Hubertus Jacobus Van Hensbergen

Wildhorus Ltd SSC Forestry Eco-Innovation Foundation · Management and consultant

We provide an inter-industry perspective that illuminates why and how sustainable forest management is so elusive in the tropics. We offer a novel, integrated industrial system that would enable a paradigm shift for tropical forestry, so that increasing demands for forest products can drive positive outcomes for people, nature, and climate.

This publication discusses the concept, evolution, and requirements of forest management planning, focusing on multiple-use forest management and small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs). Forest management planning is a document that translates forest policies into a coordinated programme for managing forests over a set period of time, integrati...

This is a review of the future issues in Health and Safety in Forestry work in relation to both technological change and environmental change.

This report examines how forests contribute to or suffer from disasters. Three events are examined: the tempest Gudrun (Sweden, 2005); the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami (Japan 2011); and the 2017 firestorm in Chile. Forests are “victims” of disaster when unable to provide services required by society and cannot recover within a relevant timeframe....

Health and safety guidance for forestry operations

Concessions have existed for hundreds of years as a means of allocating rights to natural resources. In forestry, concessions are the dominant systems for granting rights to public forests in the boreal and tropical regions. They have received mixed press in tropical forests – heavily criticized by some stakeholders and highly praised by others. Th...

Understanding the ecology of large ungulates in southern Africa requires accurate and precise measures of population size. Recovery or exploitation of ungulates in reserves is currently instigated when population size changes exceed 15% per annum, but monitoring is usually undertaken with single counts from helicopters, for which precision and the...

Report on the Poverty Impacts o Forest Certification.

The report provides a framework for wood tracking from forest through mill to be used by small enterprises that do not have fully automated record keeping.

Report on the background to developing an effective wood tracking system for small forest managers in Ghana. Includes observations on failures in the current system of timber tracking that allow illegal timber to enter the system (Current as of 2011)

A multidimensional approach to poverty alleviation and biodiversity protection.

Annual helicopter total counts took place over the period 1987 to 1994 in various bushveld areas of the Limpopo Province, Mpumalanga and North West Province, South Africa. Subjective examination suggested that the number of observations during the course of each of these counts consistently declined over time. In this study, all 13 295 observations...

Data on the breeding range of Booted Eagles (Hieraaetus pennatus) were collected over 25 yr in the Northern, Western, and Eastern Cape Provinces, South Africa, to estimate the breeding population. Based on the distribution of 150 known nest sites, rye used information from digital terrain models to define topographical characteristics of nest sites...

Large-scale afforestation with pines is taking place in montane grasslands of South Africa. Many species dependent on the grass sward will be eliminated from the planted areas. Land should be maintained as conservation areas to ensure the long-term survival of the wildlife within the afforestable region. Ten land types, defined by combinations of c...

Based upon radio-tracking, and using kernel analysis techniques, the mean range size of three adult male leopards Panthera pardus was 2182.37 ± 491.628 km2, that of five adult females 488.70 ± 292.893 km2, and that of a single subadult male 1323.80 km2. These ranges are considerably larger than for leopards elsewhere, and may reflect the aridity an...

Montane grasslands in high rainfall areas of South Africa are subject to large-scale afforestation, making wildlife conservation evaluations necessary. A system which uses landscape features to predict conservation value would be beneficial. This is an initial assessment in the afforestable region of the north-eastern Cape. Sampling of grasshoppers...

The grassland biome is the biome most transformed by human activity in South Africa. At least thirteen percent of the biome is suitable for pine afforestation. There is a need for conservation evaluations before large-scale commercial afforestation to determine which areas are required to maintain biological diversity in the afforestable region and...

The suitability of a wildlife conservation evaluation method, developed in an afforestable region of the southern Drakensberg, for use in a similar northern Drakensberg area was investigated. Sampling of grasshoppers, butterflies and birds was done during late summer along a 700 m altitudinal gradient in the Carolina-Machadodorp-Dullstroom region o...

Some areas of forestry estates, including unplantable ones, may be zoned and managed for nature conservation. This paper is an analysis of the results of studies of plants, birds and small mammals at Jonkershoek, Stellenbosch, to determine whether pine plantations are “inhospitable” to ecological and demographic processes required for the persisten...

An overview of the impacts of pine afforestation on indigenous biota in South Africa is presented. Changes in the soil, hydrology. habitat structure, micro-environment, food resources and ecological processes of the afforested area occur. These changes influence native organisms and biotic assemblages in various ways. Generally, species richness an...

The small mammals at five sites on each of six land types in the afforestable grasslands of the northern Eastern Cape Province were sampled. Sampling grids consisting of 100 equally spaced trapping points were used. Mean species richness and relative abundance per hectare did not differ significantly over the land types. Significant associations be...

Results from a short-term study of birds and small mammals in pine plantations, regenerating clear-felled sites and indigenous forest and fynbos habitats at Grootvadersbosch, southern Cape, indicate that the pine faunal assemblages are pauperised in relation to those of the original habitat. The pine bird assemblage is largely composed of forest sp...

1995. Further studies on the population genetics of the blesbok Damaliscus dorcas phillipsi. [In: Ecological genetics in mammals II. G. B. Hartl and J. Markowski, eds], Acta Theriologica, Suppl. 3: 157-164. For approximately 100 years blesbok -endemic to South Africa -have been extinct in the wild and confined to fenced game reserves or farms. Bioc...

. 60 of the 75 Banksia species are confined to southwestern Australia where five or six species often coexist. We explored the role of regional species richness, niche differentiation, and habitat specialization in structuring banksia assemblages. The diversity of growth forms and categories of seed production and response to fire were assessed in...

Harrison, J.A., Allan, D.G. & Van Hensbergen, H.J. 1994 Automated habitat annotation of bird species lists - an aid in environmental consultancy. Ostrich 65: 316–328.The Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP) has compiled a comprehensive distributional database for birds. This information is potentially valuable to environmental consultants, p...

Wildlife conservation evaluations of afforestable Afromontane grasslands are required. The methodology given is for rapid evaluation by a single person with minimal equipment. Grasshoppers, butterflies, birds and small mammals are key taxa for sampling. A survey of these taxa in different environments using an obligatory design and gradient-directe...

Pepler, D., Martin, M., Fouche, F. & VAN Hensbergen, B. 1994. Radionuclide analysis of Lesser Kestrels Falco naumanni and the origins of populations overwintering in southern Africa. Ostrich 65: 122–126.The Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni has recently shown major population declines throughout its breeding range in the Palearctic Region. In order to...

The bird assemblages of three small, different-aged pine habitats and an indigenous wooded habitat were investigated near Stellenbosch, South Africa. Eight 20-min walk-through counts were done per season (excluding summer) in each habitat. Bird species richness and abundance were higher in the indigenous habitat than any of the pine habitats during...

Natural populations of many species are increasingly impacted by human activities. Perturbations are particularly pronunced for large ungulates due in part to sport and commercial harvest, to reductions and fragmentation of native habitat, and as the result of reintroductions. These perturbations affect population size, sex and age composition, and...

The effect of weather on the capture probability of small mammals in Sherman live traps was investigated. Diurnal trapping success was reduced following fire. Smaller species had an increased chance of being caught on windy days. Rhabdomys pumilio and Mus minutoides showed a seasonal peak in capture probability which coincided with onset of reprodu...

Biochemical-genetic variation was studied in springbok Antidorcas m. marsupialis (Zimmermann, 1780) from a large (N>2000) "wild" population (n=24) and a small (30>N>20) isolated farm population (n=10) using electrophoretic allozyme analysis. Springbok showed polymorphisms at eight out of 46 loci.

Ecologists are increasingly being drawn into the task of addressing problems of environmental degradation. They are expected to find solutions that will lead to sustainable resource use throughout the world. In doing so, the robustness of the science becomes increasingly important, and the problem of extrapolating the results of research conducted...

The fuel properties of natural vegetation, and their dynamics, influence the occurrence of fires to a large degree. They also govern the nature of fires, and therefore, to some extent, their effects. Ecologists are interested in fuel properties for a variety of reasons. The most important of these are to reconstruct a plausible fire regime under wh...

Fynbos vegetation is of low nutritive quality for mammals (Bigalke 1979b). Palatable grasses are scarce (Cowling 1983b) have low protein and phosphorus values and deficiencies in some trace elements (Louw 1969). The low productivity of fynbos vegetation, apart from the first few years after fire (Kruger 1977a; see also Chap. 9; Sect. 9.3.2), also l...

Pepler, D., Van Hensbergen, H.J. & Martin, R. 1991. Breeding density and nest site characteristics of the Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus minor in the southwestern Cape, South Africa. Ostrich: 62: 23–28.A survey of nest sites and nest site characteristics is used to obtain an estimate of the breeding density of the Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrin...

Baboons damage all commercially important pine species by stripping bark, which results in deformation or death of trees and reduction in wood quality. Cones are also removed. Scale of damage appears to have increased recently in several plantation areas in both summer and winter rainfall regions and losses are estimated to total several million ra...

Measurements of the rump patch taken from photographs are used to identify possible Damaliscus dorcas dorcas × D. d. phillipsi. -from Authors

It is generally accepted that models facilitate understanding of complex systems and thereby promote learning and scientific discovery. Applications of several kinds of models in plantation forestry and related fields are presented, together with some critical comments relating to model characteristics. The paper introduces a few examples of the mo...

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Cambridge, 1984.