Red List of South African Species

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Least Concern (LC)
Assessors: Peter Taylor Rod Baxter Ara Monadjem
Contributors: Margaret Avery Duncan MacFadyen Nico Avenant Beryl Wilson Guy Palmer
Reviewers: James Harvey Matthew Child

Rationale

This species is near endemic with a wide distribution within the assessment region and occurs in multiple biomes and habitat types, including transformed landscapes. Although it is suspected that moist grasslands will contract due to ongoing climate change, compounded by settlement expansion and overgrazing, this species is commensal with humans and is adaptable, being able to live in disturbed areas and gardens. There are thus no major threats that are predicted to cause rapid decline and this species is evaluated as Least Concern. Key interventions include protected area expansion of moist grassland habitats, as well as incentivising landowners to sustain natural vegetation around wetlands and keep livestock or wildlife at ecological carrying capacity.

Regional population effects: No rescue effects are possible as the majority of the population occurs within the assessment region 

Distribution

This species occurs mainly in the higher rainfall regions of the assessment region in South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho. They exist on the coast as well as at altitudes of 2,300 m asl in the Drakensberg Mountains, KwaZulu-Natal Province (Rowe-Rowe and Meester 1982) and at 1,800 m asl in the Amathole Mountains, Eastern Cape Province (R. Baxter unpubl. data). It is reported to occur in the southern parts of Inhambane Province in Mozambique and from Port Nolloth, in the Northern Cape Province south along the West Coast (Skinner and Chimimba 2005). However, there are no records available to us to corroborate this. For example, only Crocidura cyanea was found in the Springbok area in the 1990s and records from this region need further vetting (Avery and Avery 2011). The most northerly record in the Western Cape Province is from the Eland’s Bay area. While there are no records for Mozambique, it is possible that the species occurs in southern Mozambique but further field surveys are needed to confirm this. Its confirmed absence in Mozambique would make this species endemic to the assessment region. Based on museum records, it occurs predominantly along the coast and interior of Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal provinces and inland in Lesotho, Swaziland and Mpumalanga. In Swaziland, it occurs in the highveld region and marginally in the middleveld region (Monadjem 1998). Although there is single record from North West Province, based on a putative specimen collected by Newbery (1996), it is presumably a misidentification (Power 2014).

Population trend

Trend

This species is relatively common in the coastal part of its range, although it was relatively infrequently caught in Dukuduku Forest, northern KwaZulu-Natal Province (Perrin and Bodbijl 2001), with lower numbers being found at high altitudes. It can be very common in gardens and houses. The population may be declining overall due to the loss of moist grasslands.

Threats

There are no severe threats currently known to affect this species. However, the main threat to shrews in general is the loss or degradation of moist, productive areas such as wetlands and rank grasslands within suitable habitat. The two main drivers behind this are abstraction of surface water and draining of wetlands through industrial and residential expansion, and overgrazing of moist grasslands, which leads to the loss of ground cover (de-structures habitat) and decreases small mammal diversity and abundance (Bowland and Perrin 1989, 1993). Overgrazing is particularly threatening for this species, as it relies on medium to tall vegetation cover. Suppression of natural ecosystem processes, such as fire, can also lead to habitat degradation through bush encroachment or loss of plant diversity through infestation of vegetation by alien invasives, and is suspected to be increasing with human settlement expansion. There are also clear overlaps and synergistic effects between these threats. We infer a continuing population decline based on loss of natural habitat. 

Uses and trade

There is no known subsistence or commercial use of this species.

Conservation

This species occurs in a number of protected areas. The main intervention for this species is the protection and restoration of suitable habitat, such as moist grassland and fynbos patches. Biodiversity stewardship schemes should be promoted to conserve such patches. Protecting these habitats may create dispersal corridors between patches that will enable adaptation to climate change. At the local scale, landowners and managers should be educated, encouraged and incentivised to conserve the habitats on which shrews and small mammals depend. Retaining ground cover is the most important management tool to increase small mammal diversity and abundance. This can be achieved through lowering grazing pressure (Bowland and Perrin 1989), or by maintaining buffer strips of natural vegetation around wetlands (Driver et al. 2012). Small mammal diversity and abundance is also higher in more complex or heterogeneous landscapes, where periodic burning is an important tool to achieve this (Bowland and Perrin 1993). Removing alien vegetation from watersheds, watercourses and wetlands is also an important intervention to improve flow and water quality, and thus habitat quality, for shrews. Education and awareness campaigns should be employed to teach landowners and local communities about the importance of conserving wetlands and moist grasslands.

Recommendations for land managers and practitioners:
  • Landowners and communities should be incentivised to stock livestock or wildlife at ecological carrying capacity and to maintain a buffer of natural vegetation around wetlands.
  • Enforce regulations on developments that potentially impact on the habitat integrity of grasslands and wetlands.
Research priorities:
  • Additional field surveys are needed to clarify and confirm the habitat selection and distribution of this species. 
  • The effects of climate change on its distribution and abundance should be specifically modelled.
Encouraged citizen actions:
  • Citizens are requested to submit any shrews killed by cats or drowned in pools to a museum or a provincial conservation authority for identification, thereby enhancing our knowledge of shrew distribution (carcasses can be placed in a ziplock bag and frozen with the locality recorded). 
  • Practice indigenous gardening to sustain small mammals.

References 

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,]
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