Working With The Funzi Turtle Club (Day 1)
Category: Community Conservation, Environmental Education, Funzi turtle club, Mangroves, Turtles | Date: Nov 10 2009 | By: gvikenya
This past Wednesday found the GVI marine team travelling from Wasini Island to Funzi Island for two days of training with the Funzi Bay Turtle Club, a local community effort to save endangered sea turtles. Currently there are about 30 members in the club, 20 of which, including the chair, are females from this traditional Muslim community on the island.
Since we usually spend our days on the water monitoring local and migratory marine species, to have two full days on dry land was quite a change of routine.
Douglas explaining the importance of sea turtle conservation
Upon arrival, we were met by one of the club members and taken to our house, where we met up with KESCOM volunteers Sonya and Avidad from Sweden, here for three months. KESCOM (Kenya Sea Turtle Conservation Committee) currently supports many grass-root turtle conservation efforts along the Kenyan coastline. This support comes in the form of monetary donations, grant writing, providing volunteers, management and contacts with other local organizations. Douglas is the KESCOM Funzi Island representative.
Jennifer LeClair giving the presentatoin about whales and dolphins
After our introductions we proceeded to the village for a tour and to the mangrove forest for a planting session. Since mangroves are among the fastest disappearing ecosystems in the world, each tree really counts! The turtle club also runs a shop with some very unique gifts made by local community members, and we all spend some time and money there.
Following a fabulous meal cooked by the ladies of the turtle club (one of many such delicious meals) we began our training with the group. Our goal was to help the club members learn to interact with tourists and to give them information that tourists would like to hear, in addition to giving them important information about habitat conservation. We showed a number of PowerPoint presentations to the group and with the help of Douglas on the Swahili translation, gave them information about ocean conservation, sea turtle identification and morphology, and local whale and dolphin species. Club members were extremely interested in learning and asked a number of thought provoking questions following each presentation.
Mangroves
One of the most common questions asked by the community members was how to explain to the other islanders (100% of which are fishermen) topics regarding conservation of the ocean environment. We were able to provide some examples, but in the end had to explain that changing people’s minds is a very slow process. Since entanglement in discarded fishing nets is one of the biggest threats to marine animals, we suggested that this was a good issue to start with in the community. We were very impressed with the concern of the club members about the welfare of the ocean habitats and animals, especially in an area of the country where ecosystem destruction and human disturbance is prevalent.
Overall, both sides seemed very pleased with the progress made during the first day of training. The volunteers of GVI would like to thank KESCOM and the Funzi Bay Turtle Club for there generous hospitality and delicious traditional food.
Mangroves of Funzi Island
Tags: , change of routine, club members, dolphin species, ecosystem destruction, endangered seas turtles, entanglement in disgarded fishing nets, funzi bay, Funzi Island, Funzi Tirtle Club, grant writing, grass0roots turlte conservatoin, human disturbance, Kenya Sea Turtle Conservation Committee, Kenyan coastline, KESCOM, local community members, local marine species, local organisations, mangrove ecosystems, migratory marine species, monetary donations, morphology, ocean conservation, ocean environment, powerpoint presentations, sea turtle identification, swahili translations, thought provoking questions, threats to marine mammals, tourists, traditional Muslim community, turtle club, unique gifts, volunteers, wasini island, whale species
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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