GVI Kenya

Well hello again folks!

Apologies for not getting this blog up yesterday, we had issues with our elecricity…by which we mean we had none! But we’re back on line this morning so I can fill you all in.

So yesterday saw the conclusion to our colobus census in Shimoni forest! It has taken three days of long, hard transect traversing. We’ve tackled thorn bushes, impenetrable thickets and swarms of safari ants, but have come out at the end with some awesome data. Everyone is tired and covered in scratches, but we all had an absolute blast and got to see some fantastic sightings.

 A colobus on the move

It was quite sad for a portion of yesterday however, as the destruction that has happened and is still going on up on the northern edge of the forest is awful. There are huge sections that can hardly be called forest anymore. And both teams observed charcoal pits in various stages of completion. My team actually stumbled across two men that were in the process of digging one, but they bolted as soon as they heard us coming.

On a better note, both teams had great sightings of primates. Between us, we saw 5 colobus troops and 6 sykes troops, plus the usual collection of beautiful birds, sunis, eagles and the back end of a very large snake! So in total over the three days, we have seen 19 groups of colobus and 24 groups of sykes!

We have also come to the conclusion that we shouldn’t really be calling what we’e done a census. Because a census is when you do a total sweep of the area in one day, so the number of primates you see is, in theory, all the primates in the area. But because we’ve had to do it over three days (due to man power), we will still be using distance sampling techniques to get population density estimates.

Some of the victorious team members

Unfortunately due to the power situation, we have not had a chance to run the data through the distance sampling program so don’t have any results for you yet, but as soon as we do I shall let you all know!