Census - The Finale
Category: Charcoal Burning, Coastal Forest, Colobus, Primate Research, Primate census, Shimoni Forest | Date: Aug 07 2009 | By: gvikenya
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!
Tags: , Charcoal Burning, charcoal pits, colobus census, colobus monkey, Primate Research, Suni, sykes monkey
Colobus Census of Shimoni Forest
Category: African Fish Eagle, Coastal Forest, Colobus, Primate Research, Primate census, Shimoni Forest | Date: Aug 04 2009 | By: gvikenya
Today will be the first of a two part update on some exciting research going on in Shimoni Forest. We are attempting to build on work previously done in 2001 by Julie Anderson and then in 2007 by GVI. We are doing a colobus census of the whole forest!
Marta is a volunteer here with us for three months and is currently working towards her masters in environmental modeling, monitoring and reconstruction. She contacted us asking if she could use her time here to do the field-work for her project in the forest, consisting mainly of a colobus census – we welcomed her with open arms!
Preparing to synchronise watches
We timed the census for when we had the most number of people on the mainland, and managed to get a keen group of 15 people fired up and ready. To do the census we require groups to conduct what is essentially a primate community survey along all of our regular transects, plus groups moving through the forest in between the transects following compass bearings, so a group every 100 metres. Unfortunately our GPS’s do not work in the forest due to poor satellite coverage, so we had to devise a cunning system of counting paces and regular check points coordinated using mobile phones (on silent of course!), to ensure we were all moving through the forest at a similar pace.
The team heading in
In an ideal world, you would have enough people to do the entire forest in a single day, leaving you with a ‘snapshot’ population count. We don’t have enough people so are having to do it over two days. For those groups traveling between our regular marked and cut transects, it was pretty rough going – there was plenty of crawling through thickets and fighting through thorns. However our sense of adventure and the belief in the value of the work prevailed, and lots of smiling faces headed back to base.
Getting through one of the many thickets!
During the day five groups of colobus, ten groups of sykes and one group of yellow baboon were sighted. Some of the other casual observations included a pair of zanj elephant shrews, hornbills, African fish eagles and lots of red bellied coastal squirrels!
One of the sighted colobus
We’re all tired, but looking forward a second day out in the forest. We really can’t wait to see the results and compare them with the previous years. I’ll hopefully get a post out letting you all know how it went!
Tags: African Fish Eagle, colobus monkey, hornbill, Primate census, Primate Research, sykes monkey, yellow baboon, zanj elephant shrew
Revisiting Transect 6 in Shimoni Forest
Category: Coastal Forest, Colobus, Primate Research, Shimoni Forest | Date: Jul 06 2009 | By: gvikenya
This week our research teams were back in Shimoni forest after a few weeks break. We were aware of the intensely thick canopy and vegetation that has literally sprung into life since the onset of the rainy season, and were concerned about how this was going to affect our primate community surveys. The density of the vegetation makes spotting primates significantly more challenging than in the dry season, and the very strong winds that are present at the moment reduce the chances of hearing the primates; a vital tool in the search! The rains and winds also regularly bring down trees in the shallow soils of the coral rag forest which can make it near impossible to find let alone follow our transects!
We headed out optimistic nonetheless, and made our way to the furthest transect away; transect 6. The last time we had been back to re-survey transect 6 we had been confronted by swathes of destruction from fire and on-going logging and charcoal burning.
Our fears of not seeing the primates melted away steadily throughout the day however, after we got sighting after sighting of the Angolan black and white colobus monkey, and several good sightings of sykes monkeys.
The day ended up with seven colobus sightings and two sykes sightings. The average group size of the colobus seen on that day was just over 4, with the largest group including seven individuals. What was particularly exciting to see was the number of young colobus in the groups; two very young infants who still had all white pelts and very cute pink faces, two juveniles that had developed grey pelts, and 3 sub-adults. Sub-adults are often hard to distinguish accurately as they have developed their adult colouration, but by watching their behaviour and interaction with adult females in the group it is possible to observe their on-going attachment to their mothers.
The rainy season is the peak birth time for colobus, so it should be expected to see young ones, but it was a huge sense of relief that the disturbance we were confronted with the last time we working in this part of the forest has not displaced the troops of colobus or interupted their breeding cycles.
Tags: angolan black and white colobus, Primate Research, Shimoni Forest, sykes monkey
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