Hey everyone,

Well I hope you’ve enjoyed the last couple of blogs about our marine team working with the Funzi Turtle Club.  I’m rather jealous I wasn’t able to go along with them!  I have had my hands full here on the mainland, carrying on with our coastal forest research. 

We have been pushing on through the heat and the sweat towards our goal of setting up survey transects in Shimoni west forest.  The last time I spoke about this I think we’d got about 600 metres up our future north / south spine. 

 Andy having a swing

We went in with a GPS a couple of days ago to continue plotting our progress, and to our delight we found that we had gone 1037 metres!  We’ve broken the kilometer mark!  By our estimations the north / south spine is going to be approximately 1.8 – 2 km long, allowing for up to 10 survey transects! 

This highlights how far we have yet to go, as each transect is going to be longer than the spine, but we are not backing down!  Our panga (machete) arms are bulging and our hands are blistered, but the future of research in Shimoni’s beautiful and unique coastal forest is in our hands, and every hour we spend in there takes us closer to assessing the conservation status of Shimoni west.

 Andy and Chelsea

Once we’ve uploaded the GPS points onto the map, I’ll stick them up on the blog so you can all have a look for yourselves!