Across the Serengeti-Mara, millions of wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of zebra are making their annual migration in one of the most spectacular sights of the natural world.
Six of these animals are currently wearing high-tech GPS collars, equipped with mobile phone technology – and over the past 10 years, a total of 40 have done so.
Scientists involved in this unique tracking programme analyse how these animals make decisions during their migration and use this information to devise effective mitigation strategies to ensure their survival.
The research, led by Dr Grant Hopcraft of the University of Glasgow’s Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health, sheds new light on the drivers behind the animals’ migratory decision-making.
The group’s findings suggest that although wildebeest and zebra migrate together, they move for very different reasons: wildebeest are constantly looking for fresh grazing, whereas zebra balance their need to access good food against the relative risk of being killed by a predator.
However, the results also show that both species are driven, above all else, by the need to avoid the threat of humans and human development.
“The impact of humans trumps everything else,” said Dr Hopcraft.
“This provides critical insights as to why other migrations are collapsing,” he added, pointing elsewhere, to the dwindling numbers of saiga (small antelopes) found on the Mongolian Steppes, the Mongolian gazelle, a horse-like animal called the kulan, the pronghorn antelope in the US state of Montana, and caribou and bison in North America.
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