HERBFEEDS

Information system about African herbivores’ natural feeds

Large herbivores contribute the lion’s share of the gross national product in southern Africa. Not only as livestock, but also game farms become increasingly important. Next to animal husbandry, “bush meat” (including sport hunting) is an important food resource. Furthermore, wild-ranging herbivores, ranging from elephants over antelopes to primates, are main attractants for tourism, providing an increasing contribution to the economy, and they are of high value for nature conservation. It is expected that under the pressure of future human population growth and climate change, the pressure on wild and domestic herbivores will intensify. In this context, knowledge about the nutritional values of different food plants seems to be indispensable and of high importance.

HERBFEEDS is a project developed under SASSCAL funded research (SASSCAL 1, Task 042). It is an open access information system on food resources of all types of mammalian herbivores. The idea behind HERBFEEDS is to provide information about the nutritional values and plant chemistry of all kinds of food plants of herbivores of southern Africa, linked with information about sampling site and date, collector (reference), the methodology of analyses and which plant part analysed as well as the herbivore feeding on the plant, if applicable. The information system will be helpful for different stakeholders such as livestock and game farmers, but also for animal and nature conservation management and researchers, as the chemical composition of a plant determines the utilization by herbivores and in consequence animal distribution. HERBFEEDS will be beneficial to identify new, neglected or forgotten knowledge about potential food resources and their nutritional values as well as an understanding and reactivation of local, traditional feeding knowledge and practices. This will in consequence be helpful for the development of new adapted feeding regimes and/or management strategies in the face of unpredictable changes in resource availability for herbivores due to climate change.

Planned linkages with other databases such as the Photo Guide to the Plants of Southern Africa will expand the given information. Inputs into the database are gained either from fieldwork and lab analyses or from other data resources e.g. scientific literature. Contributions that add valuable information to the database are welcome and should be sent to

herbivorefeeds@sasscal.org