Risk mitigation Part 4: the jackal and rooikat 'problem'

PJ Mommsen, a freelance risk mitigation strategist, speaks about the importance of managing risk as it relates to predators.

- PJ Mommsen

Without innovation and the creation or discovery of new solutions, many of the risks faced by the current generation of farmers will remain unmitigated, with the real possibility of these devolving into permanent, negative features of South Africa’s farming landscape.

One such risk is predation by jackal and rooikat (caracal/lynx), which continues to result in huge losses for sheep farmers. The farming community in general, and sheep farmers in particular, have over the years gone to great lengths and spent countless hours and millions of rands in research, experiments and the application of mitigation strategies to deal with this issue. For example, a decade ago, between September 2012 and midJanuary 2013, a total of 180 camera stations were set up on approximately 80 000ha, covering 17 sheep farms in the Laingsburg and Beaufort West districts of the Karoo. Thousands of kilometres of mostly gravel farm roads were travelled by the research team from the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town.

To set the scene for a discussion about the problems and costs confronting sheep farmers when faced with ‘the jackal and rooikat problem’, it is important to consider what is entailed in the loss of a sheep through predation. Importantly, calculating the total value must include costs such as the originating breeding or insemination costs, supplemental feeding of the pregnant ewe, animal health-care costs, lambing and rearing costs of the predated animal, grazing and water costs, all associated labour and energy costs related to the predated sheep, the future value of the mutton or wool of the now-predated sheep, other lost opportunity costs, loss of cash flow, and the time of the farmer or manager.