↓ Skip to main content

The impact of land reform on the status of large carnivores in Zimbabwe

Overview of attention for article published in PeerJ, January 2016
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (96th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (91st percentile)

Mentioned by

news
3 news outlets
policy
1 policy source
twitter
21 X users
facebook
8 Facebook pages
wikipedia
10 Wikipedia pages
googleplus
1 Google+ user

Citations

dimensions_citation
17 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
102 Mendeley
citeulike
1 CiteULike
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
The impact of land reform on the status of large carnivores in Zimbabwe
Published in
PeerJ, January 2016
DOI 10.7717/peerj.1537
Pubmed ID
Authors

Samual T. Williams, Kathryn S. Williams, Christoffel J. Joubert, Russell A. Hill

Abstract

Large carnivores are decreasing in number due to growing pressure from an expanding human population. It is increasingly recognised that state-protected conservation areas are unlikely to be sufficient to protect viable populations of large carnivores, and that private land will be central to conservation efforts. In 2000, a fast-track land reform programme (FTLRP) was initiated in Zimbabwe, ostensibly to redress the racial imbalance in land ownership, but which also had the potential to break up large areas of carnivore habitat on private land. To date, research has focused on the impact of the FTLRP process on the different human communities, while impacts on wildlife have been overlooked. Here we provide the first systematic assessment of the impact of the FTLRP on the status of large carnivores. Spoor counts were conducted across private, resettled and communal land use types in order to estimate the abundance of large carnivores, and to determine how this had been affected by land reform. The density of carnivore spoor differed significantly between land use types, and was lower on resettlement land than on private land, suggesting that the resettlement process has resulted in a substantial decline in carnivore abundance. Habitat loss and high levels of poaching in and around resettlement areas are the most likely causes. The FTLRP resulted in the large-scale conversion of land that was used sustainably and productively for wildlife into unsustainable, unproductive agricultural land uses. We recommended that models of land reform should consider the type of land available, that existing expertise in land management should be retained where possible, and that resettlement programmes should be carefully planned in order to minimise the impacts on wildlife and on people.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 21 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 102 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 1 <1%
Botswana 1 <1%
Unknown 100 98%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 15 15%
Student > Master 13 13%
Student > Bachelor 13 13%
Student > Ph. D. Student 9 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 7 7%
Other 21 21%
Unknown 24 24%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 31 30%
Environmental Science 26 25%
Social Sciences 5 5%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 4 4%
Arts and Humanities 3 3%
Other 5 5%
Unknown 28 27%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 48. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 September 2022.
All research outputs
#816,834
of 24,378,020 outputs
Outputs from PeerJ
#853
of 14,444 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#14,976
of 404,999 outputs
Outputs of similar age from PeerJ
#25
of 289 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,378,020 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 14,444 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 17.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 404,999 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 289 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.