AWF Blog

• A Male Leopard Goes Down

  Posted: June 24, 2008, 6:43 pm by Nakedi

  On Sunday May 22nd we received a call from Steve Faulconbridge, the conservationist from Singita Kruger National Park (SKNP). He had just found the carcass of a male leopard probably in his prime in the north of the concession.

  Matthew Harding (SKNP’s head guide), Liky Gumede (Tracker), and I immediately went to the area to help Steve investigate the cause of death. Evidence suggested that the individual was killed while he was feeding on an impala that he had brought down. It is possible that the assailant was a nomad young male lion that took the opportunity when the leopard let down his guard. This can be expected because recently there were 49 lions spotted in the concession in one day. The concession is only 15 000 hectares suggesting that the lion density is very high.

  Normally leopards place their kills high on the forks of trees. While this ensures that food will not be lost to other predators, it also protects the leopard from being attacked from the blind side while feeding. The dead leopard probably thought he was well hidden. A fatal mistake for a solitary animal! The rest of the animal was pretty much eaten by whatever killed him and other scavengers such as vultures and jackals. We were lucky to find the carcass ahead of the hyenas, or else there would have been no sign of the carcass.

• Naming Gorillas

  Posted: June 22, 2008, 6:51 pm by Paul

  Thousands of people gathered on a grassy area at the base of Mt Sabyinyo for the fourth Rwandan Gorilla Naming Ceremony, Kwita Izina. Twenty bug-eyed, curly-haired, ridiculously cute gorilla infants were given names in this year’s festival by “VIPs” of various sorts, including our very own CEO, Patrick Bergin.

  AWF CEO Patrick Bergin named one of the infant gorillas Sacola, after
  the community trust that owns Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge.

  It was great to see so many people coming from all corners of Rwanda for the event, and the crowd was buzzing like a rock concert. I wish I could say the speeches were as riveting as a concert, but at least the dance troupes – both a local group and the Rwandan National Ballet – had great music, costumes, and dancing to punctuate the long speeches.

  Dancers entertained the crowd.

  A warrior ceremony added drama and excitement to the ceremony.

  Rwandan President Paul Kagame did not turn up, but sent Prime Minister Bernard Makuza in his place. The governor also spoke, as well as ORTPN’s Director General, Rosette Rugamba, who is the hard-lined driving force between the event and is pushing Rwanda’s tourism into first class.

  The special guests were called to get ready for the giving of the gorilla names, and I chased after them with a gang of paparazzi. Patrick and the other 19 namers ducked into a traditional Rwandese grass home (built for the occasion) and emerged transformed, wearing flowing white robes and carrying spears.

  Up on stage they revealed the name they had selected for the baby gorillas. Patrick chose the name “Sacola,” a perfect choice for this tiny new member of the population. SACOLA is the name of the association that represents the community that owns the new Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge, which had its inaugural opening yesterday as well. The lodge is special in that it converts gorilla tourism dollars into benefits for local people. A percentage of the lodge’s revenue gets kicked back to the community for projects such as fixing roads and building houses for the community’s poorest families.

  Now little Sacola will be crawling around in the forest, a reminder of the good that comes when local people are involved in gorilla conservation.

• Gorilla Guardians

  Posted: June 17, 2008, 7:59 pm by admin

  When the trackers go out with the gorillas, it’s not all picture-taking and gorilla games. There’s work to be done. During our trek, Damascene and Gabriel showed me the techniques they use to collect data on the gorillas and monitor the groups – a program called Ranger-Based Monitoring (RBM).

  RBM was developed by the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP) in 1996 as a means for ecosystem surveillance across the Virunga and Bwindi forest blocks in Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC.

  Trackers and rangers are trained to monitor the health of each group member, record births, deaths and transfers of individuals between groups, and collect data on gorilla behavior and activities. They also record the daily location of the gorillas and of illegal activities within the park, such as cattle grazing and firewood collection.

  An ORTPN monitoring assistant records data as a curious gorilla climbs overhead.

  RBM is a powerful conservation tool. Trackers and rangers, the men and women who know the gorillas best, are actively involved in data collection that helps in the long term protection of the species. It is employed in the three countries that share the Virunga region and so helps facilitate transboundary natural resource management.

  So, as I was ogling Rugendo and Agashya, Damascene and Gabriel were collecting data and accounting for each gorilla in Group 13.

  Damascene takes notes from the silverback’s nest site.

  Damascene was trained by IGCP in data collection and entry. Damascene is in charge of collecting the tracker’s data and relays it to IGCP, which uses it to guide conservation management. He’s been working with the gorillas for nearly 10 years, has assisted various research projects, and has helped habituate gorillas to human presence.

  It was clear that Damascene is completely committed to the gorillas. He spoke about his work with such pride. “Of course I enjoy my job very, very much. I love it!”

  Gabriel monitors Agashya, the group’s silverback.

  Trackers also watch for poachers’ snares set for antelope and other small forest animals. Unwary or inexperienced gorillas sometimes get caught in the snares, which are made of wire or nylon. One young female of Group 13 lost a hand due to a snare. I was amazed she survived and can navigate the forest.

  “Security in Rwanda is not a problem,” Damascene explained. But neighboring DRC is not as stable. “We’ve seen a rise in snares close to the border. If our gorillas go across the border and find many snares, they come back very quickly.”

  Gorilla trackers are trained to collect data with a simple pen and paper, which aid in overall conservation management.

  Want to support gorilla rangers and trackers? AWF is helping to raise funds to equip rangers and trackers and to promote gorilla conservation - click here to help.

• Tracking Gorillas

  Posted: June 16, 2008, 8:09 pm by Paul

  In my next life I’m going to be a gorilla tracker.

  Yesterday, I joined a group of trackers as they entered Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda to locate and monitor a group of mountain gorillas. The trip began at sunrise. I picked up Damascene Hakizimana, a monitoring assistant with ORTPN, and drove from park headquarters through farmland to the edge of the forest. And when I say edge, I mean edge. The forest comes to an abrupt halt at a stone wall meant to keep buffalo in the park and out of peoples’ crops.

  The line between the park’s forest and farmland is striking, marked by the buffalo wall. Beyond, Sabyinyo disappears into the mist.

  At 7:10 am we crossed the wall and met three more trackers, the team leader Gabriel Safari, and four armed guards (for unruly buffaloes I was told). Short introductions were made and then we headed up a steep, slippery slope through bamboo, thistles, wild celery, and nettles.

  By 7:30 Gabriel stopped and whispered “they are here.” We had reached the gorillas. So much for the anticipated two-hour, grueling climb.

  Dian Fossey was right; we heard and smelled the gorillas before we saw them. A musty odor was strong in the air, and bamboo cracked loudly as the gorillas climbed down from their nests, feeding along the way.

  I’ve always had a hard time wrapping my head around the notion of gorillas sitting in nests up in bamboo (an adult female can weigh 215 lbs). But they climb through the bamboo with ease. Bamboo grows so tightly that it forms platforms that can easily support an adult gorilla - or three humans. We climbed up to inspect one of the nests. The shallow bowl of bamboo and leaves had tiny turds in it, and Damascene was excited to tell me that these meant the nest hosted a mother and an infant.

  An adult female, Akago, feeds in the early morning sun.

  After feeding for fifteen minutes, the silverback, Agashya, got up and wandered off into the vegetation, his group members falling in line behind him. We took off after them, winding through tunnels in the growth, sometimes crawling under fallen logs on hands and knees.

  We caught up with them in a space where the forest floor was clear and the bamboo formed a canopy overhead. Soon we were surrounded by gorillas. Gorillas above us in the bamboo, little ones rolling around on the ground, others happily watching us watch them.

  An adult female dropped in like a paratrooper from somewhere above, causing a torrential rain of leaves and debris. Although there was plenty of room where we were, she brushed right by me, making it clear that I was in her way. “This is Rugendo,” Damascene tells me. “When Agashya [the silverback] is away from the group, she’s in charge. She’s a tough one,” he grins. She then posed proudly in the middle of the space in front of us.

  Rugendo, the “tough one,” posed for us.

  The munching sound made when eating bamboo stalks is both loud and surprisingly pleasing to hear. It’s like a kid eating celery but on a, well, gorilla scale. My chef brother would say “I bet that bamboo has good mouth-feel.” A gorilla snaps a stalk of bamboo off, shucks the outer husk to reveal the bright green, wet inner stalk. Snap, shuck, munch. Repeat.

  There are seven groups of mountain gorillas that have been habituated for tourism in Rwanda. We were with Group 13, named after the number of gorillas in the group when it was first habituated. Currently there are 23 gorillas in the group: 11 females, 9 infants, 1 juvenile, 1 subadult, and 1 silverback. I loved how the trackers referred to him as “the chief”.

  Two infants from this group will be named at Kwita Izina, the Gorilla Naming Ceremony next week. Damascene told me that the trackers have picked three possible names for each infant (he wouldn’t reveal the names). At the ceremony, one of the special guests will pick one of the names, and Group 13 will have two newly named infants added to its family tree.

  I’ll discuss some of the monitoring techniques the trackers use to collect data in another post. After Gabriel and Damascene accounted for all 23 gorillas, we left them to their antics, hiked back down the slope, over the wall, and out of the woods.

  I couldn’t believe how lucky I am to have this opportunity. We sat on some rocks for a rest - each of us unable to stop smiling after such an encounter. It was evident that these men who see gorillas every day are still affected by them.

  Even the guy with the gun said, “I love my job.”

  Pascal, Alfonse, Damascene, me, Jean-Pierre.
  

• Celebrating Gorillas

  Posted: June 12, 2008, 10:57 pm by Paul

  About a third of the world’s entire mountain gorilla population lives in Rwanda. When it’s time to celebrate the country’s treasured gorillas, Rwanda’s wildlife and parks authority, ORTPN, goes all out.

  June 21st is the annual Gorilla Naming Ceremony, called Kwita Izina after the old Rwandan tradition of naming newborns. This year, 20 infant mountain gorillas will be given names by “key personalities in wildlife conservation and business.” Exactly who these people are has not been revealed, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Natalie Portman will show up again this year.

  Rwanda has turned the Naming Ceremony into a week-long event, beginning yesterday with the launch of several community projects made possible with funds raised from past gorilla naming events.

  I tagged along with a delegation of ORTPN staff, conservation groups, reporters, and politicians to visit a couple of the community projects. We arrived at the Nyabigoma primary school in Kinigi to a spectacular site: the 600+ students grouped in the schoolyard singing and dancing. To one side, 10 men in traditional attire beat giant drums. To the other side, the parents of the school children and other community folks joined in the singing and clapping.

  The school is one of 11 primary schools built with funds from conservation. ORTPN Director General Rosette Rugamba said, “By celebrating Kwita Izina, we are celebrating incredible success in the conservation of the mountain gorilla and the continued partnership with the community that plays host to the gorillas.”

  Over the past three years, ORTPN has given community projects over 410 million Rwandan francs ($762,000) raised through a successful revenue sharing scheme. ORTPN allocates at least 5% of its total gross revenue each year to be distributed to projects in communities surrounding the parks. The International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP) helped design the revenue sharing policy.

  In 2007 gorilla tourism generated $7 million in Rwanda. So it’s no surprise to see so many happy faces in the communities surrounding Volcanoes National Park.

• A First Encounter

  Posted: June 12, 2008, 7:16 am by Paul

  I just arrived in Rwanda and am thrilled to be back in mountain gorilla territory - montane forests thick and misty as clouds. Everyone here is gearing up for Kwita Izina, an annual gorilla-naming ceremony modeled after the age-old Rwandan tradition of naming children. More on that later; I’m excited to trek into the forests and see these beautiful primates. I am reminded of Dian Fossey’s passage from Gorillas in the Mist:

  I shall never forget my first encounter with gorillas. Sound preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming musky-barnyard, humanlike scent. The air was suddenly rent by a high-pitched series of screams followed by the rhythmic rondo of sharp pok-pok chestbeats from a great silverback male obscured behind what seemed an impenetrable wall of vegetation…. Immediately I was struck by the physical magnificence of the huge jet-black bodies blended against the green palette wash of the thick forest foliage.
  — Dian Fossey, 1983

• Counting Leopards

  Posted: June 9, 2008, 10:00 pm by Nakedi

  To successfully estimate leopard numbers in the concession, each leopard has to be individually identified by the unique spot patterns found on its flanks and face. Each leopard has its own unique spot pattern, like fingerprints on humans.

  Up to this point, I have only one camera per station. This is a problem because if the camera photographs a single leopard but captures one flank the first time and the other flank the second time, there’s no proof that the animal is the same individual. This therefore means that a single animal will be counted twice. The solution here is to use two cameras, one opposite the other, to capture both flanks of a moving animal at the same time.

  For example, the animal pictured here (see Figure 1) can be identified as a single individual, because the camera captured only the right flank. Here I was lucky because the animal was repeatedly photographed only on the right side. Another picture of the leopard taken by the same camera, but capturing the left flank, would make it difficult to determine whether it is the same animal (Figure 2).

  
  Figure 1
  Unique markings on the left side of a female leopard, captured by
  a camera on the game path on the bank of the N’wanetsi River
  at Singita Kruger National Park.

  
  Figure 2
  A leopard whose left flank is captured on camera as he moves along
  the N’wanetsi River at Singita Kruger National Park. This leopard, until
  the spot pattern on the right flank of this animal is shown to be the same
  as in Figure 1, will be counted as two different individuals.

  The best solution is to add more cameras, with two cameras deployed at each station. In that way, there’s  no chance of overestimating the number of leopards in the area.

   

• Money, Honey

  Posted: June 5, 2008, 5:49 pm by Paul

  The plan was for me to meet some bee-keepers in northern Kenya. Report on the AWF project, take some photos. I never would have guessed I’d end up in the bee suit.

  First, some background. I’m in Maralal, a small town in northern Samburu district that hugs a large intact forest block called Kirisia Forest. In the past, people have put a lot of pressure on the forest, felling trees to get at natural bee hives.

  To reduce pressure on the forest, AWF has given 300 modern Langstroth bee hives to bee-keepers from four communities around Kirisia as a way to trigger forest-friendly enterprise. The premise is simple: bees make honey, honey makes money, and bees need healthy trees to make that honey. So, if given the chance, people will conserve the forest and can sell honey for good cash to boot.

  Steve examining a traditional log hive. These hives produce less honey of lower quality.

  One of the modern Langstroth hives. AWF gave Samburu bee-keepers 300 of these hives.

  I visited the homestead of John Leadra, who invited me to see the hives he received from AWF. I was with Steve Lelegwe, the manager of the local honey refinery, and David Kinanta, a young, energetic community conservation assistant. They thought it would be a great idea to put me in a bee suit and see what happens.

  John suited up, handing me rubber gloves and the mesh hat without a word. “Don’t I need some special training or something?” I asked.

  “It’s ok, it’s night-time. The bees are calm,” they told me with suspiciously big grins.

  John had a small hand-held aluminum smoker which he applied to one of the hives to calm the bees. We removed the lid, pulled out the wooden frames which hold the honeycombs, and shook the bees free.

  The sound of bees is both soothing and terrifying. Having bees swarming inches from my face, clinging to the mesh of my bee hat was disturbing, and I fought to stay calm. Are they on the outside or inside? How am I going to react if they get in?

  Luckily for me, they didn’t get in. The bees flew around, rather cranky that two funny looking giants showed up to rip open their house and take their honey. We finished collecting the honey combs and replaced the frames and lid and let them be.

  John Leadra shook my hand vigorously, thanking me for what AWF has brought him. Steve translated. “The hives AWF bought me has enabled me to make enough money to send my two children to school. And I’ve been able to buy four cows,” he beamed. “See that irrigation machine? The honey bought me that too. Anything AWF brings cannot go away.”

  Those words stuck with me. It was amazing to see how a small investment like a few hives has enabled this man to send his kids to school.

  John Leadra was able to send his children to school with money made from the honey.

  Kinanta was a bit more disappointed. “I can’t believe you didn’t get stung! I was hoping you would get at least one good sting, so you can have a good story.” I think I got a good story anyway.

• Camera Traps

  Posted: June 2, 2008, 1:44 pm by Nakedi

  Currently I’m in the process of quantifying leopard numbers in the concession. This has proven not to be an easy task which requires a lot of time to plan and acquire proper equipment. Firstly we had to purchase equipment from the United States, but then had to wait for two weeks for the cameras to be released from the customs services at the airport.

  After receiving the cameras, I had to make a decision to put up the cameras in the field and run the risk of having hyenas and elephants crush them to unidentifiable pieces or to make steel boxes to try and protect them. I decided to take the latter. I asked around to find a suitable person to make the units for me, but they were all beyond my budget. As a result, I went on to try and make my own unit pictured below. It didn’t look like it was going to work properly even though I had every intention to put it to the test (I thought it was work of art!!!).

  Then my colleagues talked some sense to me to try and get someone to make the boxes for me. That’s when Mr. Mtungwa came in to the picture. He was kind enough to offer to make the boxes at a reasonable price per unit.

  I am preparing the camera traps

  The next step was to try the cameras out in the field. I was curious to see how the cameras worked and to see if I can use them to estimate leopard densities using the mark-and recapture methods in the concession. I spent three days with a very experienced Glass Marimane, the Head Tracker at Singita. He managed to show me the exact places where leopards were spotted in the last four years and where we were likely to capture leopards. We then put the traps in those areas to test the effectiveness of the cameras.

  The camera traps work!

• Surrounded by Coffee, Not a Sip in Sight

  Posted: June 2, 2008, 1:09 pm by Paul

  I’ve been in Nyeri for a few days now, and I haven’t had a single cup of coffee! I came here expecting to be permanently buzzing from a steady regime of coffee drinking. But nope, not one cup.

  It gets stranger: most of the farmers have never even tried their own coffee. But before I could feel too sorry for them they reassured me that - like most Kenyans - they are tea drinkers, and they’re happy to sip their chai while their coffee beans are enjoyed elsewhere around the globe.

  But they are curious. So Robert Thuo, AWF’s Agronomist who oversees the AWF-Starbucks “Coffee for Conservation” project, has a plan. In conjunction with Starbucks, Kenyatta University, and other partners, AWF is going to open a coffee lab which will enable the farmers to sample the coffee they grow.

  Robert Thuo (left), AWF’s Agronomist, sorts coffee cherries with one of the farmers.

  The lab will serve as a “cupping” station, where coffee will be tested for quality and be graded. Kenyatta University, which is providing the space, can offer hands-on courses in coffee agronomy.

  And the farmers will finally get to taste their product and see what all the buzz is about.

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes