Sitatunga  (Tragelaphus spekii)

The chief threat to the sitatunga comes from people who hunt it. Snares are set along the sitatunga’s well-travelled paths in the swamps, or dogs are used to drive the animal into open water, where it can be speared from boats, or on to land, where it is easily captured (4). In many parts of Africa, sitatungas provide a major source of protein as bushmeat, but the animal is also a victim of trophy hunting (3). There is a degree of safety within protected areas, but outside these areas over-hunting is causing a rapid decline in their numbers (4). People are also destroying the sitatunga’s aquatic habitat by draining swamps, reducing its distribution and abundance in many parts of its former range (4). Although still relatively widespread, this antelope is now locally threatened in certain areas (3), and has even become recently extinct in Niger, Guinea, and possible in Ghana and Togo too (1).

Sitatungas are found in a number of National Parks and Reserves, including Saiwa Swamp National Park in western Kenya, Moyowosi and Selous Game Reserves in Tanzania, Kafue National Park in Zambia, and Okavango Delta and the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana (4) (6). A Regional Studbook exists to manage captive populations in North America, but this species nevertheless remains rare in captivity (3). The Baltimore Zoo has been recognised for its ‘significant efforts in conservation’, for having maintained sitatunga for over 33 years, during which a total of 98 captive-bred calves have been born (7). Although captive individuals provide potential for future reintroductions into the wild, a more pressing need for the survival of this species is the enforced prohibition of hunting and the protection of its aquatic habitat, to which it has become so unusually and uniquely adapted.