2007 December | GVI Kenya

Teaching Shimoni’s Children About Their Forest

Category: Environmental Education, Shimoni Forest, Uncategorized | Date: Dec 03 2007 | By: admin

Over the weekend we played host to students from Shimoni Primary School. Friends of Shimoni Forest, who we are supporting in their efforts to seek responsible management of the forest by the community, feel that one of the most effective ways to get their message in to the wider community is by sending home groups of excited children to tell their families what they have learnt. So with the challenge put to us, that is what we set out to do on Saturday…

The children begun their day with the theme of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ before going on to make recyled baskets from paper mache - an activity they found very funny, but once they had dried by the end of the morning and been planted with vegetable seeds, they had the beginnings of their own school vegetable garden. We have started introducing the concept of these little hanging gardens in Mkwiro village, where the goats manage to get to absolutely everything within reach, no matter how clever we think we are getting with fences!

The children then settled down to an outside class on the Angolan Black & White Colobus and other primates found in Shimoni before being taken in to the forest to to learn more about it hands-on, including behaviour as they watched a troop of Colobus, and flicking through our books to identify the birds.

This is the third such class we have run for Shimoni Primary School and plan to get as many of the children in to the forest as we can to ensure they don’t take for granted their incredible natural heritage.

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Colobus Census in Gonja Forest Reserve Completed

Category: Amphibians, Coastal Forest, Colobus, Primate Research, Shrews | Date: Dec 01 2007 | By: admin

Since August of this year GVI has been supporting Kenya Wildlife Service and the Colobus Trust to carry out the first national census of the Angolan Black and White Colobus since 2001. Having already completed the census in Shimoni’s forests, we have spent the last few weeks at Gonja Forest Reserve, between the border posts of Kenya and Tanzania. Our Terrestrial Officer, Emma, returned today after finishing off the last of the transects with our team of expedition members. For me playing a key role in the census has been one of the most valuable contributions we have made to the conservation of this amazing animal. Emma, our Terrestrial Science Officer, tells us the news from Gonja…

Above: The research team for Gonja Forest Reserve, Emma is second from the right in the top row

“After two weeks and twenty two transects, Gonja provided us with just 13 Colobus sightings from 5 troops, two of which were just solitary males. In 2001, the census recorded 24 colobus, which indicates a worrying decline in the population for an area of forest that is under formal protection.

Above: The red legged running frog, Kassina maculata, a wonderful find in Gonja

But there were some excicitng findings too… we found two new species of frogs that we haven’t recorded before one of which was the beautiful Kassina maculata, or red legged running frog, the second species in this genus that we have found.

We also had a visit from a shrew, a Crocidura spp, which was very cute! Unfortunately with over 100 species described that all look very similar, we are unable to identiy which species it is without taking a specimen for identification by experts. Finally our time crawling through Gonja forest also gave us some smaller adventures… the bee nests and army ant attacks were not the fondest of memories but we saw some very very cool spiders!”