni and saved bushbabies in Fourways. The crocodile was probably someone’s pet which had been abandoned or had escaped.
One of Wright’s strangest rescues was of a jackal in Berea and how it got there still baffles her. “There were no signs that the jackal had been tied up and it was wild,” she explained. A possible explanation is that the jackal wandered into the city, looking for food.
To get to Berea, the jackal might have followed some of Johannesburg’s green corridors.
“Jackals will be attracted to dog bowls and dustbins,” said Wright.
There have been jackal sightings in other parts of Johannesburg and leopards seen in Pretoria.
Wright knows of a large jackal that lives near Boskruin.
They aren’t the only predators; otter are known to range across many of Johannesburg’s water ways. An otter lives at the Eagle Canyon golf Estate, where it snacks on the resident koi.
Otter spoor have been spotted along the Bloubos spruit to the south of Johannesburg. And besides the caracal seen close to the Klipriversberg nature reserve, Wright knows of another one of these large cats living in the Blue Hills area.
But they may not even be the biggest of the city’s wild animals. Clem Kourie, of the Klipriversberg Nature Reserve association, says he knows of someone who saw two brown hyena in the vicinity of|the reserve.
Brown hyena have also been reported in Northriding.
“These animals probably wander over large areas,” said Kourie.
One carnivore that is far more sedentary than both jackal and hyena is the genet.
This animal also prefers living in the better suburbs – areas like Westcliff and Houghton, where they seek out tall leafy trees and they breed.
Over the last couple of years, Wright and her organisation have become involved in more and more wild animal rescues. “I think as there is increased development around Johannesburg, we are flushing them out,” lamented Wright.
But the very survival of many of the world’s species, could depend on allowing them living space within urban environments, which is the basis of a new school of thought, known as Reconciliation Ecology.
The idea is that to preserve biodiversity, large tracks of land are needed and that protected conservation areas are not enough.
So, wild species need to be accommodated in human modified or urban environments. The poster boy for Reconciliation Ecology is the lesser Kestrel.
Pretoria News: 6th February 2009