Wildlife Club Head Into The Forest
Category: Butterflies, Coastal Forest, Colobus, Environmental Education, Shimoni Forest, Wildlife clubs | Date: Nov 14 2009 | By: gvikenya
Yesterday was Friday. And that meant one thing – environmental education! For the last few months or so, we’ve been swapping our boots and clipboards for chalk boards, songs and games and heading into the Base Academy (a small primary school in the village) to teach the children about environmental issues and some basic science.
We feel it is really important to give the children this sort of knowledge and awareness about the environment around them because firstly, what they learn in school about such issues is minimal and basic, and it doesn’t cover the things that affect their everyday lives.
This is why we have been focusing our lessons on areas that the children can relate to such as coastal forests, the importance of forests and the animals that live there, effects of deforestation, pollution etc. A couple of weeks ago, we decided to re-brand our weekly lesson, and form a wildlife club for the kids. This means they are now part of the Shimoni Base Academy Wildlife Club! We felt this would encourage a sense of ownership and pride in the children who come, and would really make them feel a part of something.
The children coming back from the forest
We think it has worked really well, as we now have a regular group of about 30 children that are there every Friday, who all wear their Wildlife Club badges with pride, and sing the Club song through the village! And since forming the Club, we have been putting an emphasis on actually taking the children into the forest every week. The idea behind this is to get them out there, seeing the plants and animals for themselves, and getting them out of the classroom and excited about nature, the forest and the wildlife.
So far its been a huge success; the kids absolutely love being taken out into the forest, and they have really enjoyed the topics we’ve covered so far. We’ve been going over basic plant biology (as this was in their syllabus and their exams were coming up so we thought that would help), where we actually showed them the different plant species and the different parts. Then we gave a lesson on butterflies, followed by sweep netting in the forest – they absolutely loved that (and were rather good at it…I’m considering using them for our surveys!), where we also showed them how to get the butterflies out of the nets without hurting them.
And then yesterday we tried to touch on the subject of colobus behaviour. We managed to get across the basic idea of why we study their behaviour, how colobus behaviour is adversely affected by things such as disturbance, and then what possible impacts this could have. It went surprisingly well, and they grasped the concept really well. It was a very simplified version of course, with the basic premise being if the colobus are undisturbed they will spend more time feeding, resting, sleeping and socialising, whereas if the forest around them is being disturbed, they may spend more time alert or travelling.
They are a great bunch of kids to work with, all so eager to learn and take part. Hopefully we will be helping these children to grow up into environmentally aware adults, who understand about their surroundings, and take pride in the beautiful areas they live in.
Tags: , adverse effects, alert, basic science, boots, butterlfies, chalk boards, clipboards, coastal forests, colobus behaviour, deforestation, disturbance, Environmental Education, environmental issues, exams, feeding, knowledge and awareness, nature, ownership, plant biology, plants and animals, pollution, possible impacts, pride, resting, shimoni, Shimoni Base Academy, simplified version, sleeping, socialising, songs and games, surveys, sweep netting, syllubus, travelling, wildlife club
Inside The Mind Of A Colobus
Category: Coastal Forest, Colobus, Primate Research, Shimoni Forest | Date: Oct 16 2009 | By: gvikenya
Have you ever asked yourself what you would do with your day if you were a colobus monkey? Perhaps not, but down here in Shimoni east forest, we are rather curious…
GVI has been conducting primate behaviour surveys on the colobus monkeys for about two and a half years now. It has been a constant effort, but unfortunately we have never dedicated as much time and energy into it as we would have liked. This is due to the fact that our forest research programme has many parts to it, with an array of different surveys that all require our attention.
We have been privileged recently though, by the presence of a masters student from Manchester Metropolitan University who has come out to do his thesis on colobus behaviour in Shimoni forest!
Gareth has been with us for over ten weeks now, and still has approximately five weeks to go. He has been stomping through the forest during every waking hour in search of our beloved colobus, with the hope of quietly observing and recording their behaviours.
The main outputs one wants from behavioural surveys are time budgets. These are simple breakdowns of what the colobus actually spend their time doing (normally as a percentage of total time). So for example you could observe that during the early hours of the morning, an adult male may spend 60% of his time feeding, whereas during mid day, this may be replaced by resting (say for perhaps 85% of the time). Whilst one is recording states (which are longer durations e.g. feeding and resting), one is also recording events, which are of a shorter duration, or “instant” events such as urination, or scratching.
You may be asking yourself why we would be interested in these details of a monkeys life. Well, apart from being amazing to watch (they are scarily human-like!), these observations can tell us much about the wellbeing of the population, the impact of environmental pressures, the effects of human presence / absence, and the impact that human disturbance is having on different populations.
For example if you were to observe a troop that reside deep in the forest well away from human presence, and then compare those results to a troop that is near recent destruction, you may observe some serious differences. The troop deep in the forest may spend more time feeding in the morning and evening, and resting during the middle of the day – what they should be doing. The troop closer to human disturbance may spend more time alert, or travelling. This reduces the time they can spend on activities such as feeding, or socially important behaviours like grooming. You do not need to be a genius to guess that this will be likely to have implications for the health of the individuals and the troop as a whole.
Observing colobus in their natural habitat
So we are very happy to have Gareth here with us, and are extremely excited to see his results. They may well reveal some distressing facts, which I have no doubt we will be able to link to the increasing destruction of the forest. But the first step is collecting this data, and analysing the results. Once we have firm conclusions, the next question will be “why?” and the next step – how do we stop it.
Tags: , adult male, alert, angolan black and white colobus, behavioural survey, distressing facts, energy, events, feeding, firm conclusions, human disturbance, human presence, instant event, Manchester Metropolitan University, observations, percentage total time, population, primate behaviour, resting, results, scratching, Shimoni east forest, social activity, states, surveys, time, time budgets, urination
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