Energy | GVI Kenya

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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Charcoal Burning - The Technical Side

Category: Charcoal Burning, Coastal Forest, Shimoni Forest | Date: Aug 25 2009 | By: gvikenya

If you cast your eyes back through some of the many blogs we’ve posted, you’ll see that plenty of them are about, or refer to, charcoal burning. We assume that most people have established what we are talking about – the means by which charcoal is produced. We thought however, it may be of interest to some people to know a bit more detail about this destructive and highly inefficient form of resource use.

About 47% of Kenyan households use charcoal, and total charcoal production is about 2.4 million tones (or 67 million bags weighing 36kg each). The widespread preference for charcoal is explained primarily by its affordability; it is the cheapest form of household cooking fuel (Kwale Management Team, 2009).

In Shimoni forest and the surrounding area, the majority of charcoal burning is done for subsistence purposes, and therefore on a relatively small scale when compared to commercial operations. The methods these subsistence charcoal producers use however, are basic and highly inefficient. The standard method is that of the earth-mound kiln.

A typical earth-mound kiln

The earth-mound kiln will begin with the digging of a shallow pit, which will be as big in surface area as the producer would like it to be. Just from personal experience, I have seen smaller kilns no more than 2 metres by 3 metres, and larger ones of up to 5 metres by 5 metres. These are quite small when compared to commercial kilns, but still do huge amounts of damage.

Trees are then cut down, cut into small pieces and piled up in the bottom of the pit. A wall, or structure is then built around the pit using lumps of rock and coral, tightly packed with earth. An earth roof is then constructed, sealing the structure. The idea is to starve the combustion process of oxygen, so only a couple of very small holes are left to allow smoke to escape. Some sort of fuel is poured over the wood before it is lit, to aid in the lighting process. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but my guess would be something like diesel, judging by the smell that is emitted. Long pieces of dry grass are fed in through the sides and roof so that once everything is sealed, the grass is simply lit, igniting the contents inside.

One of the smaller charcoal pits

Generally speaking, old, mature hardwood trees are cut down. Only a relatively small portion of the felled tree will actually go into the kiln. Only 10% of the wood that goes into the kiln will end up as usable charcoal. And of that percentage that does become charcoal, 80% of the energy in the wood has already been lost. The rest of the wood, and energy goes to waste.