up front - East African Wild Life Society

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R
POBox
19687 . Nairobi, Kenya' Tel 4446750/1/2'
Fax 4446732·
email [email protected]
E
PRO
. website www.incanairobi.co.ke
April - June 2003
VOLUME 26, NUMBER 2
The Magazine of the East African Wild Life Society
UP FRONT
3
4
CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE
GOING WITH THE FLOW. An ecohydrology model shows how the tapping
of rivers in Kenya may ultimately cause Tanzania's Serengeti ecosystem to
die of thirst.
EATING CIVETS - AND SARS. The coronavirus responsible for Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome may have 'jumped species' into humans from
a southern Chinese delicacy.
5
6
UWA SMASHES IVORY RACKET. The Uganda Wildlife Authority breaks up
a ring of traffickers in poached elephant tusks.
MANYARA BABOONS GET THE CLAP. The genitals of some males are
'rotting away, then falling off altogether,' say observers.
HOW HUMAN ARE CHIMPS? So much so, according to some scientists,
they should be placed alongside humans in the genus Homo.
AFRICAN HOMECOMING FOR 'BAHGDAD LIONS'. The 'zoo' lions kept by
toppled Iraqi leader Sad dam Hussein's profligate son, Uday, are to be
resettled in South Africa.
7
'KILLING FIELDS' OF THE KITENGELA. The plight of the big cats of the
Nairobi National Park takes a catastrophic turn for the worse, as another
ten lions are speared to death.
LOBSTER LOOTING STOPPED IN TIME. The use of scuba tanks to harvest
lobsters from Kenya's Lamu archipelago may now be outlawed, reports
Rupi Mangat.
8
9
10
'CRISIS' ON THE ABERDARES. Illegal destructive activities are rife in all
the forests of Kenya's Aberdare Range, according to the findings of an
exhaustive new Aerial Survey.
'ROUGH RIDERS'. Rhino Charge 2003 participants
conservation.
raise a record sum for
AIDS VIRUS TRACED BACK TO MONKEYS. The monkeys were first eaten
by chimpanzees, which in turn were butchered for their meat by humans,
researchers say.
FORUM
I
READERS' LETTERS
FEATURES
12
PHENOMENON
I
PRS SYNDROME FOUND AT THIKA
Brian W Finch reports on the case of a rare outbreak of Patagonian Rest
Stop Syndrome in Kenya.
COVER
'Phantom Feline': The little-known
African Golden Cat, here pictured in
captivity at the Howletts-Port
Lymphne Wildlife Park in England,
is the subject of a Special Report (on
pp. 25-44) in this issue of SWARA.
Photo: © Art Wolfe
SWARA April - June 2003
14
COMMENT
I
DDT AND MALARIA
DinoJ Martins assesses the implications of calls, voiced in Kenya over
recent months, to reintroduce DDT as a means of combatting malaria.
16
19
EXPLORATION I NIGHT 'EYES'
Karl Ammann recounts the joys, and the drawbacks, of 'camera trapping'
in the northern DR Congo.
PHENOMENON I THE STRANGE CASE OF THE 'BONDO APE'
Wildlife detective Karl Ammann's search for one of Africa's 'forgotten'
apes takes a series of surprising twists and turns.
1
20
EYEWITNESS
NO LIFE FOR A LION
I
Veterinarian Nigel Dougherty comes up against what is just 'the tip of an
Ogaden iceberg'.
22
JUST CURIOUS
I
ANOTHER WHALE OF A FIND?
The Magazine of the East African Wild Life Society
Could the cetacean skull found, lost, then found again, by Guddy and Kay
Birkigt, of Kinyaole (Robinson) Island near Malindi, be that of another
Longman's Beaked Whale?
25
COVER STORY
Editor
Gordon Boy
'PHANTOM FELINE'
I
Consulting Editor
Ian Parker
Gordon Boy goes in search of one of Africa's most enigmatic animals.
36
45
CAT AND MONKEY. Flyfisherman John Rowing bears witness to a rare
encounter.
PHENOMENON
A PYTHON OF GOOD OMEN
I
Editorial Committee
Esmond Bradley Martin
Simon Ball
Paula Kahumbu
Omieri, 'rain bringer' extraordinary, comes again to Nyakach in western
Kenya in the characteristic guise of a monstrous brooding python.
46
Fleur Ng'weno
David Simpson
Daniel Stiles
TRIBUTE I INSPIRATIONAL ICHTHYOLOGIST
Dr Luc de Vos (1957-2003) will be remembered as the man who breathed
new life into the study of fish in eastern Africa.
Elaine Mwango
Advertising
47
TRIBUTE
I
QUINTESSENTIAL MUSEUM MAN
Alexander Duff-MacKay (1939-2003) was a classic museum scientist and
natural historian, says herpetologist Stephen Spawls.
48
CONSERVATION
I
51
Design and Layout
Job Ballard
THE MACHAKOS EXPERIENCE
Ian Parker begins his assessment tour of Kenya's Wildlife Fora, thirteen
years after their inception, with a look at the Machakos Wildlife Forum.
50
Circulation and Subscriptions
Rose Chemweno
Colour Separation
MERU'S BIRTH AND REBIRTH. A White Rhino, born in April in Kenya's
Meru National Park, is being hailed as a milestone on that Park's road to
recovery.
~RONMENT
I
LIFE IN THE WILD I MIMICS AND MODELS
Dino J Martins takes a close look at nature's
56 .
InCA Repro
Printing
Colourprint Limited
WATCH THIS (GREEN) SPACE
That itis such a thriving public amenity today is thanks largely to the efforts
of the Friends of the Nairobi Arboretum, who in June this year marked their
tenth anniversary.
52
Executive
Maggie Maina
Swara Offices
Riara Road, off Ngong Road,
Kilimani, NAIROBI
Swara Magazine
'well-dressed'
con-artists.
ON SAFARI I MARSABIT, THEN - AND NOW
Cynthia Salvadori on the changing face of the mountain, and of the crater
lake there that some have likened to paradise itself.
20110 00200
POBox
NAIROBI, Kenya
+ 254 ( 2 ) 574145
Fax: + 254 ( 2 ) 570335
Tel:
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.eawildlife.org
REVIEWS
Swara is a quarterly magazine owned and pub-
59
60
64
67
68
TANZANIA'S AVIAN RICHES. Neil and Elizabeth Baker's opus, Important
Bird Areas in Tanzania, is probably the best compact source of general
information on Tanzanian birds and their conservation yet made available,
says Fred Nelson.
ANATOMY OF A CRISIS. Dale Peterson's Eating Apes (with an Afterword
and Photographs by Karl Ammann) contains some important lessons on the
wider, more pernicious aspects of the bushmeat problem in Africa, writes
Deborah L Manzolillo Nightingale.
following the amalgamation
SOCIETY NOTES ...
I
BACK WINDOW I 'PAINTED PRIMATES'
both
founded in 1956). It is the Society's policy to
conserve wildlife and its habitat in all its forms
as a regional and international
resource.
Copyright © 2003 East African Wild Life
Society. No part of this publication
by any means whatsoever
may be
without
the written consent of the editor. Opinions expressed by contributors
EVENTS I RUN - FOR YOUR (WILD) LIFE! Natasha Breed left that for others
to do, but she does have a report on this year's Safaricom Lewa Marathon.
formed in 1961
of the Wiidlife Soci-
eties of Kenya and Tanzania (themselves
reproduced
Paula KahlJmbu catches up with the Redtails of the Kenya's Maasai Mara
National Reserve.
2
lished by the East African Wild Life Society, a
non-profit making organisation
are not necessarily the
official view of the Society. Swara accepts the
information
given by contributors
as correct.
The impala is the symbol of the East African
Wild Life Society.
'Swara'
is the Swahili word
for antelope.
SWARA April - June 2003
CHAIRMANS
Of bad lawand disorder
the person of Prof Wangari
~enya Maathai,
is fortunate
to Minister
have, in
an Assistant
for Environment
and Natural
Resources who is competent, dedicated, charming - and refreshingly
open.
On 6 June she graced the
launching of the findings of Aerial
Survey of the Destruction of the
Aberdare Range Forests,an endeavour
carried out jointly by the UN
Environment
Programme,
the
Kenya Wildlife Service, Rhino Ark,
and the Kenya Forests Working
Group (a sub-committee of the East
African Wild Life Society).
The technical brilliance of the
survey is astounding, a composite of accurate flying over very difficult terrain,
remarkable photography and impressive
computer graphics. Every charcoal kiln,
every goat, cow, logged tree, marijuana
field, illegal settlement, abuse of the
Shamba System and landslide (181 in number) has been counted.
Parts of the gazetted forest simply no
longer exist: There are settlements, complete with churches, schools and football
fields, within what legally still constitutes
forest reserve. In many other parts the forest canopy is broken in large swathes.
Bongo Woodley, Senior Warden of
Mount Kenya National Park, did the piloting and Christian Lambrechts, of UNEp,
took the pictures and processed the material. The two presented the results together.
Even though the occasion was one of
outstanding topical interest, such launching
ceremonies tend to be rather staid affairs.
Not this one, however. For Prof Wangari
Maathai turned the event into a group discussion of a very high intellectual standard.
Every aspect of past (colonial and postcolonial) forest policy was discussed,
together with best land use. The husbanding of water, the so-called Presidential ban
on logging, fuel availability and many other
relevant points were raised. Everyone present was invited to contribute ideas, a
circumstance not normally experienced in
the presence of a Minister.
Mr Gideon Gathaara,
the· Chief
Conservator of Forests, in his articulate
closing remarks, summarised the actions
planned by his department: large-scale
plantings, meticulous law enforcement and
SWARA April - June 2003
A 'refreshingly open' approaCh: Kenya's
Assistant Minister for the Environment
and Natural Resources, the Hon Prof
Wangari Maathai.
active co-operation with the private sector,
among others. The Minister and the Chief
Conservator, between them, gave hope to
all present.
Kenya may be about to begin to save its
remaining forests and create new ones.
How this uplifting message relates to the
other forest news, namely that the government, instead of revoking the infamous
degazetting, intends to try to defend the
indefensible in the High Court at the end
ofJuly, remains to be seen.
This decision of the government was
taken against the advice of the Society, and
will - unfortunately - pit the Society
against the government in court.
tion sector is that there is yet another
1fhe
big,within
sad news
the conservacrisis
thefrom
Kenya
Wildlife
Service, an organisation that over its 14year existence has been visited by many
crises. The troubles of the KWS are usually
convoluted and unsavoury.
Where an organisation is so troubleprone, and independently so from the
identity of the players involved (in the
Ministry, on the Board, among its senior
staff), one is entitled to ask whether there is
something fundamentally wrong with the
entity.
One of the root causes of the perennial
trouble at the KWS is the bad law. If the
saying, that the law is an ass, needs any
MESSAGE
UP FRONT
demonstration, then it would be most apt
to point to the Wildlife Act. The wildlife,
forests, the environment of Kenya, of East
Africa, have suffered from bad laws and
from the lack of a comprehensive and consistent policy for the last 100 years.
The entire law needs to be
revised, and most urgently that section of it dealing with the structure
of the KWS. This section is vintage
Nyayo, written in the period of the
country's history when, with an eye
on the donors, it was expedient to
pretend to be devolving power,
while at the same time retaining
." power by virtue of the President's
~ appointing, not only the Chairman
g of the Board, but also the Director.
& The
influence of the Trustees,
~ appointed by the Minister for
~ Environment, is countermanded by
~ the secondment to the Board of
6 Management of numerous Civil
Servants.
Power is divided thus, and the result is
that the Director - and with him the entire
service - has two masters. The scene is set
for chaos ...
Consider also that the KWS is charged
to look after the country's single largest
asset, which if properly husbanded would
make everyone richer. Yet, as everyone can
see all too plainly, the asset is dwindling fast
and the people are becoming increasingly
impoverished.
Crises are curses, but they also harbour
opportunities. There is every hope that the
new government is capable of learning. It,
undoubtedly, has goodwill. Harnessing that
goodwill and pairing it with competence,
may lead to a resolution of the present crisis. If a modus operandi is found and
faithfully observed by all parties, then the
service may rise yet again from the ashes
and function, provided there is an understanding that it will, in the near future, be
freed from the shackles of Nyayo law.
The Society, meanwhile, through the
Kenya Forests Working Group, has been in
the forefront in the formulation of the new
forest law, which hopefully will be enacted
soon.
An urgent task for the Society now is to
provide a forum for the debating of new
and rational wildlife legislation taking into
account the benefits people can derive from
the husbanding of this precious shared
resource.
Dr Imre Loefler
Chairman
East African Wild Life Society
3
iA
point
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the 25,000although
on Tanzanian soil, rests increas-
The
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irhino safaris
can make YOUttti~ to Kenya a !:afati to temembet.
~
m
m
NAIROBI:
Tel.
2720610/611
Fax: Ngong
2720624,
[email protected]
Rhino
Safaris building,
Rd., e-mail:
PO Box
48023 Nairobi,
~
~t
MOMBASA:
Rhino Safaris building, Nyerere Avenue, PO Box 83050, Mombasa
Tel. 311141, Fax: 315743, e-mail: [email protected]
~~
~~
ARUSHA:
Kudu Safaris
Estate
PO Box 1404,
Njiro,
Arusha building,
Tel. 007 -11/4
57 -Themi
8193/ Industrial
6065 Fax.
8139,
e-mail: [email protected]
110.:
.
An ecohydrology model shows how the tapping of
rivers in Kenya may ultimately cause the Serengeti
ecosystem to die of thirst.
km2 Serengeti
time to iton out the wtinkle!:!
1,-1
~
• B./loOl,
ovet gO yeat!: - ~Ienty of
",fA
Going with
the flow?
two about u!:
ingly in Kenyan hands. Fot it is
developments
on the Kenya
side of the border that will
determine,
ultimately, whether
this immense ecosystem - and
its world-famous
14,763-km2
Serengeti National
live or die.
Developments
way (or in
threatening,
disrupt the
of the Mara
developments are the subject of
a detailed ecohydrology study,
carried
out by Emmanuel
Gereta, Eric Wolanski, Markus
Borner and Suzanne Serneels,
published
late last year.
The study's findings underline the unprecedented
need
for what the authors describe as
Park - will
a "trans boundary
Mara River
management
plan compatible
now
with ecohydrology
principles
for the sustainable use of shared
under
the pipeline) are
as never before, to
flow into Tanzania
River water catch-
ment, the Serengeti's lifeline.
The potentially devastating
impact on the Serengeti of such
aquatic resources."
Disruptive
developments
identified in the study include
the ongoing deforestation
Kenya's Mau Escarpment,
on
the
diversion of water for irrigation
by mechanised wheat farms on
Eating civets - and SARS
Thecausecoronavirus
is the
of SARSthat (Severe
wild animals as well, including
civets and snakes. Both are
Acute Respiratory
Syndrome)
may have "jumped species" into
humans from the Masked Palm
ingredients
in a dish called
dragon-tiger-phoenix
soup, for
which
wealthy
Chinese
in
Civet, Paguma larvata, which is
Guangdong
Province will pay
large sums.
The scientists
found
the
eaten as a delicacy in some parts
of southern China, according
to the findings
research carried
of the latest
out by scien-
tists in Hong Kong.
SARS has triggered panic
globally, having (by early June
this year) killed 783 people, of a
total of more than 8,300 diagnosed cases of infection.
Suspicion as to where
virus might have originated
the
fell
initially on pigs, chickens and
other farmyard creatures. Such
domestic species were screened
by a team of virologists led by
Prof Yuen Kwok-Yung, of the
University
of Hong
Kong's
Department
of Microbiology.
When this line of enquiry
drew a blank, Dr Yuen and his
colleagues
4
started
screening
SARS coronavirus
to be present
in the faeces and respiratory
secretions of four of the civets
they examined.
The civets were
themselves
unaffected
by the
virus. It is unlikely, in Dr Yuen's
view, that anybody has contracted SARS by eating civet
flesh in cooked food. But the
virus might easily have jumped
the species barrier into humans
from civets during the rearing,
handling, slaughter and kitchen
preparation of such animals, he
says.
So it may be no coincidence
that one of Chinas first confirmed SARS victims, Huang
Xingchu, 34, worked as a cook
in a Shenzhen restaurant.
- GB
SWARA April - June 2003
u
the Loita
Plains,
and
stream environmental
Kenya's
Mara
catchment
by
"The
study
is based
the
on an
~
~
ecohydrology
model
using
monthly rainfall records for the
period 1900-2000.
These are
calibrated
against wildebeest
and other wildlife counts for
the Serengeti
and 1999.
between
occurs in the Serengeti roughly
every seven years.
During
such a drought,
anywhere between 20 % and
80 % of the ecosystem's migrat-
that, in a "worst-case
ing wildebeest could die, the
scientists predict, depending on
that drought's severity. "From a
die-off of 50 %, it may take 20
Kenya might
(for economic
reasons) be loath either to stop
years for the wildebeest population to recover," the study says,
"while from a die-off of 80 %
the population
recover."
might
never
The model further suggests
scenario",
irtigating or to shut its proposed hydroelectric
scheme in
order to minimise the down-
TheAuthority)
UWA
of
(Uganda
Wildlife
has, with
the
securi ty operatives,
smashed a ring of traffickers in
poached
Ugandan
elephant
Ivory.
UWA Executive
director,
Dr Arthur Mugisha, disclosed
in May that seven suspects had
been
arrested,
following
a
month-long hunt for poachers.
The manhunt was triggered by
the gunning down in March
this year of seven elephants
(one of them a baby) near the
Tangi River in Uganda's
famous Murchison Falls
National Park.
adding that the detained suspects
included
one UPDF
officer, Emmy Kisembo, and a
known Senegalese middleman,
Muhammed
Gakou.
in helping the poachers
ferry the ivory out of the
said,
One
attached
of the suspects, once
to Karuma-Pakwach
road detachment,
had provided
the automatic rifles used to kill
the elephants.
In exchange,
the
poachers had given him four of
the tusks. These, together with
the rifles and the tail of one of
the butchered
elephants,
later recoveted. Another
were
sus-
had allegedly connived
resident
of the Wii
with a
Anaka
refugee camp to smuggle the
poached elephant tusks.
"This is one of the worst
single
incidents
of
elephant
poaching
at Murchison
Falls
over the past two decades," Dr
Mugisha said. A report issued
jointly by the UWA and the
Uganda Chieftaincy of Military
Intelligence
recommends
that
those suspects
found
guilty
and who are affiliated to the
Ugandan military should
face Court Marshal.
Uganda's
population,
elephant
which
is
now thought
to comprise just 2,500 animals,
©
amounts
to
less
than
~ 10% of the population
:; that existed in the coun~
~
try in the early 1970s.
..,
Safer times: Elephants in
Uganda's Murchison Falls
National Park in 1970.
SWARA April - June 2003
until the danger is averted.
"As things stand, all the
economic benefits of the Mara
River water
catchment
are
being reaped by Kenya,"
study concludes,
"while
costs of the environmental
socio-economic
fallout in
the
the
and
the
event of a severe drought (in
terms,
say, of the negative
impact on tourism) will have to
be borne by Tanzania."
- GB
Wild website
pect, who was still on the run,
Another
eight people had been implicated
park, Dr Magesha
i§
The full report, 'Use of an ecohydrology model to predict the impact on the
Serengeti ecosystem of deforestation, irrigation and the proposed Amala
Weir Water Diversion Project in Kenya' (Gereta et al), appears in the journal
Ecohydrology and Hydrobiology,
Vol 2 No. 1-4 (2002), pp. 135-142.
UWA smashes ivory racket
help
it can be persuaded temporarily
to shut down such schemes
~
'Bald patch': Aerial view of one of many small deforested 'lots'
within the Mau Forest's Amala catchment area in Kenya.
pact-
~
~
2"
Serengeti ecosystem, the consequences in a drought year could
be catastrophic.
Historically,
the study cautions, a drought
for the
for irrigation and for generating
hydroelectricity,
or whether under
some
trans boundary
~ Mara River management
1960
The model predicts that,
whereas in a normal year the
Kenyan projects might have little obvious
impact
on the
migratory movements of wildebeest and zebras within
the
key question
Serengeti
ecosystem's
future
survival is whether Kenya will,
in a drought, go on using the
Mara River's water catchment
Amala Weir, being planned for
construction
on the upper
Amala River on the Mau.
The
and eco-
nomic costs to Tanzania.
proposed Ewaso N' giro (South)
Hydropower
Project, whereby
water would be diverted from
the
R
.....
rn
~
(f>
- reported by
Gerald Tenywa
Anew
'digital
library'
offering
unprecedented
public access to audiovisual records for hundreds
of endangered wild species
from around the world went
online on 20 May. Called
ARKive, the new online
resource - dubbed the
'world wild web' and said to
be a Noah's Ark for the
Internet era - combines
snippets of film footage
with still images and sound
recordings to provide a
detailed profile of each
featured species and its
behaviour.
The new website,
<http://www.arkive.org>
,
incorporates much material
previously off limits to the
general public. It.aims to
provide "useful, educational, entertaining information
for all, from schoolchildren
to scientists". The eventual
goal is to post entries for
all 11,000 threatened
animals and plants on the
IUCN Red Lists. For now,
however, this Ark is still
loading.
- GB
5
VD plagues Lake
Manyara baboons
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Brickbats fly over
poisoning of bats
Uganda's
Forestry Department
local conservationists
for the
is being taken
to task byof
poisoning
of thousands
fruit bats around its head offices at Bugolobi, Kampala.
The bats were sprayed with poisonous chemicals in April,
following complaints that their noisy behaviour had become a
public nuisance. The spraying was allegedly carried out by a
private company hired by the European Union-funded Biological
Diversity Conservation Programme (BDCP).
The fruit bats are believed to have taken refuge at
Bugolobi, on protected forest reserve land, after the Kampala
City Council poisoned them some ten years ago in nearby Bat
Valley, where they were once so numerous their colony was a
tourist attraction.
Wildlife bodies have condemned the killing of the Bugolobi
fruit bats, arguing that both the Department and the BDCP
were acting contrary to their mandates of protecting nature.
- reported by Gerald Tenywa
How human
are chimps?
Chimpanzeees
humans reserved
they should
be incorporatedareinsotheclosely
genus related
Homo, tocurrently
exclusively for humans.
Such is the proposal of a study, published earlier this year
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in the US,
showing that chimps and humans are more closely related
than was previously thought, sharing 99.4 % of their DNA the genetic imprint for life.
Under the proposed reclassification, the genus Homo
would comprise three living species: Homo (Homo) sapiens, or
humans; Homo (Pan) troglodytes, or common chimpanzees,
and Homo (Pan) paniscus, or bonobo chimpanzees.
The study, carried out by researchers working under Dr
Morris Goodman at the Wayne State University School of
Medicine, compared 97 genes from humans, chimpanzees,
gorillas, orangutans, Old World monkeys, and mice.
Tracking mutation rates in the genes, the scientists estimate that the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans
diverged from gorillas about seven-million years ago, and then
separated into two species between six-million and five-million
years ago.
"We humans appear to be only slightly remodelled chimpanzee-like apes," Goodman told an international Press
gathering in May, adding that a symposium could be held at
which to debate this "perfectly reasonable proposal" further.
The conventional wisdom is that humans, Homo sapiens,
stand alone in the genus Homo, which once included other
species, such as Homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthal
man. Chimpanzees are placed in the genus Pan, along with
bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees.
- GB
ing baboons in Tanzania. The
disease was first noticed early in
April this year in the Lake
Manyara National Park, where
it is believed to have infected
more than 200 animals.
g
Male baboons are especially
badly afflicted,
according
to
Elibariki Mtui, of the Mrican
zt3
Wildlife Foundation
"First their genitals kind of rot
away, then they J'ust drop off,"
Mtui told the New Scientist
magazine in May. Some infected males have since died.
So far, cases of the sexually
transmitted
disease have been
found only at Lake Manyara,
but there are fears it could
spread rapidly, as male baboons
move between troops.
"With so little information
to go on, it is very difficult
at
this stage to evaluate the risks,"
says the US primatologist
Dr
Dee Carey, of the Southwest
National
Primate
Research
C;;
I
t;j
'"
~
('§
@
Centre
in San Antonio,
Texas,
adding: "This is not the first
case of venereal
diseases in
baboons."
Tanzania Wildlife Research
Institute Scientists have been to
Lake Manyara
and have taken
samples
infected
from some of the
baboons, in a bid to
identity
the
new
disease.
To
this end, they are working very
closely with the Institute
of
Primate
Research
in neighbouring Kenya.
- GB
African homecoming
for 'Baghdad lions'
Sixcramped
lion
cubs born
in a
private
zoo owned
by the toppled
Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein's son Uday are
to be released in a wildlife sanctuary in South Mrica.
The not-for-profit
San Wild
Sanctuary,
400 km north of
Johnnesburg,
has reportedly
secured the release - set for July
- of all six cubs, as well as their
mother and two other lions.
American troops found the
lions in April, along with two
cheetahs, in a private zoo of
Uday's in the grounds of one of
Baghdad's presidential palaces.
They moved these animals to
the Baghdad Municipal Zoo.
With scant food available,
the lions had to snack on military rations
6
in Arusha.
~
US soldiers tossed
into their cages. Many of the
Zoo's other animals had been
set loose by looters.
The lioness and her six cubs
will be kept in isolation for up
to a year before being taken to
Ngome Community
Reserve in
KwaZulu-Natal,
according
to
San Wild Sanctuary
founder
Louise Joubert. The other two
lions would be remaining
San Wild, she added.
at
A veterinarian will be going
to Baghdad with a San Wild
employee to escort the lions to
South Africa.
Meanwhile,
joined
Care
San Wild
for
the
has
Wild
International
in raising funds
towards improving conditions
for Baghdad Zoo's remaining
animals, Joubert said.
- GB
SWARA April - June 2003
UP FRONT
of
been cut off (for the claws), and
the hearts and livers extracted.
the Kitengela
"Just over two weeks ago,"
the communique
goes on,
"another three lions - a female
and her two six-month-old
'Ki IIing fields'
Nairobi
National
Park,
of
in
Thethe plight
lions
subject ofofthe
a report
the last issue of SWARA (Vol
26:1), has since taken a cata-
"Today," the communique
reads, "another two lions have
been speared to death in the
Kitengela, just metres from the
tigation,"
turned away after rushing
the scene on rhe afternoon
again,
these
already been disposed of"
The two latest killings differ
from most previous incidents
of 'revenge killing' of lions by
the area's Maasai pastoralists in
lions were
strophic turn for the worse.
During May, another seven
of the Park's famished
lions
were speared
to death
to
of
30 May to film the carnage,
was told the carcasses "have
cubs - were also speared to
death in this way. One of the
cubs was the first to be killed.
Once
the KWS is quoted as
having told conservationists
at
the time.
A camera
crew,
that they se~m to have been
wholly pre-emptive. No carcass
- of a Maasai goat, or cow was found to have been killed
in the
Kitengela 'corridor' just outside
the park's southern boundary,
bringing to 46 the number of
beforehand
by either slain lion.
The poaching
of skins and
body parts from the dead lions
lions killed on the fringes of the
Park over the past four years.
~
The killings have reduced
to "twelve or fewer" the number of lions now understood to
remain in the Park .
~
And the killing, it seems,
~ may not stop with the Park's
~ lions. Indeed,
some of rhe
G)
.:=
Maasai have since issued threats
News of the latest killings on 30 May - came in a com-
~
z
munique circulated that same
day by members of a voluntary
Big Cat Surveillance
group
formed in association with the
Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS)
to monitor the movements
of
the Park's big cats, with a view
to being able to protect them.
1;;
Park boundary.
The carcasses of
both animals, instead of being
left where they lay, have been
skinned. And the head of one, a
male, has been chopped off and
taken away, presumably for the
mane. All the paws have also
skinned, their jaws hacked
paws severed, tails lopped
and hearts removed."
off,
off,
-GB
Still (as of 10 ]tine), no
arrests had been made in connection with either incident.
"The matter is still under inves-
in danger
of being
idents, including the local fishermen, and representatives
of
both Watamu Turtle Watch and
the
to export
explains Carol,
~ and Tanzania
m
replaced.
he
may - if he is lucky - get one,
or maybe even two, of a batch
of five or six grouped around a
rock," says Carol Korschen, of
the Peponi Hotel at Shela on
Lamu Island. But when a diver
with oxygen tanks dives down,
he can harvest all the lobsters
because he has the time to scuttle after them."
This leads inevitably
SWARA April - June 2003
to the
Wide
Fund
for
was happening turned out to be
perfectly legal. "There was a
loophole in the fisheries' law,"
was
to look for lobsters,
World
Nature, added their weight to
the campaign.
To everyone's surprise, what
And the lobsters were in danger
of being fished out.
"When a fisherman
dives
down
three more of
the Park's starving lions (example pictured) have been speared
to death. See also page 65.
crabs, started sending divers fitred with scuba tanks to harvest
that tradition
10 June,
.Since
tice for the Bajuni fishermen of
Kenya's Lamu Archipelago.
Three years ago, however,
when a Durch investor, under
the lobsters,
to start killing elands too that
stray out of the Park on to the
Kitengela, on the grounds that
"they are eating our grass."
the rraditional
way has
Free-diving
for lobsterspracin
long been standard
the prerext of wanting
is also seen as "unprecedented".
Lobster looting
stopped in time
classic syndrome
of over-har-
vesting the sea, and interfering
with the natural cycle of reproduction and replenishment.
A long-time Lamu resident
and activist for the preservation
Project (the conservation group
she founded), started lobbying
against this form of lobster
Concerned
~
countries
~
~
legally scuba dive for lobsters!
"Fortunately,
as Kenyan
fisheries' law was being redrafted at the time," she adds, "we
where
you
could
were able to get a clause inserted whereby only free-diving for
of its marine life, Carol and the
Lamu
Marine
Conservation
hunting.
"making Kenya
the only two
Lamu res-
lobsters is legal."
This goes to show what
concerned
citizens can do to
protect their natural resources.
For further information,
e-mail
< [email protected]
>.
- reported by Rup; Mangat
7
destructive
activi ties in the forests
signs
a decline in
in
Kenya of (reported
26: 1) are not reflected in the
Encouraging
on Mount
SWARA
nearby Aberdare
forests, which are now
in a state of crisis, according to the findings of a survey made public on 6 June.
The survey found illegal logging,
charcoal production, clear-felling for the
cultivation
of marijuana
and other
crops, squatter settlements,
fires, livestock grazing,
quarrying,
and other
destructive activities to be rife in all the
forests on the Aberdare range.
Carried our jointly by Rhino Ark,
the Kenya Wildlife Service, the UN
Environment Programme and the Kenya
Forests Working Group, the report called Aerial Survey of the Destruction of §
the Aberdare Range Forests - runs to 56 ..
pages and includes 21 full-colour aerial
photographs
and almost
colour maps.
While it is beautifully
as many
(18)
produced,
the
survey does not make for
reading - or viewing. Its
identify the different types
evidence across the entire
quantifying
the prevalence
very edifying
aim was to
of threats in
range, while
and the exact
locations of these threats, and assessing the
impact of fencing on the conservation
of
the Aberdare forests.
'Crisis' on the
Aberdares
The
survey
counted
no
fewer
than
9,425 illegally logged indigenous
trees,
including
4,446 African
pencil
cedars
Uuniperus procera). Another highly valued
hardwood
tree species,
Camphor (Ocotea usambarensis), once abundant
on these slopes, is now
virtually depleted. Only
272
illegally
logged
Camphors
were found,
indicating
that grown
trees of this species have
become extremely difficult to find.
Charcoal
production is identified in the
survey
as the single
biggest threat facing the
Aberdares. In total, the
survey counted
14,499
charcoal kilns - that is,
more than six times the
number
found in the
Mount
Kenya forests in 1999
charcoal threat
'Critical') .
the
(when
there was adjudged
the
to be
The Aberdare forests worst affected by
charcoal problem
are those on the
range's western, southern and southeastern
slopes. In parts of some of the drier forests
on the escarpment
bordering
the Rift
Valley, charcoal production
has already
resulted in the destruction of up to 80 % of
the forest canopy. Considerably fewer kilns
were found, however, within fenced areas
on the range's northern and western slopes.
The more than 50 landslides seen in the
Kikuyu Escarpment
Forest Reserve alone
are symptomatic,
the survey says, of the
particularly
severe logging and charcoal
burning activities observed there. The steep
terrain, coupled with the high rainfall,
make such landslides an inevitable consequence of the deforestation.
Cultivation within the forests is also on
the increase. The survey found 146 cultivated fields, of which 16 - covering a total
Destructive aftermath (top): Aerial view of the damage wrought
by large-scale charcoal production near the (Thika) Chania River,
on the Aberdare Range's Southeastern slopes. Where in place,
the protective fence (left), shown here with KWS Senior Warden
for the Aberdare National Park, Daniel Onsembe, has significantly
reduced levels of damage.
Aerial Survey of the Destruction
of the Aberdare Range Forests is compiled by Christian Lambrechts (UNEP), Bongo Woodley (KWS),
Colin Church (Rhino Ark), and Michael Gachanja (KFWG). Further information can be obtained from < [email protected]
>.
8
SWARA April - June 2003
UP FRONT
Rough riders
of three hecrares, all on rhe easrern slopes
above Endarasha, Chinga and Wanjerere were under marijuana. Other fields, seen
mainly near Chinga, were found to be
growing either tobacco or maize.
Overgrazing in forests by livestock to
the detriment
of forest regeneration
is
identified as another major problem, particularly on the northern Aberdares, where
most of the 18,497 herds of forest-grazing
livestock counted by the survey team were
observed. "These numbers,"
the survey
states, "clearly imply that access to forests
for grazing, while provided for once, and
managed, is now totally uncontrolled."
around
the Aberdare forests will, on
fencein 2005),
now going
(due
enclose upa
total area of some 1,760 km2• More than
160 km of fence line has been erected since
Thecompletion
electric
1988,
when
the charitable
trust,
Rhino
Ark, initiated the project in collaboration
with the KWS and other conservation
bodies. Funding for the project depends on
voluntary
contributions,
both local and
international,
and on sums raised through
the staging of events such as the Rhino
Charge (accompanying article).
In zones where rhe fence is in place, the
survey found the incidence
of humanwildlife conflict to have been significantly
reduced. For communities
living near rhe
fence, this has been a key factor behind
their acceptance of the fence, which has
been instrumental
at the same time in significantly reducing the prevalence of other
destructive activities in the forests, notably
charcoal making.
Besides the added protection accorded
by the fence, both monitoring and enforcement of existing laws and regulations need
srepping
up considerably
if the illegal
acrivities blighting
the Aberdare
Range
forests are to be stopped and the ecosystem
preserved,
the survey concludes.
r:f,
Rhino Charge 2003 participants
a record sum for conservation.
road motoring event staged
RhinoinCharge,
gruelling
annually
Kenya the
to raise
fundsofffor
the conservation of habitats and wildlife
on the Aberdare Mountains, this year
netted a record KSh 26,345,000 (the
equivalent of roughly US$ 361,000) - an
increase of 60 % on the US$ 226,000
that was raised at last year's event.
The 2003 event was contested on 1
June (Madaraka Day, a public holiday in
Kenya) at the Mukurian Group Ranch
near Dol Dol in Laikipia, northwest of
Mount Kenya. All proceeds go, as in
previous years, towards the ongoing
fencing of the Aberdare Conservation
Area and National Park.
Already, more than half of the 320km-Iong perimeter fence has been
completed. The remaining 120 km, or
so, of fenceline is expected to be in
place in 2005. The purpose of the fence
is to protect this crucial, yet threatened,
forest from illegal encroachment (Main
Report) and to pre-empt human-wildlife
conflict, while providing a safe haven for
the Area's black rhinos and other resident wildlife species.
Since its first staging 15 years ago
in 1988, the Rhino Charge has been the
project's principal fund-raising vehicle.
The event is the brainchild of Rhino Ark,
the charitable trust that initiated the
fencing project in collaboration with the
Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and other
conservation bodies. In all, Rhino Ark
has so far raised in excess of KSh 180million (the equivalent of more than US$
2.4-million) towards the project.
The Rhino Charge itself is an event
like no other. It sees competing teams of
up to six members, in a quite amazing
array of specially adapted 4x4 vehicles,
attempt to blaze as direct a trail as
pOSSible over some of the most rugged
off-road terrain imaginable between 13
checkpoints, sited (as the crow flies)
anywhere from three to 15 km apart,
within a specified period.
The
raise
The winner is the team that, in
completing the course within the time
allotted (usually ten hours), covers the
shortest distance. The competitors have
no advance knowledge of where the
checkpoints are, so routes have to be
selected on the spur of the moment often with nail-biting consequences (for
drivers and spectators alike).
At this year's event, only 22 of the 55
participating teams succeeded in visiting
all 13 checkpoints within the allotted ten
hours. The winning team was that of
William Carr-Hartley, Neil McRae, Mike
Carr-Hartley, David Francombe, Justin
Larby, and Simon Evans, driving Car No.
42, a Range Rover. They clocked up just
55.096 km in completing the course in 9
hours 42 seconds.
The real winner, though, is conservation. And the team whose efforts brought
in tFie largest sum in cash sponsorship KSh 5,295,485 (about US$ 72,540) was that of veteran Rhino Chargers Allan
McKittrick, Bruce Knight and Charlie
Stubbs, whose Range Rover Buggy, Car
No.5, finished 13th overall. Next, in
terms of funds raised (with KSh 3-million,
or US$ 41,100), was the Lada Niva
pairing of Mike and Sarah Higgins, which
in finishing 37th did not manage to
complete the course.
The all-women's team, the Ark
Angels, comprising Rhino Charge debutantes Debbie Shah, Claire Hirani, Alex
MacLeod, Peggy Ngure, Mutheu Murenga,
and Severine Le Masne, were placed
47th, but still weighed in with sponsorship totalling KSh 2,210,655 (the
equivalent of about US$ 30,285).
Their progress in Car No. 44, a LandRover 109 (pictured above), was followed
with particular interest in Kenya, given
the rallying cry that appeared on fundraising advertisements placed for them in
the local press during the run-up to the
event Who said it takes balls to enter
the Rhino Charge?
-GB
- reported by Gordon Boy
SWARA April - June 2003
9
AIDS virus traced
back to monkeys
CONSULTING
SERVICES
Malte Sommerlatte & Partners is a
consultancy company established in
1985 to provide services in wildlife
management and forest conservation.
The company consists of a group of
wildlife manager, foresters, landowners
and economists who have first hand
experience in the management of
wildlife and forest estates. We provide
consultancy services in the following
areas of interest:
-Wildlife and forest management
plans
-Game counts and vegetation
surveys
-Wildlife utilization and game
farming
-Habitat rehabilitation and
reintroduction of wildlife
-Eco-tourism development and
management
-Community based wildlife and
forest projects
-Establishment of conservancies
and trusts
-Training of wildlife personnel
-Feasibility studies and projects
appraisals
-Environmental impact assessments
Malte Sommerlatte & Partners has
done over 40 consultancies throughout Africa for such agencies as GTZ,
The World Bank, IUCN, AWF, IFC,
USAID, EU and KFW as well as for
wildlife departments and government
ministries. Weare particularly
involved in wildlife and forest projects
on private or community land in East
and Southern Africa.
If you are interested in further information or wish to discuss a project,
then please contact:
Dr Malte Sommerlatte
Senior Consultant
POBox 416°7, Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: (254-2) 350147, Fax: (254-2) 575089
Email: [email protected]
10
of the journal Science, have traced
Researchers,
in the virus
latest back
issue
the origins writing
of the AIDS
to monkeys in Africa that were first eaten
by chimpanzees, which in turn were then
butchered by humans for their meat.
Four years ago, the same researchers
argued that humans had probably got the
AIDS virus from chimpanzees carrying the
simian immunodeficiency virus, SlY, the
precursor to HIY.
Analyses of different strains of HIV-l,
the most widespread of the viruses causing
AIDS, show that it has jumped from chimpanzees to humans at least four times,
according to lead researcher Paul Sharp,
a professor of genetics at Britain's
University of Nottingham. The first
such jump appears to have occurred as
long ago as 1930, Prof Sharp adds.
Another virus, HIV-2, also causes
AIDS, but is less virulent and not near-
ally to span the globe. Today, as many as
25-million people have died of AIDS and
at least 40-million others are known to be
infected with HIY. There is no vaccine and
no cure, although drugs can extend lives.
SIVs are a large family of viruses carried
by many African monkey species. In their
natural hosts, the viruses seem not to cause
any illness. To collect samples of the various SIVs, co-author Martina Peeters, of
France's University of Montpellier, took
blood from the corpses of 800 monkeys
that were being sold as bushmeat on
Central and West African markets.
Peeters found that 13 of the 16 species
ly as widespread. This virus seems to
have been acquired directly by humans
from monkeys, says Prof Sharp.
For centuries, people in Africa may
have been infected with various SIVs,
getting sick sometimes and dying. But
these SIV infections did not go on to
become epidemics, Prof Sharp eXplains,
because human populations were smaller, more scattered and less mobile.
~z
During the 20th century, with the ~
advent of cities, roads and mass migra- ~
tions, conditions were ripe for such an ~
z
epidemic to start spreading and eventu- ©
DNA: 50 years on
The
burgeoning
science of
owes
much
to the discovery,
50genetics
years ago,
of
the structure and chemistry of DNA
(Deoxyribonucleic Acid), the molecule at
the centre of all living things.
The breakthrough in our understanding of the DNA molecule came on the
morning of Saturday, 28 February 1953, in
a laboratory in Cambridge, UK, where scientist James Watson was trying to assemble
a model using cardboard cutouts.
His colleague, Francis Crick, walked in
and noticed - in James Watson's jumbled
arrangement - the molecule's now famous
double-helix structure. The two scientists
then announced to the world, over lunch
in a nearby pub, that they had discovered
'the secret oflife'.
Watson and Crick went on to win a
Nobel Prize. Rather less well known is the
role of Rosalind Franklin, the 'dark lady of
DNA'. For it was her earlier X-ray experiments that produced the first images of
DNA's double-helix
structure. These
images, seen by Watson, were instrumental
in helping him fit the pieces of the puzzle
together.
Once the molecule's structure was
known, scientists could start manipulating
it. And today, in the field of biotechnology,
'fads' include fluorescent pet fish injected
with the genes of bioluminescent jellyfish.
SWARA April - June 2003
sampled carried their own versions of SIV
Among the SlY-carrying species, the virus
had infected about 20 % of the monkeys.
The researchers
also examined
SIV
LETTERS
from chimpanzees.
They found that its
DNA appeared to be an amalgam of two
different monkey SIVs - one carried by
Red-Capped Mangabeys, and the other by
Greater Spot-nosed Monkeys.
The scientists
believe chimpanzees
originally acquired both viruses from hunting and eating these monkeys. Then, at
some point, in the cells of those chimpanzees infected
with both SIVs, the
viruses "recombined", melding their genetic material into a new 'hybrid' virus - the
precursor of HIV-l.
In a related study, to appear
in July's
Journal of Virology, the researchers
SIVs to be less common
found
in wild chim-
panzees than in monkeys.
While monkeys
may have been infected with SIVs for hundreds of years, the scientists say, their
research suggests that chimpanzees
had
acquired SIV "much more recently".
Studies of wild chimpanzees in Africa
show that SIV has spread to about 15 % of
the total population,
the researchers say.
Primatologists
are still trying to establish
how the virus is transmitted
between
chimps
- whether
through
sex or during
fights where animals bite one another.
Perhaps, Prof Sharp says, his team's
findings might help to discourage people
from eating bush meat, which includes
chimpanzees and various other nonhuman
primates.
Despite
compelling
evidence
that butchering and eating these primates
started the epidemic, the practice is still
widespread in some parts of Africa.
'Back to front' verdict
on Sable taxonomy
It
maysuch
seema churlish
raise[SWARAVol
criticisms
over
splendid toissue
26:1], but I should nevertheless
like to
make a couple of points.
On Higher hopes for Sable Antelopes
(pp. 8-9): Steve Foreman's article at last
vindicates the contention I have propounded for more than a decade that the
Shimba animals are merely a (possibly
rather stunted) population of the kirkii
subspecies.
The shortness of stature and horn
may possibly be due to the poor quality
of the hilltop forage, now exacerbated
further by the encircling fence preventing
the animals from seasonal south-eastward migration in search of minerals.
Kingdon (1997) also sounded a note of
doubt: "The isolated Kenya coastal
population (with somewhat smaller horns)
is recognised by some authorities as the
Shimba sable, H. n. Roosevelti."
However, Mr Foreman states that the
Tanzanian sable were "previously recognised as Hippotragus niger kirkii" and
further on writes that "the Roosevelt
Sable population can conservatively be
estimated at more than 4,000 individuals, probably a lot more - as against the
120 formerly thought to exist only on the
Shimba Hills."
I should strongly suggest that this is
putting the equation back to front. The
common sable, Hippotragus niger kirkii,
is documented as existing from southern
Africa north to the Galana River. All
Tanzanian and Kenyan populations have
therefore now been proved to belong to
this one subspecies and the (albeit
resounding and presidential) epithet
'roosevelti' should now be expunged
from sable literature!
On A Weaver well out of its normal
way (p. 7): I should like to suggest that
the description "black masked, yellowcaped, chestnut-chested"
is sloppy and
misleading for melanocephalus. In birdtalk the mask is the frontal part of the
head, the face.
This species is blackheaded, as its
Latin name indicates. To state "yellowcaped" leads to further confusion with
jacksoni, which does have a bright yellow
cape (or mantle), as opposed to the
greeny-yellow back of melanocephalus
below the bright yellow collar.
A more accurate description would
be "blackheaded, yellow-collared, orangechestnut breast."
Fiona Alexander
Sable Valley Wildlife Sanctuary
POBox 890
UKUNDA via Mombasa 80400
Kenya
The figures game
- reported by Gordon Boy
Readers
Parker's
Already popular in Taiwan, these have yet
to hit the American
market,
where
demand for them is said to be reaching
fever pitch.
In another seemingly bizarre application, a Canadian biotech firm is making
use of spider genes in goats. This is so the
goats' milk can be spun into high-density
string. Uses for this 'bio-steel', as it is being
called, are expected to include surgical
sutures.
Biotechnology promises much. But the
implications of re-writing millions of years
in a matter of minutes are still imperfectly
understood.
So, while many welcome the
new discoveries, others urge much greater
caution in our testing of the limits of
nature.
should
be misled by Ian
figure not
(unsubstantiated)
of
70 % for the proportion of Kenya's game
living outside national parks, for - as he
states - the latter occupy only 5 % of the
land area (The Shaping of a Game Plan,
SWARA 26:1).
This means, in effect, that game
exists at almost eight times the density
inside the national parks as it does
outside of them. In other words, national
parks have done a pretty good job to date
in preserving game. And in any case,
what is this 70 % made up of? Perhaps
50 % bushbuck, or some other common
species? What we need is some indication of biodiversity, such as the number
of different species per km2 inside
national parks compared with outside.
This would probably show the areas
outside to be even more impoverished.
I see Ian is still trying to sell the idea
that wild animals should be viewed as
property belonging to the person on
whose land they occur. One of the
problems with this is that one cannot tell
whether the zebra-skin watchstrap one
sees came from a legitimate source of
private ownership, or from - say - inside
a national park.
Another problem is that unless a
landowner can mark all of 'his' wild
animals in an identifiable fashion, then
who is to say where they have come
from? Or, when enter a neighbour's land,
then how can ownership be claimed?
Incidentally, game is a Middle English
word meaning the quarry, an object of
pursuit. Its usage dates from before
1573 (OED), and it perfectly describes
the animals people wished to protect in
1900.
Clive Spinage
via e-mail
- reported by Dino J Martins
SWARA April - June 2003
11
Syndrome (PRSS) listed in the glos-
YOU
findmedical
Patagonian
Rest And,
Stop
sarywon't
of any
journal.
while you may find passing mention of it in
ornithological publications, it would be
hard to locate any further information on
the syndrome, except perhaps in the United
States.
The syndrome is not endemic to North
America, however. Indeed, it could be
termed pandemic. 1, for one, have been fortunate enough to experience the syndrome
several times in my ornithological life.
How did this syndrome get its name?
Well, there is a small town in southern
Arizona called Patagonia, not far from the
Mexican border. For many years, the cottonwoods along the main road there, across ()I
from a 'pull-in' with seats and tables (a rest if
stop), offered the only reliable sighting in ~
the whole of the US of a nesting Rose- g§
throated Becard.
@
Not unnaturally, this was quite a draw
for birders from allover America. Then,
one day, someone who had come to the
Patagonia Rest Stop to observe the nesting
Becards found a Clay-coloured (pardon
me, Clay-colored) Robin there, then an
extreme rarity in the US. This brought
'twitchers' flocking in from all over the US.
(And here, I mean 'twitchers' in the true
sense of the word, signifying birdwatchers
who avidly seek out rarities.)
The Robin proved to be quite elusive,
however. So some serious searching was
called for. This meant that large numbers of
birders were combing every likely patch of
scrub in the area in their quest for the bird.
Something unusual began to happen.
Birders, while out looking for the elusive
Robin, kept coming across other birds that
were astoundingly rare, some of them
much rarer than the Robin itself
PRS Syndrome
found at Thika
Brian Finch on the case of an outbreak of
Patagonian Rest Stop Syndrome in Kenya.
More people came to the Rest Stop to
see these new-found rarities, and they in
turn would find yet other rarities, which
brought in still more people, who found
more rarities ... and so on. The concentration of effort on this small area of no
apparent significance netted an astonishing
number of rare bird species. This has since
also happened elsewhere, particularly in
Britain. The phenomenon had to have a
name, so 'Patagonian Rest Stop Syndrome'
was born!
My first brush with PRSS came while I
was living in Sydney, Australia. Someone
had seen a Ruff at Pitt Town Lagoon, a
marsh depression out towards Windsor at
the foot of the Blue Mountains. A Ruff,
while not that unusual, was still interesting
enough to have me out at the lagoon at first
light the following Saturday morning. I
trudged barefoot through the sludgy ooze,
not seeing very much of anything. But
then, noticing a congregation of shorebirds
over on the far side of the lagoon, I made
my laboured way towards them.
Predictably, these birds turned out to be
mostly Curlew and Sharp-tailed Sandpipers
and Red-necked Stints. But there was one
much taller bird among them. This was a
Black-tailed Godwit. Why the excitement?
Well, this was only the second inland
record for the Sydney area. The species'
southerly migrations usually terminate well
to the north.
Scene of the rare outbreak: One of the
Thika settling ponds (left), on which
this Gadwall (top) and this (not so)
Common Redshank (facing page) were
photographed in January.
12
SWARA April - June 2003
PHENOMENON
In January this year, a team from the
Bird Committee of Nature Kenya and the
Ornithology Department of the National
Museums of Kenya was carrying out its
annual waterbird census. This included a
routine visit to the settling ponds at the
Thika Municipal Sewage Works, near 01
Doinyo Sabuk on the Thika-Kangonde
road, about 40 kilometres northeast of
Nairobi.
@
~
,.
~
~
~
A Swamp Harrier passed in close, and
all the waders flew up. One of the stints
seemed to have a white rump, but my
attention was drawn to another small wader
that was trilling rather like a Pectoral
Sandpiper. I followed the waders as they
twisted and turned in their inexplicably
complex intra-specific manoeuvres - and
lost sight of my little triller.
The flock wheeled back and settled in
exactly the same spot. I looked for the small
wader with a call like that of a Pectoral
Sandpiper, and there was ...
a Pectoral
Sandpiper, a very rare species in Australia,
but surely not what! had been looking at in
flight. A bit further along was the real
author of that call: the second record for
New South Wales of a Long-toed Stint!
By now, I was feeling quite pleased with
myself So I settled down to watch the birds
further. Another thing caught my eye. The
strange stint with the white-rump was there
... and it was a White-rumped Sandpiper,
a first for New South Wales and only the
second record for Australia.
I realised at this point that I had better
go off and make some phone calls. Rather
than flush the waders, I decided to skirt
around the lagoon's edge. There, in front of
me, was a pair of Australian Pratincoles,
vagrants from the desert, another second
record for this area.
I did eventually make it to a phone. I
called several people, all of whom I urged to
turn up regardless of what they had lined
up for the day. I then returned to the
swamp and to all my little prizes. And there
with them, inexplicably, was the Ruff, my
original target bird, and- I had forgotten all
about it!
SWARA April - June 2003
Then, horror of horrors, something falcon-like stooped down towards the lagoon
- and all the birds took to the sky. I tried to
keep an eye on the specials, so that I could
show them to my friends. The Whiterumped went that way, the Long-toed the
other way, the Pectoral (I think) was with
that party of Sharp-tailed Sandpipers, or
no, that was the Ruff ...
The falcon-like bird dropped like a
stone and settled nearby. It was a Little
Whimbrel (the fourth record, maybe, for
the Sydney area). The milling waders, sensing it was one of their own kin, started to
alight around it. Time now for a roll call:
Long-toed, over there; White-rumped ...
Yes, all were present and accounted for.
were enjoying this incredible specta-
Some
birding
had arrived
and
cle, when
onefriends
- emerging
from some
bushes - yelled out "Hey! Two Australian
Pratincoles over here."
"Oh, yes,' said 1, 'I clean forgot to tell
you about those!"
Most of the birds, apart from the
Godwit and the Pratincoles, remained in
the area for another couple of months,
commuting between the various swamps.
Many of the birders who came to look at
them found other local rarities: Freckled
Ducks, Painted Snipe, Black-necked Storks,
Superb Parrots and the homely Budgerigar,
to name but a few.
What possible bearing, though, does
any of this have on natural history in East
Africa? Well, the answer is simply that we
have - near Thika in Kenya - recently experienced a case of our own of Patagonian
Rest Stop Syndrome.
Itai Shanni's phone rang while we were
both listening to a Chiffchaff singing in
Timboroa, west of the Rift Valley. The call
was from Bernd de Bruijn, at Thika with
the census team. The team had, Bernd said,
found a male Ferruginous Duck on the
ranks. We immediately resolved to return
the following week via Thika, to view - and
to photograph - this bird for ourselves, if it
was still there.
Pulling in at the ponds, we noticed a
group of waders on a raised platform in the
water. A Spotted Redshank, an uncommon
enough species, was among them. But,
alongside this, was a Common Redshank, a
species that (in spite of its name) is a mere
vagrant to inland Kenya. Indeed, even
coastal records of this once regular species
have dried up over recent years. We scoured
the large numbers of mixed ducks for the
Ferruginous, but with no luck.
We walked the 50-odd metres to the
next pond, where I set up the telescope to
scan through all the birds. One was an
unusual-looking small diving duck. This
turned out to be a female Tufted Duck, an
increasingly rare visitor to Kenya. So we
were happy enough with that.
Then the Ferruginous Duck appeared
along the pond's nearer edge. It obligingly
swam past alongside a Southern Pochard, a
giant by comparison, the diagnostic white
undertail shining like a beacon. We
admired and photographed these birds,
before settling down methodically to check
through the other waterfowl present.
I nearly fell into the water (not the best
water to tumble into) when my gaze fell
upon another unusual duck: a Gadwall (a
female, or juvenile), only the third of its
species seen in Kenya since 1944!
No doubt, other birders visiting these
ponds over the coming weeks and months
to view these rarities will come back with
reports of their own of other, possibly even
rarer sightings. That is normally the way
with PRS Syndrome!
~
13
COMMENT
DDT and malaria
on calls, voiced in Kenya over recent months,
to reintroduce DOT (banned in the country since 1986) as a
means of combatting malaria.
Dino J Martins
brain. Its fat-soluble nature also means that
o
z
is
@
tongue twister, dichlorodiphenylDDT
is an abbreviated
name for the
trichloroethane.
First synthesized
in
1874, DDT has been available commercially since the 1940s, when the US army used
it to control body-lice on soldiers. Classified
as a POP (persistent organic pollutant), it
lasts for many years in the environment.
DDT has been used widely around the
world for different purposes. Yet the benefits of this chemical pesticide are debatable.
Today, with the rains pounding Kenya, we
are faced with the possibility of a devastating malaria epidemic. Some have called for
the re-introduction of widespread DDT
spraying to control mosquitoes.
Less widely contemplated are this pesticide's negative impacts on ecology, human
health, even malaria itself in the long term.
Acclaimed by some as a saver of lives
and damned by others as a vicious toxin,
DDT has a colourful history. True, it has
been responsible for eliminating large mosquito populations. In some countries, this
has greatly reduced the incidence of malaria. But the indiscriminate killing action of
DDT has also resulted in the demise, along
with
.. the mosquitoes, of many beneficial
Insect species.
It is important to weigh the dangers and
potential benefits of DDT in a wider context that includes human health and
well-being over generations, as well as ecology, of which we are an inseparable part.
DDT is a toxin. Specifically, it is a neurotoxin that attacks the Central Nervous
System. It kills by interfering with the
synapses. It inhibits the production and
action of enzymes. As a POP, it accumulates
in fatty tissues, including the liver and the
14
it bio-accumulates along food-chains.
Put simply, this means that the merest trace in plankton becomes a few
milligrammes once passed through
fish, worms, or frogs, and into birds of
prey. One of the unlikely outcomes of
widespread DDT use was its accumulation
in human breast-milk, ending up in
babies' blood in dangerous doses. It also
affected the development of egg-shells in
birds of prey, leading to the collapse of
many raptor populations.
Ecologically, DDT accumulates readily
in the sediments of rivers and other bodies
of water. Bound to particles, it is easily
transported over great distances by water.
Studies have detected DDT in the air above
fields six months after it was sprayed. Traces
have also been found in the Antarctic ice,
many hundreds of kilometres from its nearest possible point of use. It also accumulates
in the topsoil, when used on crops.
The lethal dose to humans is just 0.5 g.
Yet farmers in rural Tanzania routinely
sprinkle sachets of DDT powder on crops
without any form of protection. It takes
just 0.0033 mg to kill a fly. It is this toxic
potency that has made DDT so appealing
in the fight against insect vectors of disease,
such as malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.
DDT spraying does kill mosquitoes lots of them, very quickly. But DDT, like
any other chemical pesticide, does not kill
all the mosquitoes. And ironically, the callous use of DDT may ultimately prove to
be the best thing for malaria.
How could DDT spraying help malaria?
The answer lies in the complex interplay of
insect ecology, behaviour and genetics.
Insects have been around for more than
300-million years. That's a lot longer than
even the remotest prehistoric human. This
long history has not been without its challenges, and time and time again the insects
have emerged triumphant.
The adaptability of mosquitoes in the
face of a human-chemical assault is multifaceted. Insects have the remarkable ability
very rapidly to evolve a resistance to chemicals. This resistance has been documented
in fruit flies in the action of a single gene
called DDT-R. This gene allows insects to
survive ever-increasing concentrations of
toxins through production of an enzyme,
Cytochrome P450, that breaks down the
pOisons.
Hundreds of insect species are known
to be resistant to DDT. These include
malarial mosquitoes in India and Iran,
where spraying continues today.
From our high school biology, we know
that malaria is caused by a parasite,
Plasmodium, that depends on the female
Anopheles Mosquito for transport. Less
well known is the fact that in Kenya epidemic malaria in the highlands is the result
of changing micro-habitats and climate.
Even very slight temperature changes
can increase mosquito and parasite survival
rates many-fold. Add to this the effects of
deforestation in eliminating natural mosquito predators, and the exponential
increase in breeding sites - such as cans,
bottles and the ubiquitous plastic bags.
It will come as no surprise to any observant ecologist that mosquitoes can adapt
quickly to these changing conditions. Some
studies have demonstrated that mosquitoes
will even alter their feeding times in
response to spraying. To avoid contact with
insecticide-impregnated bed-nets at night,
they simply feed during the early evenings,
when people are still exposed.
To control mosquitoes more effectively,
we need better to understand mosquito
ecology and behaviour. At the heart of the
malaria epidemic, in ways subtle and obvious, are ecological problems. We need to
accept that most such problems stem
directly from our own actions.
Solving the mosquito problem in the
long term can be achieved only through
consideration for the environment. As
Rachel Carson states in her classic work,
Silent Spring, we must stop behaving with
the "irresponsibility of an industrialized,
technological society toward the natural
world."
Safer alternatives for combatting malaria exist, but these are considered 'too
expensive'. Yet, if we invested research and
resources in such alternatives, we could
make them more cost-effective and more
widely available. Chemicals like DDT may
work today, perhaps even tomorrow. But in
nature, what goes around comes around.
,1,
Spray now, pay later.
SWARA April - June 2003
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I
The Encounter Guide Map already in the
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-.:.
not alone in feeling challenged by
wildlife
photographers,
am
the idea
of knowing
there are Icreatures out there I am never likely to see,
engaged~ in u.nrecorded behaviour I am
powerless to capture on film by any conventional means.
Nowhere has this realisation been
Among
brought home to me more forcibly than in
the dense riverine forests of the northern
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
There, in 1999, I decided to investigate
reports going back to the late nineteenth
century, suggesting that there may be an
isolated population of gorillas (at the time
classified as Gorilla gorilla uellensis)
near the border with the Central
African Republic.
The investigation began promisingly enough. In muddy streambeds
leading down to the Boumou River
near the village of Badai, we regularly
found clear footprints, each some 30
cm long, and were able to take good
casts. We located numerous ground
nests. From these, we collected faecal
samples, some weighing as much as
720 grammes. We picked up sample
hairs, up to 14 cm long, which we
kept for DNA analysis. And we
recorded vocalisations that, curiously,
we heard only at night. But, in
months of trying, we never got so
much as a fleeting glimpse of any of
the primates.
Imagine our surprise, then, when
- on receiving the DNA test results -
16
we learned that our study animals were not
gorillas at all, but chimpanzees! In many
ways, this raised more questions than it
answered. For, if these were indeed chimpanzees, then evidently the groups included
some very big apes, with some very unusual
habits, such as nesting on the ground and
moving about at night. Our ground searches intensified, but again our days spent
wandering about in the thick forest went
unrewarded. For there was no chimp, giant
or otherwise, anywhere to be seen.
This fruitless search revived my interest
in 'camera traps', devices whose potential I
had eagerly embraced some years before.
Indeed, my first such contraption was
housed in an ammunition box, and I used
it very enthusiastically in my back yard on
Mount Kenya until an elephant, ostensibly
enraged by the flash, trampled it into the
ground one night.
Remotely operated 'camera traps',
trained on selected forest trails, now represented probably my best chance of getting
to 'see' the mystery DRC chimps. So, in
2001 I purchased several units, settling initially for cheaper models at the lower end of
the market. All such 'traps' make use of an
infra red 'trigger' beam. Any passing animal
intercepting the beam ttiggers flash and
shutter simultaneously, so effectively
taking its own picture. Things could
hardly sound more elementary.
But, while the technology has certainly improved immeasurably since
the days of my first 'trap', under tropical African conditions it is still far
from perfect, as I soon discovered - to
my cost. For such cameras just cannot
withstand the humidity of the rainy
Burning bright, in the forests of the
night: Pairs of glowing eyes (above)
are often ail you get in photographs
taken by camera traps like this one
(left). Eye-height from the ground,
then, is sometimes your only clue
as to subject identification.
Right:
The Red River Hog, Potamochoerus
porcus, Is one of the species that
quite regularly tripped our infra red
trigger beams.
SWARA April - June 2003
season. The films inside become moist and
sticky, and the automatic rewind mechanism soon gives up the ghost. And one of
my 'traps' suffered irreparable damage following a termite infestation!
I have since upgraded and now have
four up-market 'traps' in place. But even
these are far from weatherproof. Tired of
continually having to send the cameras
back to the US for costly repairs, I shall this
year be wit'hdrawing all four units before
the onset of the rains in April. The rains
then go on until December. So the 'window
of opportunity' for photo trappers in much
of tropical Africa is, at best, rather limited.
The results, even so, can be as exhilarat-
Unexpected boon: This photograph of a Yellow-backed Duiker, Cephalophus
silvicultor, the largest of all duikers, Is believed to be one of the first ever
taken of the species In the wild.
Photographs: © Karl Ammann
ing as they are unexpected. One stretch of
forest between the Ulele and the Boumou
Rivers has so far yielded striking images of
Water Chevrotains,Yeliow-backed Duikers,
Leopards, Red River Hogs, Giant Forest
Hogs, Genets and Hyaenas - not to mention Elephants, Buffaloes, other duiker
species (including the Bay Duiker), and
several bird species as well.
One of the highlights, undoubtedly, has
come in the shape of three photographs of
an African Golden Cat (including the one
reproduced on page 26), an animal that had
previously been photographed in the wild
on only one or two occasions. (The same
appears to be true of the Yellow-backed
Duiker).
The chimps, though, have remained my
primary target throughout. And, while I
still have not seen them, I do, thanks to
the 'camera traps', now have many
images. In these pictures, the apes certainly appear to be rather larger than
those in other known chimp populations - big enough, perhaps, for them to
be unafraid of sleeping on the ground.
One of the local Azande names for these
apes, literally translated, means 'The one
that kills the lion'.
As with so many 'trap' -taken images,
however, particularly of unfamiliar subjects, scale can be difficult to gauge. And
scientists, to date, have been extremely
reluctant to commit themselves to estimates of individual sizes and weights,
based solely on these images.
The clearest picture of all (overleaf)
was taken, not by a camera trap but by a
hunter who shot one near Bondo in
SWARA April - June 2003
17
1999. Please feel free to judge for yourself
how its dimensions compare with your
interpretation of those of the average chimpanzee).
I have managed to obtain other photographs of the chimps, taken from exactly
the same sites but with measuring aids preinstalled. These take the form of a vertical
pole, demarcated in alternating stripes of
black and white at 10-centimetre intervals,
with short stakes driven into the ground at
one-metre intervals between the pole and
the camera.
Now, with the aid of computer simulation, it is hoped that these latest pictures still under examination - will at last enable
scientists to determine just how big these
chimps really are.
I have since also invested in a video
camera set in an underwater housing and
fitted with a remote sensor. But again, disappointingly, this tends to fog up when
there is a lot of rain about. I am now anxiously awaiting delivery of my first tape
from this new unit, which is monitoring a
track whereon my still cameras have documented regular chimp traffic. This tape,
when it arrives, may reveal further surprises: more African Golden Cats perhaps, orwho can tell? - possibly something even
more out of the ordinary.
The suspense of never quite knowing
what you are going to get is undeniably part
of the thrill of 'photo trapping'. Bur what
you do always get are lots of spoiled films.
That is the depressing realiry. You also get
plenry of images of the 'glowing eyes' only
rype, where eye-height from the ground is
your only clue as to subject identification.
And you may, if my experience is anything
to go by, also get to run up rather large
camera repair bills!
The technique is certainly valuable,
however, as a monitoring tool in difficult
habitats. And, while I am still hopeful of
one day getting to observe the 'oversized'
chimps with my own eyes, I feel much less
frustrated for having some 'eyes' at least,
however weather-sensitive,
already out
there in the forest doing some of the 'looking' for me.
My 'camera traps', meanwhile, continue
to have an unexpected effect on the local
people. Since the early days, when women
would sometimes trigger flashes on their
way down to the riverbeds to empry drying
ponds of fish, nowadays the local villagers
avoid those fotests in which cameras have
been placed. The sight
at all hours of the day
widely interpreted as a
powerful "white man's
trifled with, is at play.
18
Photos: © KARL AMMANN
of flashes' going off
and night has been
sure sign that some
sorcery'~, not to be
if,
SWARA April - June 2003
PHENOMENON
The strange case of
the 'Bondo ape'
Wildlife detective Karl Ammann's search for one of Africa's
'forgotten' apes takes some surprising twists and turns.
In
the Congo presented three 'gorilla skulls'
a Belgian
returning
from
to 1898
the Musee
Royalofficer
de l'Afrique
Centrale
in Tervuren, Brussels.
The officer had collected the skulls near
a place called Bondo and from another village on the ltumbiri River, 100 kilometres
to the south. Both sites are in the northeasternmost reaches of today's Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Anatomical differences between these
skulls and the skulls of gorillas then already
in museum collections (the species was first
described scientifically in the 1850s from
specimens obtained in West Africa
by the French explorer Paul B du
Chaillu) led Tetvuren zoologist
Henri Schouteden in 1937 to proclaim a new subspecies: Gorilla
apes. The 'Bondo ape', then, was conveniently forgotten.
Seven years ago, in 1996, the Kenyabased Swiss wildlife photographer Karl
Ammann took up the quest to rediscover
the forgotten apes, and so put an end - one
way or the other - to nearly 100 years of
uncertainty.
To this end, Ammann has since led several expeditions into the forests around
Bondo. His extraordinary findings are
detailed, in part, elsewhere in this issue (pp.
16-18). While no living 'Bondo ape' has yet
been sighted, the expeditions have yielded a
hunters seem to point, as well, to
there being something distinctive
about the 'Bondo ape'. These
hunters do not differentiate between
gorillas and chimpanzees. Local for- ,
est apes, the hunters say, are of two
types. Each has its own name. Some
are what (literally translated) are
known as 'tree-beaters'; while those
@
of the other type are referred to as
~
'I'IOn-k"11
i!2
I
ers.'
~
The 'tree-beaters' are the smaller
gorilla uellensis.
The race was named uellensis
after the Uele River, upon whose
northern bank Bondo is located. No
other gorillas have been documented from this locality, which is about
as far removed from the outermost
range limit of Africa's nearest
Western Gorilla (G. gorilla) populations as it is from that of the nearest
groups of Eastern Gorillas (G. beringei).
Geographical isolation, then, coupled
with the marked anatomical differences,
pointed to the likely existence, in the
Bondo area, of a distinct Gorilla subspecies.
The other known subspecies, by current
taxonomic reckoning, are the Western
Lowland Gorilla (G. g. gorilla); the Cross
River Gorilla (G. g. diehli); Grauer's Gorilla
(G. b. graueri); the Mountain Gorilla (G. b.
beringei), and - under debate still - the
Bwindi Gorilla (G. b. ?).
Primate taxonomists have long since
stopped short of including uellensis in the
Gorilla family tree. The reason is simple
enough: No new specimens have been
forthcoming, and until recently there was
no further evidence to corroborate the continued existence, even, of such a race of
5:
wealth of material, including plenty of the
large ground nests characteristic of gorillas.
The way saplings have been broken
around such nest sites, coupled with the
appearance of the faecal and hair samples
(and footprints) found in and near the
nests, further pointed to the presence here
of a population of gorillas. All the nests
were. in swampy riverbeds. All were well
built and clearly worn, indicating that they
were unlikely to have served as mere 'day
nests'.
Then, as if to clinch the matter,
Ammann stumbled upon another skull.
Like the Tervuren uellensis skulls, this skull
had the pronounced sagittal crest typical of
adult male gorillas. Otherwise, however,
the skull's proportions and measurements
were quite different from those of any of
'Bondo ape': Could this large male (top, facing page), shot by a hunter in 1999, really be
just an ordinary chimpanzee? The human presence alongside does at least give a sense of
scale. In other pictures, taken by remote camera traps (left, facing page), the ape's size
can be difficult to assess, even where measuring aids have been pre-installed (above).
SWARA April - June 2003
the five (six?) gorilla subspecies recognised
by science.
So, what kind of ape could this possibly
be? To find out, Ammann duly submitted
samples (of the hair and faeces, as well as
the skull) to laboratories for DNA analysis.
The verdict of initial testing, based on the
ape's mitochondrial DNA, was nothing
short of staggering. For this was the DNA,
not of any gorilla, but of a chimpanzee!
The skull, meanwhile, on being reexamined, was also pronounced to be that
of a chimp - albeit one of an unusual crested variety. Faecal analysis provided further
corroboration, showing the apes to have
been eating a frui't-rich diet consistent with
that of chimpanzees. The 'Bondo ape',
then, was apparently a chimpanzee that in
some respects behaves more like a gorilla.
There are chimpanzees in the forests
around Bondo. But these, in keeping with
the habits of chimps elsewhere, prefer to
sleep in trees, rather than in nests on the
ground.
The accounts of the local Azande
~
z of the two types. They are hunted
with poison-tipped arrows while
busy feeding in trees. The 'lion-killers', the
hunters aver, are rather bigger and seldom
climb trees. They are also much harder to
kill, as they are strong enough, even once
hit, to flee and to lose themselves in the forest before succumbing to the poison.
The presence, on muddy forest trails, of
huge ape footprints 30 cm long (that is, a
Size 13-plus in human shoe-size terms)
appeared to confirm the Bondo hunters'
reports of there being an outsized breed of
chimp in the vicinity. Ammann has taken
several good casts of these footprints.
His investigations, though, have been
interrupted repeatedly by the ongoing war
in the DRC. For long periods, this has rendered access to the Bondo area impossible.
But the search for the mysterious 'Bondo
ape' has continued - often through the
work of hired local trackers and bushmeat
hunters in the forests.
Early in 2002, Ammann received word
that a "very large" chimp of the 'lion-killer'
type had been shot near Bondo, and that its
19
No life for a lion
carcass had been photographed.
Ammann
was able to contact one of his trackers,
whom he dispatched at once to the scene.
The tracker later obtained prints of some
of the pictures, including the one reproduced here (on page 18).
Veterinarian Nigel Dougherty bears witness
to 'the tip of an Ogaden iceberg'.
Size, being relative, can be very difficult
to assess in the absence of a dependable
sense of scale. So these images, wherein
people appear alongside
the dead ape,
came as something of a breakthrough. The
dead chimpanzee shown in these pictures
would appear, according to one estimate,
to be at least 1.8 metres tall (roughly fivefoot-nine-inches).
The animal's likely body
weight is anybody's
Considerations
guess, however.
of physical size and
body mass may have prompted such apes,
Ammann speculates, to adopt a new and
different nesting culture. To have taken to
nesting on the ground in riverine forests
teeming with lions, leopards and hyaenas
(the latter renowned for their audacious
and frequent attacks on people), as well as
elephants and other large mammals, such
apes - just to feel secure - would probably
have to be of such a size.
Whether
these
ground-nesting
'lion-
killer' crested
'Bondo
apes' really do
represent a distinct population
remains to
be seen. Anlayses of their nuclear DNA,
and follow-up tests based on the Y chromosome, have yet to be concluded. Surveys
to the sourh and east, meanwhile,
have
confirmed that the ground
iour is indeed
limited
Bondo-Bili
nesting behavto Ammann's
study area and to some of the
surrounding
forests.
Ammann is now provisioning a clearing in the area with sugar cane. A nearby
village is growing the cane and putting it
our on an elevated platform twice a week.
This year, he hopes - with a trip video
camera he has installed there - to get some
film footage of the apes as they stop by to
feast on the sugar cane.
"I have little doubt,"
he says, "that
before long we shall be able to look at
images of what are very big chimpanzees
doing their thing in the forests of Bili and
Bondo.
'Their
thing' could very well
amount to a wholly new chimp culture and possibly a lot else besides."
it
- reported
by Gordon Boy
complete presentation on the mystery 'Bondo
apes', including much photographic material, is
given on <www.kar/ammann.com/bondo.htm/>.
This website presentation is designed, Ammann
stresses, simply to present the facts, so that
people who are interested have access to all the
information available and can use tnis as a basis
upon which to form their own opinions.
A
20
ever seen. Yet here I am - a vet workof the
saddesttown
cases
ing is
in one
a dusty
Somali
whoI have
just
This
happens to be passing through - summoned over in the stifling heat to give my
professional advice.
Earlier, jolted out of my midday torpor
by the unusual nature of the request, I welcomed the invitation. There is nothing like
the..sense of anticipation
that comes with
gOing our to examine a new case.
But this time I am also a little nervous
- not because of the subliminal
risk of
becoming
a hostage (or worse) in this
town, but because of the case itself. Its very
the sight I forget to check whether
or a she.
it is a he
'His' parents, I learn, were part of a
loose association oflions that had somehow
managed to survive in the desolate Ogaden
landscape. These lions had been tracked
from a distance. One lioness's gravid state
had been the subject of particular interest.
Soon after her cubs were born, every
adult animal in the 'pride' was shot. As a
tiny cub, the young lion before me was
snatched from the bloodbath,
along with
'his' siblings. The latter have all since died;
'he' is the sole survivor. As if this ordeal
to
were not bad enough, I am now looking at
the early days of a life sentence behind bars.
"We want you to come and tell us why
This young lion's tale is sadly typical of
life, or the indifference towards it, here in a
limited history does wonders, though,
concentrate and focus the mind:
our lion is not putting on weight."
The journey to the patient is uneventful. There are no 'technicals'
(sawn-off
part of Africa so wracked by feuding and
conflict that even tomorrow itself a bonus,
Pajeros mounted with heavy-calibre guns),
no unexpected
Kalashnikovs,
no grenade
launchers, not even the usual piercing looks
- just a preoccupation
with what I have let
myself in for.
meets the Ethiopian Ogaden, the men all
have AK47s, whether stashed in their huts
Finally, we get to where the Ogaden
lion is being kept. Some donkeys
are
harassed into moving aside. A large rusting
gate pock-marked
by previous crossfire is
for it is another
day. Here, where Somalia
or strapped in that
across their backs.
This young
deceptively
lion's capture
lazy way
and impris-
onment
is symptomatic
of the raw
opportunism
that goes hand in hand with
everyday survival in these parts, where
noble sentiments
can have no place. As in
'What I should have done, for the lion's
sake, was to convince them instead to
spend their money on a single bullet'
wrestled open by one of the guards. Here it
is, then: the moment of truth. I now know
what it must have felt like to be a gladiator
at the Colosseum gates.
It is a good thing the imagination
can
be so misleading. For instead, I find myself
staring at a very sad, very confined lion. It
is not rearing up, like the iconic pillar of
strength. There is simply not room enough.
And this lion is a far cry from that emblem
of strength, the Lion of Judah, on Haile
Selassie's flag. It is, in short, almost spent.
At just a few months old, it is little more
than an oversized cub. I am so shocked by
ancient
Rome,
such lions are destined
for
'entertainment',
to be kept in tight confinement and tormented over weekends by
ignorant crowds. Then, if such a beast is
lucky, he might be sold off to become an
exhibit in someone's decadent private 'zoo'.
Whatever
his fate, this lion is just
another hapless victim in what, for some
time, has been a thriving and lucrative
trade in live wild species from Somalia and
the Ogaden.
"So, why is our lion losing weight?" I
am brought back to my brief. On the spur
of the moment, to buy more time, I launch
Now based in Somalia, Dr Nigel Dougherty, a Member of the Royal College
of Veterinary Surgeons, works on both domestic animals and wildlife.
SWARA April - June 2003
FOCUS
the pads, and the dusty ground
abrasive.
Satisfied
odd signs' is
gest that the
particularly
round off the
that
is not
th is 'constellation
of
most likely dietary, I suglion be given some offal,
the rumen
contents,
to
exclusively muscle compo-
sition of his caprine meals. Watching
lions on a kill, it has always interested
me to see how they go for these parts,
perhaps for a fix of essential vitamins.
I do not have access here to Hill's
Manual of Clinical Nutrition, and (as
you can imagine) I am a very long way
from the Net. But, in rerrospect, judging
by the way the local abattoir dresses its
carcasses, this is being taken care of, and
the lion is receiving a wholesome mix of
clean red meat decorated with stomach
'Sad case': The young Ogaden lion that
may, if it survives, end up in someone's
decadent private 'zoo'.
into a series of biosecurity guidelines. I tell
them to keep all domestic cats - scrawny
moggies that, even now, are milling about
around the cage - away. Goodness alone
knows what these fellow felines might be
carrying to have been reduced to such a
pi tiable state.
I cannot
recall whether
lions carry
Echinococcids
(a type of 'measle' potentially fatal to humans), but suggest a wash of
the hands after handling the cage. I advise
that children (there are scores of them here)
be discouraged
side the cage.
from playing in the dirt out-
contents and dirty offal.
There is no diarrhoea,
tion, is quite
Then, to
Any deserted
could act as
the possible added burden of worms. I do
not trust the 'extra label' application
of
anthelmintic
concoctions meant for cattle,
another matter.
the design of a compound:
building, certified mine-free,
a convenient
refuge, with a
small adjoining enclosure into which the
'crate' could be placed. The compound
would need to have a three-metre
fence
around it, complete with a barbed wire
overhang - if the lion's owners wish to keep
their neighbours as friends.
This is no 'gold standard' design out of
a capture and care manual. But it is at least
practical and within the means of the owners, who all pledge to follow my advice.
(Whether or not they have since done so, I
have been unable to ascertain.)
ment for most of his life - not a good
confinestartcub
for had
any been
animalin solitary
that would
normally learn about life from boisterous play.
In this cage, there is hardly room even for
This
stereotyped pacing. And, with so little stimulation during rhe long periods between
moments
of torment,
I wonder whether
even stereotypy
manifest itself.
chemical restraint? The cage can at least be
modified as a transport crate. Its sides, mercifully, are smooth. For how the lion would
fare on the move, without any form of seda-
would
have a chance
to
On, then, to my second piece of 'spur of
the moment'
advice: "Why don't you try
letting the donkeys into the compound?"
Some stimulation,
I fancy, for the lion
behind those big, glazed, hopeless eyes.
There is scope for much improvement
in the cage's design: its size, for one thing.
To devise a system allowing freedom of
movement around the compound
is well
and good. But what if they want the lion
moved, trucked by road and then put on a
boat? With no projectiles,
no drugs for
SWARA April - June 2003
While eXplaining the design with hand
gestures, I get a bit too close to the cage.
The lion manages a half-hearted snarl and a
wince. He has been put through this sort of
close torment every day of his life. But I am
prompted
to suggest
another
immediate
step: that, for greater privacy during the
heat of the day, some cloth tarpaulins,
draped over the cage, might help to limit
the degree of torment inflicted by strangers
passing by.
Only then do I turn my attention to
the patient. What strikes me, apart from
dullness in the coat and the fact that one or
two ribs are showing, is the glassy look in
this animal's eyes. The elbows are cornified,
and in places the pads are a little raw. But
there is no smell of ammonia, for the cage
has no bottom and when excrement piles
up, some strong men just shuffle the cage
along. There is no concrete either, to annoy
no malabsorptive
problems that I can detect. This lion's problems, then, are almost wholly dietary - with
so I follow the rule that, above all, be sure to
do no harm. That the patient's poor weight
gain is due to a lack of food is plain to see
when the owners measure out the lion's
daily portion.
have suppressed the lion's appetite. It
depression
also
since
I did anymayclinical
Psychological
is a while
work
on cats, and it is amazing
how fast
you get rusty on the basics. This becomes
evident when I try to work out how much
of a goat the lion should be given each day.
Conveying
this is another matter, for it
means having to convince the owners as to
why they must part with good meat to feed
their oversized cat.
The lion can hardly move its muscles,
let alone exercise - which may be just as
well, as it is hard to convince the owners
that it needs more to eat. What I should
have done, for the lion's sake, was to convince them instead to spend their money on
a single bullet, for there is little chance that
this creature, if freed, could ever fend for
itself.
Such is the reality of a trade from which
real money can be made in a place with few
other opportunities,
simply to feed the
decadence of a few in oil rich states. I lay no
blame
on the captors,
feeling instead
that
the finger should be pointed at those in
positions that sanction, turn a blind eye, or
actively fuel the trade.
if.
21
JUST CURIOUS
nesting sites on Kinyaole (Robinson)
Some
ago, while
mapping
Islandyears
in Formosa
Bay,
about 42turtle
km
north of Malindi on the Kenya Coast, we
found the skull of a cetacean that had been
washed ashore.
We were keen to know what species it
belonged to: whether of a dolphin, or a
whale. So we cleaned it up and took it
across the narrow creek to the mainland by
boat. There, a tour bus agreed to take it for
us to our Malindi office, from where - we
hoped - we could get some experts to have
a look at it.
Alas, our skull never arrived. Time and
again, we checked with our Malindi office,
and with the tour operator on whose vehicle the skull had supposedly travelled. All
our enquiries drew a blank. So we resigned
ourselves to the fact that the interesting
skull, from whatever animal it might have
come, had vanished forever.
Almost three years later, we again set
eyes on that skull. We were in Malindi,
attending an open-air class hosted by a
workshop that specialises in the maintenance and repair of tour buses. There was
an old mango tree in the yard. And there,
in the crook of two large branches, was our
long-lost cetacean skull! (The original bus
had evidently called in here for repairs,
unloaded all its cargo, and then simply forgotten to reload the skull.)
Our delight at rediscovering the skull
soon turned to disappointment, however.
For the skull's condition had deteriorated
terribly. Its beak - once so impressive - had
been broken off, and the whole thing was
covered in grime and filth. Nevertheless, we
reclaimed the sad relic and returned with it
to the island.
Again we cleaned it up, this time with a
view to making it an exhibit at the marine
wetlands 'museum' our community-based
Another whale of a find?
organisation, Friday's Arm, is planning for
the island. We still hoped, even then, to get
experts in to view it and to trace its evolutionary and morphological relation to the
remains of other comparable finds.
We had no sooner done this, when flicking through a back issue of SWARA
[Vol 25:1, 2002] - we came across the story
of the skull of a Longman's Beaked Whale,
Indopacetus pacificus, that had turned up in
a school classroom in Nairobi, 500 km
inland. That skull, we read [in A Whale of a
Find, by Harvey L Hinsz], was only the
third one of its kind ever to be found!
We compared 'our' skull with the one
pictured in the article, and although ours is
minus its beak and seems rather smaller, we
both believe it could be that of another
Longman's Beaked Whale. In a subsequent
issue of SWARA [Vol 25:2, 2002], we then
read about the discovery, off South Africa's
coast, of a complete Longman's Beaked
Whale skeleton. And we understand, too,
'Beakless' wonder: Guddy (left) and Kay Birkigt (below) on Kinyaole Island with the recovered
cetacean skull. Top: Children with the Friday's Arm CBO gather around their island's strange
'bone'. Below right: The SWARA picture of the Longman's Beaked Whale skull (currently in the
NMK Osteology Department) that in 1998 turned up in a high school classroom in Nairobi.
22
that another of these rare whales has since
been found washed up [in July 2002] on a
beach in Kagoshima, Japan.
By our reckoning, then: If the skull we
found, then lost, then found again, does
turn out to be that of a Longman's Beaked
Whale, it would represent only the sixth
such record worldwide, and only the second for eastern Africa.
To have this confirmed would, of
course, be very exciting. Bur for us, after all
our adventures with this skull, and for the
whole of the Friday's Arm CBO (which has
become fascinated by the strange "bone"), a
positive identification will be exciting
enough - whatever it turns our to be!
So we are enclosing some photographs
(including
the two reproduced on this page),
in the hope that SWARA readers might be
able to help enlighten us - and all of our
fellow Robinson Islanders. For additional
information on the skull, we can be reached
at < [email protected] >.
Guddy K H Birkigt
Chairperson
Friday's Arm
MAL/NOt
SWARA April - June 2003
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~~Vti.~ftj\:\. ••.~IU
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II..
lcome
i~
ornithologist Dr Augusto Toschi
11 February 1946, Italian
had just
h,d IT'')'
spent ,,",on
five <0
weeks
f,e1ph,d.
with the
H,
Coryndon Museum Expedition to Kenya's
Mau Forest. And now he was returning to
Nairobi with an impressive haul of 109
bird skins, many belonging to uncommon
'montane' species: Tullberg's Woodpeckers,
Doherty's Bush-shrikes, a White-browed
Crombec, Abyssinian Crimson-wings, a
White-tailed Crested Flycatcher ...
It was an exciting list, by any standard.
But then, he also had - stashed away in his
collection - a pair of very much larger
skins.
.~
Both these were the pelts of a mammal
Dr Toschi could not immediately identifY.
He had noticed the skins among the possessions of some Ogiek ('Ndorobo')
hunter-gatherers the Expedition had stumbled upon in the forest. The Ogiek could
produce no permit for the skins. And without a permit, theirs represented illegal
trophies under Kenya's Game Laws. The
bemused Ogiek, whose kinsmen had been
roaming these forests for centuries, had
never heard of such permits, or indeed of
Kenya's Game Laws. So, for them, the
ensuing fuss over their two skins must have
seemed bizarre. Bur, taking the line of least
resistance, they duly handed over the pelts,
which (they claimed) had come from animals killed after being chased and cornered
by their dogs.
On getting back to Nairobi's Coryndon
(now National) Museum, Dr Toschi
.Ii
showed the confiscated skins to, among
others, the naturalist John G Williams.
Williams, then aged 32, had just been
appointed the Museum's new Curator of
Birds (a post he would go on to hold, with
growing distinction, for the next 20 years).
Dr Toschi then took both skins to the
Kenya Game Department offices, where he
handed them in, along with a formal report
detailing their 'recovery from poachers.'
Until his death in 1973, Dr Toschi
went on to achieve great things, first as
Director of Italy's Instituto Nazionale
Fauna Selvatica and then, in 1969, as the
author of the three-volume Avifauna
ltaliana, still that country's definitive reference work on birds. Back in 1946, however,
after parting with the two unusual skins,
the Doctor - as far as anyone can tell -
©
'Phantom feline'
Gordon Boy goes in search of one of Africa's
most enigmatic and elusive animals.
concentrated on his precious avian specimens. For, while these are listed in full in
The Journal of the East Africa Natural
History Society (Vol 19, pp. 93-94), there is
no further mention anywhere of Dr Toschi
in connection with either of the animal
skins.
Professional hunters of old recall, over
many years, having seen one of the pelts
hanging on a wall behind the Licensing
Officer's desk at Kenya Game Department
headquarters, then situated adjacent to the
Museum buildings in Nairobi. One or
other of the two skins (no-one is quite sure
which) was later returned to the Museum,
presumably on account of its scientific
Colour polymorph: African Golden Cat of the 'grey' phase (above), photographed in May
2002 in the northern DR Congo. This image, obtained by Karl Ammann with the help of
a remote infra red 'camera trap', is one of the few photographs ever taken of a living
African Golden Cat in the wild state. Facing page: Captive 'red' phase specimen (top)
at Howletts-Port Lymphrte Wildlife Park, England in 1992. Bottom: Head of the first
melanistic Golden Cat on record for Uganda, photographed in 1992 after being killed
in a snare in Uganda's Bwindi-Impenetrable
Forest.
interest. Either way, one of the skins - Reg
No. 3369/332A - came to be in the permanent collection of the Mammalogy
Department at the National Museums of
Kenya (NMK). Scribbled on the back of its
tag is the note, 'Red var. Mau Forest.
Collected by Game Dept. No other details'.
The second skin's present whereabouts are
not known.
The skins, measuring roughly 115 cm
from the tip of the nose to the end of the
tail, were those of two medium-sized cats.
In life, these animals would have stood perhaps 45 cm (about one-foot-six) at the
shoulder and may have weighed, at most,
about 12 kg (26Ib). They came, then, from
a creature less than half the size of a leopard, yet more than twice the size of a
domestic cat. And they were clearly neither
Servals nor Caracals, the only other felines
of this size known to occur in Kenya.
Their identity, while not difficult to
determine, nevertheless came as a major
;r-
SWARA April - June 2003
surprise. For these were African Golden
Cats, Profelis aurata, denizens of the rainforests of West and Central Africa. As such,
their range - until this pair of skins turned
up - was assumed to extend no further
eastward than the forests of far western
Uganda, notably on Mgahinga and
Muhavura, easternmost of the Virunga
Volcanoes, and the Rwenzori Mountains,
as well the Bwindi-Impenetrable, Kibale,
and Semliki Forests.
The Golden Cat - primarily nocturnal,
frequently crepuscular - is one of Africa's
most elusive and enigmatic mammals. For,
whereas science has known of its existence
for nearly 200 years, its habits remain
almost wholly undocumented. Until as
recently as 2002, no living specimen had
ever been photographed in the wild.
What little is known about the creature
has been extrapolated mainly from brief
field observations and from assorted
remains recovered from trappers returning from the tropical rainforests of West
and Central Africa. A few live animals,
also seized from trapping parties, have
ended up in zoos in Europe ... and
some have gone on to breed there.
Even the cat's natu-ral diet - apparently consisting of rodents, game birds,
SWARA April - June 2003
hares, tree hyraxes, duikers and otlier small
forest antelopes, as well as monkeys - has
had to be pieced together from scraps of
partially digested material found in its scats
(faeces).
show an astonishing degree of variaSpecimens
have
been coats.
collected
tion in the that
colour
of their
So,
while Golden Cats are predominantly grey
and heavily spotted in some parts of their
range, in others their coats are more often
plain and uniformly reddish-brown. One
captive specimen was seen to change colour
- from rufous to grey and vice versa - over
periods of just a few months, suggesting
that such transformations may also occur in
the wild. Scientists have argued, however,
that coat colour among African Golden
Cats is determined genetically, rather than
by geo-climatic, or other environmental
factors.
Such variable coat colours and patterning, coupled with the marked discrepancies
on record in the creature's general size and
build, have caused no end of confusion
among taxonomists. Accordingly, African
Golden Cats have at one time or another
been thought of as belonging, not to one
species, but to any number of different cat
speCIes.
The consensus today is that there are
two races, or subspecies. In one, Profelis
au rata celidogaster, animals of the 'grey
phase', which are also heavily spotted often blotched - allover, are predominant. This 'Western race' occurs mainly
to the west and northwest of the River
Congo, ranging from Senegal, Guinea
and Sierra Leone, in the extreme west,
to Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, the
Republic of Congo, and the Central
African Republic (Map, p. 31).
East of the Congo River, animals of
the 'red phase' - with spotting only on
their lower flanks and bellies - are in the
27
ascendancy. This 'Eastern race', Profelis
aurata aurata, is the one found in the
eastern Democratic Republic of the
Congo, as well as in Rwanda, Burundi
and Uganda. Surprisingly, however,
there is no evidence - yet - of the
African Golden Cat's occurring anywhere in Tanzania.
With the appearance in 1946 of the
two Mau Forest skins - both of the 'red'
phase, of course - came speculation that
African Golden Cats of the 'Eastern
race' might also occur in other Kenyan
forests west of the Easrern, or Gregory,
Rift Valley. Suitable habitats might
include partS of Mount Elgon, the
Kakamega Forest, the Cherangani Hills,
and the Nandi Forests. To have reached
the Mau Escarpment, the species must
once have frequented, or be present still
in most, if not all, such areas.
and around many of these forests
then,
observers
in
been potential
preoccupied
with
unmasking the identity of another
strange creature. And that beast was of
course the legendary Nandi Bear. To such
prejudiced observers, any unfamiliar beast
glimpsed in the vicinity was automatically
equated with either a kerit or a chemositthe quadrupedal and bipedal incarnations,
respectively, of the Nandi Bear. (The presumed features of the Nandi Bear were, in
other words, projected on to the unfamiliar,
usually fleeing, animal.)
Reported sightings in western Kenya of
strange animals that in retrospect might (in
some cases) have been Golden Cats were
drowned out, such was the the Nandi Bear's
hold on the imagination. Indeed, it seems
entirely plausible that the mythical Nandi
Bear acquired the arboreal habits some have
ascribed to it from rare daylight glimpses of
living Golden Cats - which are known to
Untilhad
be at least occasionally arboreal - lying up
In trees.
Against this confused background, the
verdict of the pioneering. early game warden A Blayney Percival, in his day one of
Africa's most accomplished naturalists,
seems almost prophetic. After years spent
pondering the veritable litany of reported
Nandi Bear sightings, Percival's conclusion
- in A Game Ranger's Notebook (1924) was: "I do no more than state my belief that
there is an animal of arboreal and nocturnal
habit in the Nandi forests awaiting discovery, description and Latin name."
Not all Golden Cat sightings from
western Kenya in the early days are quite so
nebulous, however. In 1943, Trans Nzoia
farmer Beric Brooksbank was hunting buffaloes in thick forest along the Kassawai
River, which in its upper reaches marks the
southern boundary of raday's Mount Elgon
National Park, when a strange animal ran
across the forest track in front of him. "My
first thought," Brooksbank is quoted as
having revealed afterwards, "was that it
looked like a lioness, only it was very small
- far too small to be a lioness."
For another eight years, Brooksbank
remained in the dark as to what kind of
animal he had seen. But in 1951, on being
shown a copy of Hugh Copley's Small
Mammals of Kenya (Highway Guides,
1950), he at last was certain. It was what
Copley refers to as the 'West African Red
Tiger Cat' - today's African Golden Cat.
The Copley guide was among the first to
publicise for a general audience the discovery of the Mau Forest pelts. The book also
gives an account of an experiment
whereby the skins were paraded before a
baraza (assembly) ofKipsigis elders. "Of
those present, only three had seen such
a skin before," Copley writes, citing this
as proof that in Kenya "the creature is
very rare."
'The cause of all the trouble': Such was
the. verdict of author-explorer Kenneth
Gandar Dower on this 'Spotted Lion'
pelt (left). photographed in 1936 as the
frontispiece to his 1937 account of the
search, with trapper Raymond Hook
(with Caracal above), for the "little
spotted lion of the Kenya mountains".
Sceptics dismissed the 'Spotted Lion'
as a sub-adult Lion that had retained
the 'kitty spots' of a Lion cub (right).
28
Copley's description of the Golden Cat
is somewhat exaggerated. It is "nearly as
large as a cheetah," he tells us, "but it is
more heavily built, especially at the shoulders and loins, and it has much shorter and
stouter legs. The general body colour is a
light chestnut red, shading darker on the
back. The flanks have reddish-brown spots.
The underpartS are white, with large chocolate-brown spots. The tail is powerful,
nearly half the length of the body, and has
a dark stripe down the middle. The ears are
dark, nearly black. The head is heavy and
lion-like. "
[ In reality, the African Golden Cat is
similar in build to the North American
Mountain Lion, having strong limbs and a
relatively small head - quite unlike that of
a Lion. And its tail, frequently described as
"long", sometimes as "very long", is seldom
even one-third, let alone "nearly half", of
the animal's head-body length. Indeed, the
tail of the one surviving Toschi skin in the
NMK Mammalogy Department (pictured
on p. 31) measures just 180 mm, which is
rather less than one-quarter of its head-body
length - of 980 mm. ]
while, on the eastern side of the Rift
Across
the Mau
Forest,creature
meanValley,from
another
unfamiliar
was making the headlines. For there, in the
forests of the Aberdare Mountains and
Mount Kenya beyond, lurked the mysterious 'Spotted Lion'. The search for this beast
was the particular passion of the young
English adventure-seeker, Kenneth Gandar
Dower (1909-1944), who in 1935 - with
Feline 'middleweights': The Caracal (far left,
facing page) and the Serval (above) are the
only other felids in East Africa comparable
in size with the African Golden Cat. Facing
page, near left: Raymond Hook, pictured in
his Nanyuki farmhouse in 1966 when aged
74, kept a pet Caracal. His 1944 report of
a Golden Cat sighting on Mount Kenya was
widely disbelieved.
the help of the Nanyuki-based rancher,
game trapper and wildlife guru, Raymond
Hook (1892-1968)
- completed two
lengthy 'Spotted Lion Expeditions'.
The inspiration behind this quest came
in the shape of two large skins. These had
been recovered by the Kenya Game
Department from a pair of lions shot in
1934 by settler-farmer Michael Trent in the
upper Pesi Valley, 3,000 metres (nearly
9,900 feet) above sea level on the northwestern Aberdares. Both skins are most
unusual in being covered, not just in spots,
but in what Reginald Pocock - then
Curator of Mammals at London's Natural
History Museum - would later describe as
"jaguarine rosettes".
Both are the skins of sub-adult animals.
For they are enormous. Indeed, the one
now in the London Museum, that of an
almost mane-deficient male, measures 2.64
metres (84-cm tail included); that is, all of
eight-feet-eight-inches!
(Again, though,
nobody seems to know what became of the
second skin, which evidently stayed behind
in Kenya.)
These two pelts, while clearly those of
lions, raised much intriguing speculation.
SWARA April - June 2003
Coats of many colours: The skin of
a heavily spotted African Golden
Cat from Ghana (top left) presents
a marked contrast to those of both
Were they manifestations of atavism? Of
a genetic 'throwback' of some kind to a
primitive ancestral patterning once
prevalent when (if?) lions were forest
dwelling animals? Or were these animals
really the surviving descendants of just
such a primitive form of 'forest lion?
For, whereas many a lion in East Mrica
has been observed to retain its juvenile
spotting into adulthood, there is no
other example on record quite so
extreme as either of these specimens.
Whatever the explanation, these two
beasts were - quite obviously - far too
large to be Golden Cats. But again, as with
the Nandi Bear, sightings (on both the
Aberdares and Mount Kenya) of what do
appear to have been Golden Cats were
seized upon out of a desire to substantiate
the belief that there was indeed an undis-
the 'red' phase specimen (top right)
from the Republic of Congo and the
'grey' phase specimen (near left)
from Nigeria.
Fisheries, is one such example. That year,
Dent got a glimpse of four strange cats
crossing a forest track on Mount Kenya,
3,100 metres (10,170 feet) up, close to the
headwaters of the Kathita River above
Meru. These felines, he claimed, were
"smaller than ordinary lions and of an altogether different type."
Soon afterwards, Dent's staff - who had
been trapping leopards on the eastern
slopes of the Aberdares - reported having
caught in one of their traps "a strange ani-
covered 'montane species' of Spotted Lion
prowling about. Time and time again, in
The Spotted Lion (Heinemann,
1937),
Gandar Dower's own hugely entertaining
account of the search, the testimony of
Hook's Borana headman and cook Ali
Abdi, for one, is ridiculed. For what he says
falls well short of the grand expectations
conjured up by the two enormous skins.
Significantly, Abdi never got to see
either of the Spotted Lion pelts. But he had
evidently seen Golden Cats. And, clearly, it
was these cats he thought the Spotted Lion
Expeditions were' looking for. "In these
mountains," he is quoted as saying at one
point, "there are two kinds of lions: the
simba and the marozi [presumably a corruption of the Kikuyu word muruthi,
meaning 'lion']. I saw two, many years ago,
in a gorge on Mount Kenya. They do not
have martes and they are smaller - with
sh ort Iegs.·"
Likewise, most other presumed early
sightings of living Spotted Lions were, in
retrospect, almost certainly of Golden Cats.
The much-quoted
1931 testimony of
Captain R E Dent, then Warden of Kenya's
mal, neither a leopard nor a lion, but a
cross between the two, only smaller
because it was a youngster". When Dent
asked to see it, they pleaded that, since
he had instructed them to catch only
leopards, they had thrown that animal's
carcass away.
In 1944, seven years after the appearance of Gandar Dower's book on the
Spotted Lion, Raymond Hook himself
came across a Golden Cat on Mount Kenya
- on the Gathiuru Track beside the Rongai
River, low down on the mountain's western:
slopes. But when Hook informed Archie
Ritchie, then Chief Game Warden in
Nairobi, of his sighting, he was told
(according to his daughter Hazel [Holmes],
who still lives in Nanyuki) that he "must be
dreaming", for Golden Cats "do not exist
in this part of East Mrica".
This exchange typifies the official attitude, pre-1946, towards Golden Cat
sightings in Kenya. Unaccustomed to such
short shrift, Hook never forgave the Game
Department. And when, 20 years later in
1964, the Department withdrew all his
trapping licences for "infringing" Kenya's
Game Laws, he wrote back in protest:
"Well, in that case, do not exist. So could
I have a licence, please, to trap an animal
that [you say] does not exist." Hook duly
received a Permit entitling him to trap three
I
<r>
~
~E
'§
~
~
~
u
@
This 'grey' phase skin (left), measuring
102 cm (HB - 73 cm + TL - 29 cm),
was collected in November 1967 near
the Goil River on Mount Nimba, Liberia,
by Alec Forbes-Watson. Today, the skin
is in the NMK Mammalogy Department.
SWARA April - June 2003
i
~
sene~al
GUi~
BiS~;:rG~....
Ulnea
~
fiTe7r~
Leon,.-,
···1 ~
••••<
Ethiopia
Liberia•• (.
Kenya
o 0
o
DISTRIBUTION
African Golden Cat, Profelis aurata
••
Existing specimen records
o
Reported sightings
Map for SWARA by JOB BALLARD
Golden Cats on Mount Kenya! (Hook,
though, who died four years later in 1968,
never saw another Golden Cat.)
As such an obvious red herring in the
searches for both the Nandi Bear and the
Spotted Lion, the African Golden Cat was
surprisingly overlooked even by Bernard
Heuvelmans (1916-2001), the Belgian scientist now universally recognised as the
founding father of cryptozoology. There is
no mention even of a Golden Cat in
Heuvelmans's seminal work, On The Track
of Unknown Animals (originally published
in French by the Librarie Pion in 1955
under the title Sur la Piste des Betes
Ignorees).
discourse on what is referred
Thelengthy
nevertheless little
includes
to asbook
the "mysterious
spotteda
lion of the Kenya mountains". Bernard
Heuvelmans, it seems, had - unusually for
him - been unaware of the two Golden Cat
pelts that had turned up nine years before
in the Mau Forest!
Had Heuvelmans known about these
skins, it is quite possible that he might - at
one fell swoop - also have hit upon the
identity of another of Africa's 'mystery
beasts'. Reports of that strange animal are
still baffling cryptozoologists today, more
than 50 years after its possible existence was
The surviving 'Toschi' skin (right), one of
tV/o recovered from Ogiek hunters in 1946
that first established the African Golden
Cat's presence in Kenya. For the species,
it is quite a large skin; measuring 116 cm
(HB - 98 cm + TL - 18 cm).
SWARA April - June 2003
first brought to the notice of outsiders by
the Bakiga-Ankole people of southwestern
Uganda. They called it ntarago. And, while
Heuve\mans correctly deduces (in his
Chapter on the Nandi Bear) that it is "an
unknown animal of the cat family", he conspicuously fails to provide us with a list of
suspects. Instead, he simply quotes - as the
source of his information - the hunter, E A
Temple-Perkins, who in the early 1960s
went on to become one of Uganda's
Honorary Park Wardens.
Temple-Perkins's introduction to this
animal came while he was hunting in the
forests around Lake Mutanda and Kisoro,
near Mgahinga on the Uganda-Rwandese
border, in the early 1950s. One evening,
after returning to camp at Kichwamba, he
'Red shift': East of the River Congo, the
'red' phase becomes progressively more
dominant. In Kenya, no sighting of an
African Golden Cat of the 'grey' phase
has ever been reported.
heard - "intermittently for two hours" - a
"voice that was strangeness itself" For it
"sounded harsh and guttural," he wrote in
his memoir, Kingdom of the Elephant
(London, 1955), adding: "It was not the
cough of a leopard, but more like that than
anything else, if you add the word liquid or ~
gurgling". His trackers, who were from the
area, were not in the least surprised. For
they knew this beast well. "It's an ntarago,"
they told him, "- a cat of the night; a cross
between a lion and a cheetah, only smaller."
The biological impossibility of such a
crossbreed led some scientific-minded
•
interrogators to dismiss as crude fantasy the
testimony of "ignorant natives". Yet reports
of there being a strange type of cat, usually
described in exactly these terms, or else as a
small "lion-like forest cheetah", on the
slopes of Mount Kenya above Embu and
elsewhere persisted. And from European
settlers in Rwanda, there came tales (first
mentioned by Gandar Dower) of a breed of
"dwarf jaguar" at large in the forests skirting the Virunga Volcanoes. The African
Golden Cat, then, had been leading people
a merry dance!
That merry dance continues today. For,
whereas there have, in many parts of Kenya
(and also in the southern Sudan and the
Omo Basin of southwestern Ethiopia),
been countless other sightings of Golden
Cats over the past five decades, only a few
31
r
..... ~
~
f.. I photographs have so far been taken of living specimens in a wild setting.
Three such images - all of 'grey' phase
animals - were taken in May 2002 with the
help of a remote infra red 'camera trap'
trained overnight on a forest trail beside the
Ulele River near Bili in the northern DR
Congo. The successful 'camera trapper' was
the Nanyuki, Kenya-based photographer
Karl Ammann, best known for his graphic
exposes over many years of the bushmeat
trade and of its devastating impact on
Central Mrica's great ape and other large
mammal populations.
No photograph, however, has yet been
taken in East Africa of a living African
Golden Cat of the 'red' phase. Nor, in these
times of rapidly diminishing forest cover
and of indiscriminate trapping for bushmeat, has so much as a single roadkill, say,
or snare victim, ever come to light in
Kenya that science is aware of So, we
still know virtually nothing about the
behaviour of this most secretive and elu-
emphasising the animal's black-backed ears.
"Very elusive," the text states, "even when
present in numbers in some parts of its
range." In Kenya, the latter is shown - on a
distribution map - to include only the Mau
Forest.
tion of an Eastern Golden Cat is the
Perhaps
the most extraordinary
depicone published
in the Theodor
Haltenorth-Helmut Diller guide, Mammals
of Africa (Collins, 1980). For this shows an
improbably hefty beast with a very long tail
that is so heavy in the haunches and muzzle as to look decidedly, even frighteningly
leonine.
By contrast, the Golden Cat portrayed
by Jonathan Kingdon in his Field Guide to
African Mammals (Academic Press, 1997),
is far less intimidating, having a short brush
sive 'phantom' cat.
The species has of course been feain the many field guides to
Mrican mammals that have appeared
since the 1960s. In the earliest of these,
C T Astley Maberly's Animals of East
Africa (Howard Timmins, 1960), the
Golden Cat is described as "Strictly a
dweller in dense forest, and very rare in
Kenya. I can give no details of its habits,
calls, ete."
John G Williams was among the
first scientists to see the 1946 Mau
skins. In his Field Guide to the National
Parks of East Africa (Collins, 1967), he
describes the Golden Cat as ''A rare anij'
mal in East Africa, found only in the
Mau Forest, western Kenya, and the
forests of the Rwenzori and southwest- ~
ern Kigezi in Uganda." He adds that the ~
species is "Perhaps most frequent on the ;
I'
the beast itself For such mutability is
apparent even in photographs of captive
specimens. The Art Wolfe photograph published in The National Audubon Society
Field Guide to African Wildlife (Chanticleer
Press, 1995), taken at the Howletts-Port
Lymphne Wildlife Park in England in
1992, shows a stocky, heavy-muzzled cat
with a rich chestnut pelage. By contrast, the
zoo specimen photographed
by Paul
Vercammen in Chris and Tilde Stuart's
Field Guide to the Larger Mammals of Africa
(Struik, 1997) is beige and altogether more
'leggy' and slender, resembling an overgrown domestic cat.
It seems all the more astonishing, then,
given the proliferation of illustrated field
guides in which it is featured, that the
Golden Cat has managed to remain so
aloof, so unknowable. For, despite all
the reported sightings east of the Rift
Valley, the species' Kenyan range is - for
want of hard evidence - still shown on
most distribution maps as a single small
dot over the Mau Forest.
rrl , tured
.
then, is not entirely the result of ignorance,
or the fault of artists. It is in the nature of
@
Mountains." The accompanying colour
plate (which is painted by Rena Fennessy)
shows quite a compact, stocky little creamoorlands
the Rwenzori
~
, I alpine
ture, similar
in mostofrespects
to the one
depicted in black-and-white in the Maberly
guide.
The colour plate in the Jean DorstPierre Dandelot Field Guide to the Larger
Mammals of Africa (Collins, 1970) differs
in giving the Golden Cat a very long tail,
which darkens markedly near the tip, while
of a tail, dark at the tip and with faint
banding. Kingdon does point out, however,
that ''Adult sizes are very variable, as is the
proportion of the tail." (Kingdon, it should
be pointed out, is perhaps alone among
these authors/illustrators in having seen
Mrican Golden Cats, both alive in the wild
and dead in the flesh.)
That Golden Cats should assume so
many different shapes, sizes and colours,
Riparian element: The lushly vegetated fringes of streams in western Uganda's BwindiImpenetrable Forest (top, facing page) offer perfect cover for African Golden Cats, which
have always migrated along rivers and river systems. Above: The melanistic 'grey' phase
specimen from Bwindi photographed by Tom Butynski in 1992. Across their entire range,
only about 5 % of all African Golden Cats are melanistic.
Plausible sightings have been reported, not only from the Aberdares and
Mount Kenya, but also from as far afield
as the 01 Keju River near Olorgesailie,
south of Nairobi; the Arabuko-Sokoke
Forest, near Watamu on the Kenya
Coast, and the banks of the Galana
River in Tsavo East National Park. In
East Mrica, then, the Golden Cat, far
from being the montane forest creature
it was once supposed, seems to range
over many contrasting habitats, at altitudes of anywhere between 3,500
metres (11,500 feet) and sea level.
Detailed written records of some of
the more recent encounters
with
Golden Cats have, because of their rarity value, been submitted to the East
Africa
Natural
History
Society
(EANHS), which in turn has gone on to
publish some of them in its regular
Bulletins. Most such encounters have taken
place in the forests of the Aberdares.
The first published description of a
sighting identified as that of a Golden Cat
appeared in the EANHS Bulletin for
September/October
1979. It came from
Ian W Hardy, for many years resident
hunter at The Ark, that well-known forest
lodge overlooking a salt lick in the Salient
(the easternmost part of the Aberdare
National Park). Hardy had been on his way
to The Ark at 3:00 p.m. on 14 July 1979
when "Three Golden Cat~ an adult with
two young, crossed the road in front of the
vehicle, running very fast."
SWARA April - June 2003
rJ~_",
The sighting was a first for Hardy, who
by then had been driving through this part
of the Aberdares almost every day for seven
years. "At first, I thought these must be
Caracals," he writes. "But I quickly realised
they were not. For they had short legs and
lacked ear tufts. And besides, both altitude
(2,133 metres) and habitat (montane forest
interspersed with open, grassy glades) were
wrong for Caracals."
1979, again at 3:00 p.m. - Nairobi-
Not based
longnaturalist
afterwards
- onWatson
7 October
Rupert
was
'1..\
.Jt
driving along a narrow forest track near the
Kinaini River, towards the southern end of
the Aberdare Forest, with the wildlife artist
Rob O'Meara. "The cat was sitting on its
haunches in the middle of the track, no
more than 25 metres in front of us. I saw
it," Watson writes (in EANHS Bulletin,
January/February 1980), "only after it had
jumped up and was dashing off into the
forest. It was reddish-brown," he continues,
"and its most prominent feature was its
stockiness."
In what is perhaps the most remarkable
encounter of all, a Golden Cat was seen on 4 January 1981 - killing a Sykes
Monkey beside the Kimakia River in the
southeastern Aberdare Forest. The eyewitnesses were the flyfisherman John Rowing,
who was then managing coffee estates in
the Thika area, and his daughter Clare.
What they saw is the subject of one whole
chapter in a book (as yet unpublished) of
memoirs by Rowing, who now lives in
retirement in Oxfordshire in the UK.
That chapter is reproduced here in
abridged form (p. 36). It is perhaps the best
eyewitness account to date of simian predation by a Golden Cat. (But there ate some
other records - notably one of a Golden
Cat's killing a Red Colobus Monkey in
western Uganda's Kibale Forest, and of
Golden Cats' stalking Talapoin Monkeys at
night in Gabon, West Africa.)
In April 1981, between Yambio and
Tambora in the southern Sudan, the safari
operator Anthony Seth-Smith (now with
Ker & Downey) witnessed another exam-
~
pIe of ptedation by Golden Cats. "We were
driving back to camp after dark," he recalls
in his memoir, For the Honour of a Hunter
(Trophy Room Books, 1996), "when, in
our headlights, we saw three Golden Cats a female with two young - under a mango
tree beside the track. They did not immediately depart the scene, so we were able to
observe them for several minutes. They
were hunting the bats then swooping down
to catch moths and other insects that wer,e,
being attracted by the smell of the fetmenting fallen mangoes."
The Golden Cat had long been familiar
to Seth-Smith, who gtew up on a farm very
close to the Mau Forest. There, in the
upper Legoman Valley near Marishoni, he
had seen one as a teenager 30 years before
in 1951. In Kenya, he has since seen another Golden Cat - in the Aberdares Salient at
10:45 a.m. on 1 December 1994. "A rich
russet in colour, it had spots low on the
flanks, like those on the skin displayed
many years ago on a wall in the Kenya
Game Department," reads his account (in
EANHS Bulletin, March 1995).
Seth-Smith is now convinced, moreover, that the Golden Cat is synonymous
with another strange creature of the Mau
Forest that his Ogiek fellow-hunters have
always referred to as the kororoni. "Over the
years, I have spoken to many Ogiek people
p about this animal," he says, "and they have
;ii all described it as a 'cross between a cheetah
~ and a lion, only it is smaller than either and
o
The underbelly (right) of one of
two African Golden Cat skins of
the 'grey' phase collected by R L
Harger in 1948 in the Ituti Forest
in what is now the DR Congo.
SWARA April - June 2003
~ has a prominent dark ridge down the mid~ dIe of its back'."
~
Literally translated, the Kalenjin name
~ for the Golden Cat, mur ng'etunyit, means
33
'lion crossbreed', from mur (signifying
'crossbreed') and ng'etunyit ('lion). Like the
ntarago of the Bakiga-Ankole, then, the
perception of the Golden Cat's being a
'crossbred lion', usually with a cheetah,
seems to be widespread across East Africa.
The animal's Kikuyu name, nginyanaracho,
means 'stepping proudly', from nginya
('stepping') and naracho (Old Kikuyu for
'proudly'). However, this name is very often
also applied to the Serval, which in
Kalenjin is more usually differentiated as
pusitap timin ('cat of the forest'). And in the
Samburu language, just to confuse matters
further, nginaracho is the word often used
for 'cheetah' (kanyutu in Kikuyu)!
Other Golden Cat sightings in the
Aberdares Salient have since been reported,
including one - at 8:25 p.m. on 6 January
1995 - from The Ark itself. The watchman
on duty that night alerted James Cullen,
another of The Ark's resident hunters, urging him to identify a "strange, cat-like
I
"At first, I thought it might be a Caracal,"
Cullen writes (in EANHS
Bulletin,
animal" lurking near the salt-lick outside.
., December 1996), "for it was brownish-red.
But then, looking at its head, I saw that its
ears were short and rounded. And when it
jumped up suddenly and went slinking off
into the night, I noticed," he adds, "that its
tail was of medium length, quite unlike
that of a Caracal (which is very short and
stumpy)."
In the same issue of EANHS Bulletin,
, there appears an account of yet another
~ sighting in the Aberdares Salient. At 6:00
guide Simon Belcher was out on a game
drive with two of his clients. On approaching Junction No.8 from the M2 Campsite,
ap.m.
Golden
ran1995,
acrossKer
the&road
just atour
few
on 12Cat
July
Downey
J' metres in front of the vehicle. "It then
'J
paused briefly," Belcher writes, "and we
, were able to view it through our binoculars
I',
for about ten seconds before it disappeared
into the undergrowth."
All plausible sightings to date in Kenya
of African Golden Cats have been of animals of the reddish phase. So, it is
interesting that the first two records for
Ethiopia - both from the Omo National
Park, and both dating from 1995 - should
be of individuals with coats described as
"completely spotted, on a pale grey-tan
background". The observers in both cases
were the scientists C A Schloeder and M J
Jacobs, then affiliated to the Department of
Fisheries and Wildlife at Utah State'j
University in the US and both working at
the time with the Ethiopian Wildlife '
Conservation Organization (EWCO).
Ecology (Volume
34,
1996),
WritingSchloeder
in the
of
andAfrican
JacobsJournal
describe
how, in early July 1995, while conducting a
survey of the Omo National Park's Sai
Plain, they "flushed the cat from its resting
area under a Salvadora persica tree," when
driving between sites. "We were then able,"
they write, "to follow the cat for about five
minutes, so verifying its identity." Their
second Golden Cat sighting - in August
1995 - was just seven kilometres south of
the first. "This cat attempted to hide under
some Acacia shrubs on being flushed out of
a patch of Setaria incrassata. When we sur-
Composite? This artist's Impression (left) by
a Kikuyu slgnwriter from the southeastern
edge of the Aberdare Forest, near the River
Klmakla, Is of the creature known locally as
nginyanaracho, often described as "a cross
between a lion and a cheetah, only smaller".
The name seems to be applied equally to
both Golden Cats and Servais.
,'S'
rounded the patch, the cat was forced to
move," they write, "running right over our
feet." The Omo Park Scours, when interviewed, could reveal no prior knowledge of
this species in Ethiopia.
Since the early 1980s, meanwhile, there
had been tales coming our of Kenya's
Arabuko-Sokoke Forest of encounters with
a "strange cat-like animal". In 1983,
researchers from Cambridge University and
BirdLife International, conducting a habitat assessment study, went one step further
in suggesting that this mysterious feline
species - which they had seen during one of
their sampling sessions -looked exactly like
the African Golden Cat.
This claim really threw the cat among
the pigeons. For the Arabuko-Sokoke
Forest is, as the pigeon flies, almost 450 km
southeast of the Aberdares, over vast
expanses of largely unforested terrain. The
'Fire cat': the Asiatic Golden Cat, Profelis
temminckii, occurs in Tibet, northeastern
India, Myanmar, Thailand and Sumatra.
This Karen' Phillips Illustration appeared
In International Wildlife magazine In 1981.
The Asiatic species has more prominent
facial markings, Including chevron-like
streaks of white across Its cheeks.
SWARA April - June 2003
Illustrated tour: In field guides, the African Golden Cat takes on many different
forms. Top row, from left: 'Grey' (left) and 'red' phase animals In the Dorst-Dandelot
Larger Mammals of Africa (Collins, 1970); 'red' phase by Rena Fennessy In Williams'
National Parks of East Africa (Collins, 1967). Bottom row, from left: 'Red' phase In
the Haltenorth-Dlller Mammals of Africa (Collins, 1980); 'red' phase by Jonathan
Kingdon in African Mammals (Academic Press, 1997), and (sitting) 'grey' phase In
Haltenorth-Dlller (op cit).
claim, then, was initially dismissed as
"wholly improbable". The cats that the
British researchers, and others before them,
had seen in the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest
must have been Caracals, it was felt, which
they had mistaken for Golden Cats.
In 1992, however, the case for there
being Golden Cats in the Arabuko-Sokoke
Forest received a boost from another
researcher, Munir Virani, then in the forest
every night studying Sokoke Scops Owls.
Late one evening, while driving to a study
site near the Jihore Forest Station on the
forest's northern edge, Virani came
across a cat "of a rich fawny brown
colour" sitting in the middle of the
road. "Though small, it was powerfully built and it had a long tail," reads
his account (in EANHS Bulletin,
September 1993).
"My first impression was that of a
Caracal," he says. "But Caracals have very
short tails and pointed ears with long terminal tufts. This cat had neither, and can
only have been an African Golden Cat."
What is more, Virani - now a biologist
with The Peregrine Fund, specialising in
birds of prey - went on to see the species
35
j~.
,~~
again, on several occasions in both 1992
and 1993, during his nightly 'owl rounds'.
"Most such sightings were of individuals walking along the Cynometra
fotest
road at, or soon after, dusk," he writes.
"But, on two separate occasions I saw a
female with kittens. I even made drawings
of the paw marks. But try as I might, I
could get no photographs.
I now keep my
camera on my lap whenever I drive into
this forest at night, in the hope - so far
unrewarded
- of seeing this rare animal
again."
The
Mrican·
meantime,
Golden
Cat had,
in the
become the subject of relatively
frequent,
almost regular sightings in an
even more unlikely setting: that of the 01
Keju
Cat and Monkey
Flyfisherman John Rowing bears witness
to a rare encounter
The
scream
soundedwater
almost
was which
loud enough
to be
sound
of rushing
from human.
the poolIt into
I was casting
heard
even above the
for trout.
I was fishing a stretch of the Kimakia River on Forest Reserve land southeast of
Kenya's Aberdare National Park. With me was my daughter Clare, on leave from the
Royal Navy, and an English friend of hers and fellow Wren who was photographing
butterflies a little way upstream. The date was 4 January 1981.
My first thought, on hearing the scream, was that it must be the cry of a monkey
seized by one of the Crowned Eagles we had seen circling above the forest on our way
into this deep valley. I turned to Clare, whose more elevated position - up on the bank
some way behind me - provided a better vantage point.
Clare, I noticed, was staring intently into a patch of bush across the river, beneath
an old thorn tree. She motioned down to me that I should stay where I was. She, as it
turned out, had witnessed the events leading up to the fateful scream.
After hearing something quite heavy crashing through the bush, she was surprised
to see a Sykes' Monkey break cover, closely followed by a cat. Still more surprising,
the cat was of a kind she could not immediately identify (despite countless fishing and
camping trips, over many years, to the moorlands and forests of the Aberdares).
She saw both monkey and cat dive into the scrub around the thorn tree. Then
came that piercing scream. When at length I joined Clare on the bank, the strange cat
was still in those bushes. But there was no sign anywhere of the monkey. The cat was
about the size and colour of a Caracal, Clare told me, but there were no tufts on its
ears, which were short and rounded. It had a long tail and its lower flanks were pale
cream and spotted.
A Caracal-sized beast was unlikely to pose much of a threat to an animal of my
size. So I decided, taking my landing net with me, to go over and flush the cat out. At
my approach after crossing the river, the cat broke cover, bounding off across a
narrow, open patch of short grass, before vanishing into the thick forest beyond.
It took the cat just seconds to cross into the forest proper. But, in this time, I did
at least get a clear view of the whole animal. And what I saw was entirely consistent
with Clare's description, which I could neither add to nor better, except to say that its
tail looked rather shapeless and blunt-ended, not unlike a length of rope.
I then went over to the base of the tree, where - sure enough - I found the monkey, dead and bleeding profusely from bites to the back of the neck and head. It was
indeed a Sykes' Monkey, but of a colouring that struck me as unusual. The fur on its
back seemed to have more of a reddish-green tinge than is normal, and its limbs were
jet black, rather than dark grey. (This odd colouration is a mystery to me even now.)
Clare's calls, meanwhile, brought our English guest - and her camera - on to the
scene from up-river. We wanted her to photograph the dead monkey. But, alas, she
told us she had already used up all her film - on butterflies!
That night, working from our observations, our guest was able - from books - to
identify the monkey's killer as a Golden Cat, Felis aurata.
Excerpted and abridged from A Rare Encounter, one of the chapters in an as yet unpublished
book of memoirs by John Rvwing, now living in retirement in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in the UK.
River,
close
to
the
Olorgesailie
Prehistoric
Site,time,
barely
km south
ofl
Nairobi. Over
this 60
seasonal
river has
- along much of its course - carved deep,
canyon-like gorges into the rock. But, in
places it forms open swampy areas during
the rains, which go on to provide important year-round
waterholes for the local
Maasai pastoralists and their livestock.
The dense riverine scrub around these
'oases' is always full of game birds Helmeted
Guineafowl and Yellow-necked
Spurfowl especially. Every year, during the
open season, licensed bird-shooting
parties
from Nairobi visit the 01 Keju waterholes
(usually between November
and March)
with their Labrador retrievers. And it is
usually during such bird shoots that, year
after year, Mrican Golden Cats are reportedly seen.
Of the bird-shooting
enthusiasts, perhaps none has seen the species here more I~
frequently
than veteran Nairobi
motorsportsman Ian McRae, twice a winner of
The Rhino Charge, Kenya's uniquely challenging annual off-road motoring
event.
McRae has been visiting the 01 Keju area
regularly since 1984. His first sighting of a
Golden Cat was in February 1986, while
on a shoot with fellow members of Kenya's
Labrador Retrievers' Club.
That animal was seen on a rough track
between
the 01 Keju streambed
and
Oltepesi on the busy Nairobi-Magadi
road.
And
McRae,
as a former
Assistant
Mammalogist
with the National Museums
of Kenya (where, in the early 1960s, he was
Lookout: A Sykes Monkey on the Aberdares
(top left) was In 1981 seen being chased
and killed by an African Golden Cat in what
is perhaps the best eyewitness account
(left) of simian predation by the species.
The remains of other primate species have
turned up In Golden Cat scats, however,
along with those of rodents, hyraxes and
gallinacaeous birds.
SWARA April - June 2003
'rt":'
."
trained by, among others, John G
Williams), was never in any doubt as to its
identity. For he was familiar, not only with
the Toschi skins, but also with other museum specimens, including the three 'grey'
phase skins in the NMK Mammalogy
~ Department today, two collected by R L
Harger (Iwri, Congo, 1948) and one by
Alec 0 Forbes-Watson (Mount Nimba,
Liberia, 1967).
[ Olorgesailie, coincidentally, was the
r scene of the only major study done in
Kenya by Dr Toschi, whose findings went
on to be published in Note ecologiche su
alcuni mammiferi di Olorgasailie (Bologna,
1949). However, in this paper Dr Toschi
makes no mention of having noticed any
sign of Golden Cats among the areas "some
(alcum) mammals". ]
I
A Golden Cat was again seen in the
Shompole area in 1997, this time on the
banks of the Ewaso Ng'iro (one of six major
Kenyan rivers with headwaters in the Mau
Forest), at a point "not far from the Natron
Swamp". The observer, Andrew Melesi,
now involved in tourism resource development under the Shompole
'Group
Ranches' scheme, was then camping nearby. "Driving back to camp after dusk, we
had just put our headlights on," Melesi
recalls, "when, in the track in front of us,
right beside the river, we saw a Golden Cat.
It stood there looking at us, as if transfixed
by our lights, for perhaps 15 seconds,
before slinking off. It was so close, there
was no question of mistaking its identity."
All McRae's encounters with Golden
Cats have followed a similar pattern. "We
have usually been walking up Guineafowl
Watershed: Bamboo (left) and montane
forest in the Aberdares Salient (centre)
and the northern Aberdares (right), amid
the headwaters of rivers feeding into both
the Tana and the Athi river systems, are
the haunts of most African Golden Cats
reportedly seen in Kenya in recent years.
with our dogs," he says, "when, suddenly,
from a clump of low bush almost at our
feet, a Golden Cat has come darting out.
All these cats have been on the ground," he
adds, "and all have stayed put until the very
last moment, relying - like a Serval does on avoiding detection by hiding, lying low.
Indeed, were it not for the presence of the
dogs, I am convinced we should walk right
past them every time, without even knowing they were there.
"They are magnificent animals," he
goes on, "of a warm chestnut colour and
with long, leonine tails. Very powerfully built, they look as though they might
quite easily be capable of dispatching
I
a Labrador
in any one-on-one
encounter." Has McRae written up any
of his sightings? "The thought has not
occurred to me," he admits, "in that it
has never struck me as unusual for
Golden Cats to be living in such riverine scrub habitats."
I
I
Prey species? Whether Bush Duikers on
the Aberdare moorlands (right, top) fall
prey to African Golden Cats has yet to
be established. But in Uganda, the
remains of other Duiker species have
been found in scats. Bottom right: In
Central and West Africa, the diminutive
Water Chevrotain may also be among
the Golden Cat's favoured prey species.
SWARA April - June 2003
McRae may well be right. For there
have since been other reported sightings in just such habitats. In August
1997, Dr Paula Kahumbu - now the
CITES Co-ordinator for Kenya under
the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) saw a Golden Cat below Lugard's Falls
on the Galana River in Tsavo East
National Park. "There had just been a
serious fire in the Park, and I was with
~
~
~
~
the KWS inspectors sent in to assess
the damage," says Kahumbu, who was
then based in the Mwaluganje-Shimba
Hills area southwest of Mombasa.
"We had stopped our vehicle beside
the river, and were going over our
notes," she says, "when we were surprised to see - walking up the road
towards us - what looked at first like a
dwarf lioness, only it was more slender
and, proportionally, had a shorter tail.
Its lower flanks were spotted, and its ears
- small and rounded - were devoid of
tufts. So it could not have been a
Caracal, the felid you might expect to
find here. On seeing the car, it disappeared into some riverside scrub and,
although we looked, we never saw it
again."
More recently, field researchers
monitoring cheetahs on ranches and
farmlands in Kenya as part of an Africawide study by the Namibia-based
Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF),
have been puzzled by "peculiar, yet very
persistent" enquiries from local communities participating in their Cheetah
I
nily similar" in both the Project's main
study areas, one centred around Lake
': Project.
Elementeita,
near Gilgil, has
and been
the other
on
The questioning
"uncanif' David Stanley's Ranch not far from Kiu, on
the road between Salama (itself on the
Nairobi-Mombasa
road) and Kajiado,
south of Nairobi.
Assistant, Cosmas Wambua, Wykstra has
been trying since 2001 to learn more about
these strange beasts, which both she and
Wambua assumed initially to be Caracals.
"But, from all the reports we have received,
we have both become convinced," she says,
"that the unexpected little intruder in our
cheetah field surveys is really none other
than the African Golden Cat."
"What people have been wanting to
know," explains Project Leader Mary
Wykstra, "is whether they should also be
reporting to us, sightings in their areas of
the 'little spotted lion-cheetah', the kasimba,
that hunts at night." With CCF Research
Interestingly, many of the places where
Wykstra's informants
claim to have
encountered the kasimba (literally, 'little
lion') are just 30-50 km south and east of
Olorgesailie. Such places include the
rugged hillsides and streambeds around
Lokululit, in the Pelewa Hills south of
Kajiado, and other similar habitats between
Kajiado and Nairobi National Park, on terrain traversed by some of the headstreams
of the Athi. So the African Golden Cat, far
from being confined to moist upland
forests, really does seem to occur just about
everywhere.
African Golden Cat's great versatili-
Onety inperson
surprised"
by the
habitat"not
range
is Conservation
International's Director for Eastern Africa, 'I
a bit bigger, and leggier, than the domestic cats descended from it. The Caracal (below),
while similar in.bulld and colour to some African Golden Cats, is easily told apart by the
Dr Tom Butynski. Over more than 15 years
(1978-1993) spent living in southwestern
Uganda's Kibale and Bwindi-Impenetrable
Forests, Butynski has come closer than
most to studying the Golden Cat's ecology
and behaviour. "This is a misunderstood
elongated tufts on the tips of Its ears. Below right: The Serval, unlike the Wild Cat (also
found In Eurasia) and the Caracal (in the Middle East and India), occurs only In Africa.
species," he says, "in that it lives from sea
level to altitudes of at least 3,600 metres -
Stalkers of the savannahs: The Wild Cat, Felis sylvestris (above), widespread in Africa, Is
I
I
•
38
SWARA April - June 2003
in swamp, gallery forest, savannah/forest
mosaics, lowland forest, montane forest,
subalpine forest, and moorland.
"This considerable diversity of habitats
has seldom been acknowledged in the literature," he adds. "So, while some reports of
the Golden Cat's distribution in Kenya
may appear incredible at first, most such
reports make sense when you consider that
Golden Cats in West Mrica and in western
Central Mrica are well known to inhabit
wooded savannah,
coastal forest."
gallery
forest,
and
Butynski points out that body size is
often difficult to assess in the wild, particularly at a distance, and especially at night.
"Contrary to what is often stated in the literature," he says, "the tails of Servais,
Caracals, and Golden Cats are all roughly
40 % of their head-body lengths. Thus, tail
length is a poor distinguishing character.
Localised traits: Melanistic Servais are fairly common in the Tsavo National Parks of
Kenya (above), as well as on the Aberdare moorlands. Proportionately, the Serval
has the longest legs and the biggest ears of any feline species. Below: Many Tsavo
Lions retain their 'kitty spotting' well into adulthood, inviting comparisons with the
mysterious 'Spotted Lions' of the northern Aberdares.
"If you think you might be looking at a . mm, and a body weight of 7 - 13 kg.
Golden Cat in the wild, focus instead on
Males have body lengths about 10 0/0
the size and shape of the ears," he advises.
longer than females, and body weights that
are heavier by about one-third."
"The ears of Servals are relatively large with
a white patch of the back. The ears of
It is not surprising, therefore, that
sightings of Golden Cats reported from
Caracals are relatively long and triangular
within Kenya have often been on the banks
with long tufts. The ears of Golden Cats are
of, or near, watercourses. Like the Serval,
relatively short, rounded, untufted, and a
shiny black on the back. An animal with
the Golden Cat appears to have no aversion
such ears, encountered well within moist
to water, and will hunt among reed beds in
forest, is almost certain to be a Golden Cat.
swampy habitats for water rats and cane
rats. Indeed, even fish have been found to
"My review of the literature indicates,"
says Butynski, "that most adult Golden
form a part of the cat's diet, according to a
Cats have a head-body length of 650 mm 1993 study of scats in the Republic of
900 mm, a tail length of 280 mm - 350
Congo by Marcellin Agnanga, for many
years chef de service of that country's
Ministry of Conservation of Fauna and
Protected Areas.
The Albert Nile, flowing into the
Sudan, and all the tributaries feeding
into it once there, may have served as
'forest bridges' in allowing Golden Cats
to disperse northward from Uganda
and, thence, to fan out across Equatoria
in the southern Sudan into Ethiopia.
The Victoria Nile and the vast Kyoga
wetland, may have provided similar
riparian 'corridors' for the species' eastward dispersal across Uganda into
Kenya. However, the assumption, often
made, that the Golden Cat is a 'western'
species whose historical dispersal must
have followed a west-to-east path across
Mrica - while likely - remains purely
conjectural, cautions Tom Butynski.
SWARA April - June 2003
J
What
,
is evident is that the Mrican
Golden Cat's dispersal over countless generations and many hundreds of years has
been determined, above all, by the courses
of Mricas major rivers and river systems.
And it is certainly no coincidence that in
eastern Mrica almost all reported sightings
of Golden Cats have been of animals either
on the banks of or else very close to rivers.
That the Golden Cat should occur, as
seems likely, in forests along the Kenya
Coast - such as Arabuko-Sokoke - and on
both the Aberdares and Mount Kenya,
then, makes sense in that all three are
"
linked up by the riverine corridors of the
Tana and the Athi, Kenya's two major river
systems. As the Galana, the Athi (for its
part) flows through Tsavo East National
Park, before - as the Sabaki - snaking its
way past the northern reaches of ArabukoSokoke and spilling into the Indian Ocean
just north of Malindi.
Likewise, by moving down (or up) the
Tana, Golden Cats might very well have
colonised the forests of the Tana Delta,
I between Malindi and Lamu. Their presence there, while not corroborated, might
explain the identity of another strange
beast repeatedly brought to the notice of
German missionaries stationed at Ngao,
near Garsen, by local Pokomo people in the
early part of the twentieth century. That
beast, referred to as koddoelo, was described
as "Reddish, lion-like but smaller than a
lion", "nocturnal", and as "having thick
forelegs - with very sharp claws".
[ At the time, as the news of the koddoelo of the Pokomo spread, this was seized
upon by would-be discoverers as yet another manifestation of the Nandi Bear - albeit
of a 'stray' population way out of that creature's presumed range in western Kenya.
Overshadowed, then, by the then all-pervasive Nandi Bear legend, the koddoelo was
soon forgotten. And the African Golden
Cat, not for the first time, was able to slip
away unnoticed.]
Among tribespeople throughout its
range, the Mrican Golden Cat has acquired
a fearful reputation - chiefly as a voracious
killer of poulty and livestock. Sources quoted by the Dutch taxonomists Peter J van
Mensch and Peter van Bree, of Amsterdam's
Zoologisch Museum, in their paper entitled On the African Golden Cat, Profelis
aurata (Temminck, 1827), in Biologia
Gabonica (Vol 1:4, 1969) maintain that
"People in Mrica are very afraid of the cat,
which they consider to be very fierce ... so
fierce that it may, if provoked, even attack
humans."
This portrayal of the Golden Cat as an
brazen opportunist
that, given half a
chance, will prey (so some sources claim)
on "chickens, goats, even sheep and young
cattle" appears totally at odds with the
exceedingly shy, retiring animal that eyewitnesses have reported. Nevertheless,
some of today's scientists have actively
endorsed
such claims. Dr Timothy
Davenport, now a field biologist with the
New York-based Wildlife Conservation
Society (WCS) and stationed in Tanzania's
Southern Highlands, is one such scientist.
In
west Uganda, published in the Autumn
his study,
in South1996
issue African
of the Golden
journalCatCat
News,
Davenport - then associated with Uganda's
Natural
Forest
Management
and
Conservation Project - declares the cat to
be "a bold opportunist that will take anything,
including
domestic
animals,
depending on local conditions. Among
Bakiga communities living close to the
Bwindi-Impenetrable Forest," he continues, "the consensus is that Golden Cats
regularly take chickens, goats and sheep.
And they are also known," he adds, "to
have taken domestic cats, and - on one
occasion - a hunter's dog."
In different parts of the forest,
Davenport was able - with the help of veteran Twa hunter Calebo Ngambaneza - to
locate three of this feline's scats. On examination, all three were found to contain the
If you have seen (or think you might have seen) an African Golden Cat, then SWARA would
very much like to hear from you. You can send details of your sighting to the East African
Wild Life Society on < [email protected] >, marking your submission for the attention
of SWARA. Or you can fax your account to us on + 254 ( 2 ) 570335.
Asiatic Golden Cats captured on film by
FFI researchers in Sumatra using remote
camera 'traps' include this adult female
with her seven-week-old kitten (above)
and (facing page) a melanistic specimen.
hair of Duikers: presumably that of the
Black-fronted Duiker, much the smaller of
Bwindi's two resident Duiker species. (The
other species is the Yellow-backed.) One of~!'
the scats also contained the lower jawbone
of a rodent. Ngambaneza told Davenport If'
that, over many years spent in the forest, he
had come across Golden Cats on Duiker
carcasses "on at least four separate occasions". No trace of any domesticant was
found in any of the sampled scats, however.
Davenport's conclusion, then, that
"Golden cats seem to be prepared to run
the gauntlet of human retribution outside
the Park, in order to take domestic livestock when Duiker numbers are low, even
where alternative prey is abundant in the
forest," appears to rest largely on circumstantial evidence. This verdict contradicts
that of the World Conservation Union
(IUCN) biologists Kristin Nowell and
Peter Jackson in their study, Wild Cats: A
Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan
(IUCN, Geneva, Switzerland, 1996), that
"Predation by the Golden Cat on domestic
livestock appears to be rather rare."
Tom Butynski seconds the NowellJackson view. "There is still no good
evidence that I am aware of," he says, "that
Golden Cats leave the forest (where they
might encounter villagers and their dogs)
to prey on domestic livestock. Servals, however, are common on the farmlands and
pastures near the villages around Bwindi and most villagers probably do nor distinguish between Servais and Golden Cats."
In 1982, some Game Rangers brought
a 'grey' phase adult female Golden Cat to
Butynski at his camp at Ngogo in
the middle
of southwestern
being underestimated? In terms,
here, of its ancestral range? "The
question of a possible relationship
between the African and the Asiatic
Uganda's Kibale Forest' Reserve.
They had found the cat dead in a
buffalo pit-trap. Ten years later in
1992, some Park Rangers brought a
melanistic (black) Golden Cat to
him at his gorilla research camp in
the western sector of the BwindiImpenetrable National Park. This
second cat had been collected,
dead, from a poacher's wire snare.
These are probably the first - and
only - records for East Africa of the
'grey' and the melanistic phases of
the Golden Cat. (Two photographs
of the melanistic specimen appear
here - on pp. 27 and 32.)
Among African Golden Cats, the incidence of melanism over the species' entire
range is thought to average little more than
5 %. Of 186 pelts in museums and private
collections around the world that were
examined duting the 1960s by the 'two
Peters', van Mensch and van Bree, only
seven (3.8 %) were black. The African
Golden Cat skins in Belgium's Musee Royal
de l'Afrique Centrale in Tervuren come
mainly from what is now the DR Congo.
Of these, 58.4 % are of the 'red' phase,
35.4 % are 'grey', and 6.2 % are melanistic.
In the Kuhn private collection in Frankfurt,
Germany, which includes only specimens
from Liberia, 36 % are 'red', 59 % 'grey',
and 5 % melanistic.
In Kenya, at the easternmost, or 'red',
end of the distribution spectrum, no 'grey'
phase Golden Cat that science is aware of
has ever been recorded. And nor has there
been any reported sighting in Kenya of a
melanistic specimen. Such a form, though,
might prove hard to distinguish, given the
high incidence - in so many of the habitats
frequented by Golden Cats - of melanistic
Servais. Remember, then, should you come
across a strange black cat of this size, always
to look very closely at its one betraying feature: its ears!
Colour polymorphism, whereby two or
more colour forms co-exist without replacing one another, has caused considerable
confusion among traditional
African
hunters. Hunters in both Cameroon and
Gabon once assumed, erroneously (if
understandably), that all 'red' Golden Cats
were male and all 'grey' ones female.
Elsewhere in West and Central Africa, the
cat's habits are likened to those of the
Leopard. There, the African Golden Cat is
still commonly referred to as the "baby
brother", or the "boy", of the Leopard.
The African Golden Cat's closest living
relative may be its Asian namesake, the
Asiatic Golden Cat, Profelis temminckii,
found in Tibet and in parts of northeastern
India, Myanmar and Thailand, as well as
on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The
latter generally has much more prominent
facial markings, including chevron-like
streaks of white on its cheeks and a pair of
white lines extending from the bridge of its
nose, then up over its brow, forming a 'V'
between the ears.
closely resemble their African counOtherwise,
Asiatic
Golden
Cats the
so
terparts that
some once
believed
two might be conspecific. After all, the
Lions, Leopards, Cheetahs and Caracals of
Asia are conspecific with those in Africa
(their ancestors' having invaded the continent from Asia some one-million years ago,
probably via the Jordan Depression in the
Middle East then linking the TigrisEuphrates and the Nile River systems).
Most cat taxonomists are not convinced, however. And the consensus today
is that the two are wholly unrelated.
"External similarities," according to the
IUCN's 1996 Notes on the Golden Cat
(posted on < http://lynx. uio.no/catfolk
/aurataO l.htm » "may just be the result of
convergent evolution in moist forest habitats, since there has been no direct forest
connection between Asia and Africa for 20million years." Is the Golden Cat again
In compiling this article, Gordon Boy gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Dr Thomas M
Butynski, who was kind enough not only to make available much of the scientific literature on
the species, but who hc;s also painstakingly
vetted the complete draft text.
Golden Cat may still merit closer
scrutiny," the authors of the IUCN
Notes are careful to add.
[ That the Asiatic Golden Cat
should bear the specific name temminckii is confusing in that it was
the African species, and not the
Asiatic, that the great nineteenthcentury Dutch naturalist C J
~ Temminck described in 1827 ~ from specimens collected in West
~ Africa in 1819. When, later in
~ 1827, an Asiatic specimen was
- brought to London's Regent's Park
Zoo, the then Fellows of the London
Zoological Society decided to honour
Temminck by naming the (Asiatic) species
Temminck's Golden Cat. While this common name has since been dropped, the
Latin name temminckii persists. Temminck,
then, had nothing to do with the discovery
of the felid with which his name is now
linked. ]
Intensive photo trapping over tecent
years in parts of the Asiatic Golden Cat's
range on Sumatra has greatly enhanced our
understanding of that species. In 1996, scientists with Fauna & Flora International
(FFI) positioned 20 photo traps at different
locations within west-central Sumatra's
Kerinci Seblat National Park. Each such
photo trap comprises a Trail Master™ 'trail
monitor', including transmitter, receiver,
and compact Olympus Infinity camera
with built-in flash and 38-mm auto-focus
lens. Passing animals are detected, and the
camera shutter triggered, when the infra
red beam (which can be set to varying
degrees of sensitivity) is broken.
In May 1996, from one of these 'traps',
came the first image ever taken in this way
of an Asiatic Golden Cat. That image was
confusing at first. For the subject was wholly black. It turned out to be the first
photograph taken in the wild of a melanistic specimen. Other successes were to
follow. And by August of that year, from
photo traps in three widely separated areas,
FFI researchers Deborah J Martyr, Jeremy
Holden and Achmad Yanuar had obtained
photographs of no fewer than eight different Golden Cats, including one of an adult
with a seven-week-old kitten, another first.
On the nearby island territory of
Borneo, the acclaimed US wildlife photographer and dedicated cat enthusiast Art
Wolfe has since succeeded - in 1998 - in
photographing a Bornean Bay Cat, Profelis
badia, for the first time. The Bay Cat
41
resembles a miniature Asiatic Golden Cat,
and is thought to be a close relative. The
specimen photographed by Art Wolfe, a
female, had been captured alive (it was later
released) after being flushed from cover by
the forest fires then ravaging much of
Borneo and neighbouring Sarawak.
As a tool for carrying out biodiversity
surveys, the 'camera trap' has revolutionised
the gathering of data, enabling scientists to
identify individual animals (in the case of
some species) and to monitor their movements, at night as well as by day. This in
turn has made it possible to arrive at reliable population estimates and densities, as
well as to delineate individual home range
areas. With such 'traps', FFI researchers in
Sumatra have been able, for example, to
collect unprecedented data, not just on
Asiatic Golden Cats, but also on a host of
other seldom-seen
species, including
Sumatran Tigers, Clouded Leopards and
Asian Tapirs, not to mention birds such as
the Sumatran Giant Pitta.
To date, scant use has been made of the
camera trap in wildlife monitoring in East
and Central Mrica. Even for the region's
pioneering camera trappers like Karl
Ammann, the technique is still "a bit of a
hit-or-miss affair" (Separate Story, pp. 1618). For, instead of being able to keep 20 or
more functioning 'traps' in position for
long periods, Ammann (and others like
him) are very often severely constrained by
the elements.
In the DR Congo, where Ammann
," now has five functioning 'traps' (one a
video unit), the rains - which last from
April to December - are the major constraint. "The cameras just cannot cope," he
says, "with moisture, whether in the form
of rain or high humidity, and are always
packing up, often irreparably. Under these
conditions, our 'camera trapping' season is
limited to just four months in a year, if we
are lucky."
Ammann first resorted to the use of
camera traps in 1999, in an effort to obtain
images of some chimpanzees whose strange
proportions and beha';iour have baffled
primatologists, none of whom has ever seen
the 'mystery apes'. That his 'traps' should
have photographed passing Golden Cats is
purely incidental, he acknowledges.
Other 'trapping' enthusiasts have since 1999 - been attempting to verify the
presence, in Kenya's Arabuko-Sokoke
Forest, of the Golden Cat. Camera traps
trained overnight on promising-looking
tracks in the forest's Cynometra woodland
belt have yielded some fascinating images of Genets, Porcupines and other creatures
of the night - but still no Golden Cat has
crossed any of their 'trigger' beams.
It is surely only a matter of time before
camera trapping becomes part of routine
wildlife monitoring procedure in East
Africa. When that time comes, we may well
find - as was the case in Sumatra - that
Mrican Golden Cats are present, within
some habitats, in far higher numbers than
is deemed possible now. The pathetic fallacy, that because humans so seldom see
Mrican Golden Cats, the latter must necessarily be very rare, may then have to be
modified. For all this really goes to show, it
may equally be argued, is that humans do
not see very well, especially at night.
Conversely, the fact that we are getting
to see Golden Cats at all may be a reflection, not so much on advances in our
monitoring technology, as on the continuing fragmentation of natural forest habitats
over so much of the species' range. Laments
Tom Butynski: "The Golden Cat's impressive historic dispersal along the major rivers It
of Equatorial Africa is, sadly, now a thing of
the past.
"The Mrican Golden Cat may be a
great survivor," he adds. "But even great
survivors have their limits. And those limits
- whether imposed by hunting, deforestation, riparian developments, settlements
and sham bas, or by fires, or roving packs of
mongrel dogs - have left today's Golden
Cat populations across East Mrica increas-
Distant relative? The Asiatic Golden Cat,
'photo trapped' (above and left) by Fauna &
Flora International (FFI) researchers based In
Indonesian Sumatra's Kerlnci-Seblat National
Park, bears some similarities, In looks as
well as habits, to Its African namesake.
42
SWARA April - June 2003
Photograph:
ingly marooned on widely scattered 'island'
habitats."
Only now are we beginning to learn
something about the habits and the distribution of this most remarkable, and
elusive, of African felines. And still, reports
of new sightings continue to come in. In
Kenya, one of the more recent documented
sightings was of an individual disturbed at 11:50 a.m. on 18 December 2001
while apparently resting at the base
\ of an ancient Podocarpus falcatus
tree, amid thick bamboo in the
Mount Elgon National Park.
The observer, Nairobi naturalist Dino J Martins, was heading for
the Elgon moorlands at the time.
"Having taken the turn-off near
the Kimothon Gate, we stopped
for a picnic near the head of a steep
valley half-way up the side of the
Endebess Bluff. Sections of the
bamboo were in flower," Martins
recalls. "So, while the others were
making sandwiches, I went down
into the valley, to see what beetles,
flies and other insects were about.
"Before long, on emerging (on
my hands and knees) from a bamboo thicket, I came face to face
with a magnificent Golden Cat. It
can't have been seven metres away,
The cat's whiskers: 1992 portrait
(right) of the (Captive) 'red' phase
African Golden Cat at England's
Howletts-Port Lymphne Wildlife Park.
Surprisingly little is known about the
species' behaviour in the wild.
SWARA April - June 2003
© ART WOLFE
Rare breed: The Bornean Bay Cat, Prof/is badia (above), resembles a miniature Golden Cat.
Described in 1856, the species was photographed for the first time only in 1998, when Art
Wolfe travelled to northern Borneo to see this specimen, a female captured (later released)
after being flushed out from cover by a forest fire.
and had evidently been lying curled up
against the trunk of that tree. It must have
been just as surprised as I was, for it seemed
to flinch, before rising and making its exit."
Then, more recently still, at 8:00 p.m.
on 27 March 2003 an African Golden Cat
was seen crossing a forest track on Mount
Kenya's lower western slopes, near the confluence of the Liki and Liki North Rivers.
The observers, Nanyuki flower-growers
Richard and Netty Fernandes,
were driving back home from
Nanyuki
when (in Richard's
words): "Just 200 metres after
crossing the Liki Bridge, a goldenbrown cat of about knee-height
and with a longish tail appeared in
our headlights. Realising that it
was definitely not a Caracal, we
stopped the car, but the cat was
soon off - into the dark forest over
to our left."
The
next
morning,
the
Fernandes' reported their sighting
(the first in many years from
Mount Kenya) to the KWS Senior
Park Warden for Mount Kenya,
Bongo Woodley.
Such encounters are fairly typical of a meeting with the African
Golden Cat, which for decades has
been revealing itself, fleetingly, just
often enough to remind us that it
really does exist, and that it is out
there ... somewhere. As to where
this 'phantom cat' might next
appear: the chances are, this will
probably be where we all least
expect it.
",
43
PHENOMENON
fhe
L
this year - very late. But when they
(March-May)
rains
did long
finally
arrive in the
lastcame
weeklate
of
April (as usual, within days of a nationwide
alert from the Meteorological Department
urging us to brace ourselves for a severe
drought), they fell with a vengeance.
And, for many parts of East Africa, May
2003 was the wettest month on record since
el nino visited us in 1998. Sasamua Dam on
the shoulder of the Aberdares, Nairobi's
principal water supply, burst its banks.
Landslides ensued, washing piping away
and leaving taps dry across large areas of the
Kenyan capital. And from the Kano Plain
in Nyanza, near Lake Victoria in western
Kenya, came dramatic press photographs of submerged dwellings - and
ruined lives.
In many cases, these Nyanza 'flood
victims' were the same people whose
despairing images had appeared in the
papers only days before as early
'drought victims'. The transition from
ruin (through crop failure, famine and
disease) at the hands of impending
drought to similar ruin by flooding
really was that abrupt.
One community for whom the
dire repercussions of such suddenly
alternating droughts and floods (now,
alas, increasingly the norm, following
the removal of essential 'sponge' forests
from so many of Kenya's water catchment areas) is especially keenly felt is
that of the people of Nyakach in western Kenya.
This community is based around
Nyakach Bay on Lake Victoria, near
the fringes of the swampy Kusa Delta
where the Nyando River, after snaking
its way across the Kano Flood Plain on its
way from the Mau Escarpment in the east,
reaches and enters the enormous lake.
For centuries, the lower Nyando River,
with its seasonal swellings and contractions,
has been the lifeline for the people of
Nyakach, who depend (between periods of
inundation) on being able to cultivate the
flood plain's rich seasonal marshlands.
These marshlands, sadly now largely
stripped of their original dense cover of
papyrus, reeds and water grasses, were
always a favourite haunt, also, of the
Central African Rock Python, Python sebae,
of which some very large OS-foot plus)
local specimens have been reported.
These snakes, like the people, have
always lived in harmony with the Nyando's
cyclical ebb and flow, laying their eggs (for
example) at height of the dry season, so
their hatchlings will all· emerge with the
advent of the rains, when frogs, rodents and
SWARA April - June 2003
A python of
good omen
other prey species are most plentiful and
widespread.
Over time, Nyakach's great pythons
came to be identified, understandably, as
harbingers of the community's all-important, life-sustaining rains. Massive pythons
found guarding large clutches of eggs were
seen as incarnations of Omieri, the rain
snake. For, as one 79-year-old villager, Sirari
Gome, explains: "Were anything bad to
happen to our visitor during her stay on our
land, death and starvation would stalk our
children for many years to come.
"After 1987," Gome adds, "when [a previous incarnation of] Omieri died on the
operating table from severe burns suffered
in a bush fire, our people experienced
a succession of the most terrible hardships and disasters."
The Nyakach community was not
about to take any chances this time
round. Accordingly, pilgrims came to
Wasare Village from all over Nyando
District to visit the giant brooding
python, estimated by some eyewitnesses to be "almost 15 feet long". The
pilgrims brought with them chickens
and goats, which they sacrificed and
left behind as food for Omieri.
Worthy of Omieri: This enormous Rock
Python was photographed in Kenya's
Lake Nakuru National Park.
bringer, and were venerated accordingly.
Imagine the reaction, then, when in
March 2003, just as the potentially calamitous drought appeared to be nigh, a gigantic
python with a clutch of more than 80 large,
tennis-ball-sized white eggs was observed
on a smallholding near Wasare Village, in
Lower Nyakach.
The news spread quickly and brought
palpable relief. For now there was hope
again. And people could replant their crops,
in the certainty that there would":' after all
- be a harvest.
It is not enough simply to see Omieri,
however. Indeed, tradition dictates that
such a python's every need must be taken
care of, lest any misfortune should befall the
The sight of so many desperately
poor people, then so wracked by
drought as to be barely able to feed
themselves, lavishing so much precious
food on a python (a snake that many
other local communities would simply
kill on sight) soon fired the popular
~
imagination in Kenya, triggering a rash
?i:
~ of news reports and updates in the
~ daily press.
:t>
~
The rains duly came, and still the
human pilgrims - now ravaged instead
by the rampaging flood waters - kept coming, bearing with them more gifts for
Omieri. Come June, Omieri's precious eggs
hatched out, and the little python hatchlings (more than 60 of these, by some
accounts) dispersed in all directions into the
surrounding vegetation. There, perhaps two
or three may survive predation by raptors
and other predators and go on to reach
adulthood.
Nyakach residents, meanwhile, instead
of being praised for their love of pythons,
have been roundly condemned by some
church leaders for their "Satanic" and
"primitive" beliefs. The Nyakach Member
of Parliament, the Hon Peter Odoyo, is
unmoved. "Pythons are sacred to the people
of Nyakach," avers he, "- just as cows are
it
sacred to the Hindus in India."
- by Gordon Boy, with reporting by
Trupti Shah and Gichuki Kabukuru
45
TRIBUTE
Dr; 6\ i
13 June 2003 aged 45, will be
Luc De Vos,
died who
in Nairobi
. remembered
as who
the man
singlerandedly,revived the pursuit of ichthyology
~thJt brAc~of natural history dealing with
the~study of fish) in eastern Africa.
As Chief Ichthyologist at the National
Museums of Kenya (NMK), he was instrumental - over the last six years of his life ,in creating from scratch something the
Museums, oddly enough, had never before
had: a Department of Ichthyology.
"Fish, because they are seldom seen in
their murky underwater habitats, are far too
easily overlooked," De Vos was fond of
telling people, "with the result that their
great value and importance in conservation
terms is simply forgotten." He might have
been referring to the NMK's own oversight
in making no provision, prior to his arrival
in 1997, for an Ichthyology Department.
Not one for idle laments, he spent the rest
of his life doing something to make amends.
The result is the bustling department
we see today, with its large collection of
specimens, both marine and freshwater,
and a library extending to hundreds of publications and reference materials.
r,
De Vos's own particular speciality was African freshwater fishes.
Indeed, his PhD thesis (1983) takes
the form of a Pan African Revision of
the Schilbeid Catfishes - a family on ~
which he became the world's top
authority.
It is perhaps ironic, then, that
his young department's
biggest z
coup came (in 2001) in the shape of ~
a marine fish specimen. Not just ~
any marine fish, this was the ~
'Malindi Coelacanth', the first such ~
'living fossil' from Kenyan waters
ever brought to the notice of science (report
in SWARA 24:3, 2001).
For naturalists in East Africa and for
Inspi rational
ichthyologist
LUC DE vas ( 1957 - 2003 )
Somalia's Juba River (SWARA 24:1, 2001).
That fish is the Giant Pancake-headed
(CEPGL) would again prove irresistible,
howevet. And from 1992 to 1996, De Vos
Catfish, Pardiglanis tarabinii. And like the
Coelacanth, it is deemed a 'living fossil' in
that its form (compared with that revealed
in the fossil recotd) has changed little in the
past 3.5-million years.
De Vos, catfish expert that he was,
always took particular delight in this find
(as anyone lucky enough to be given a tour
of his department will surely have noticed).
Luc De Vos was born in Sint Niklaas,
Belgium, on 8 December 1957. By all
accounts, he knew from a very early age
that he was" born to fish", as he always liked
to put it. So, on leaving school he enrolled
at Belgium's Catholic University of Leuven,
where he studied zoology, before going on
was back - this time as Project Manager
(Ichthyology) for the Bujumbura, Burundibased Regional Centre for Research in
Applied Biology. Here, he produced some
of his finest published work, notably on the
ichthyofauna of Lakes Tanganyika and
Kivu: His extensive field work took him to
i
Coelacanth experts around the world alike,
it came as a relief to have, in De Vos, such
a highly respected and skilled ichthyologist
on hand to supervise the dissection and
documentation of this precious find.
Publicity spawned by the Coelacanth
did much to elevate the ichthyology's profile in Kenya, and De Vos went on to raise
funds for the fish itself to be exhibited in
the NMK's main gallery in Nairobi, and for
a cast to be made for display in Malindi. (It
is understood this cherished project, when
finished, will be dedicated to his memory.)
For De Vos himself, perhaps the high
point of his time in Kenya was the rediscovery - in 2000, in the lower Tana River of a catfish species then known only from
one specimen collected 28 years earlier in
46
Defining moment: Dr Luc De Vos in 2001
with the 'Malindi' Coelacanth. With him
are (to his right) Collins Ajwan'g, then a
student intern, and Paul Mburu, a volunteer, and (to his left) Joseph Gathua, of
the Ichthyology Department, and Joash
Gathua and Dickson Nyonje, from the
NMK Departments of Herpetology and
Molecular Genetics respectively.
to specialise in ichthyology. While busy on
his PhD, he doubled as a research assistant
at the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale in
Tervuren, Brussels.
On completing his PhD, he wasted no
time in getting posted to Africa, joining
Rwanda's Institut National de Recherche
Scientifique. In 1987, he went on to teach
in the Sciences Faculty at the University of
Kisangani in the DR Congo (then Zaire),
before returning to Belgium in 1991.
The lure of the fish-filled paradise that
is Central Africa's 'Great Lakes' region
many Aftican states outside the CEPGL,
including the Republic of Congo, the
Central African Republic, and Gambia and
Senegal, in West Africa; and Malawi,
Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and
South Africa - anywhere with significant
bodies of fresh water for him to explore.
In 1997, after a short spell back in
Brussels as Ichthyologist/Curator of Fishes
for East and Central Africa at
Tervuren's Africa Museum, De Vos
was posted to Nairobi as part of a
WOB
(Flemish Association for
Development
Cooperation
and
Technical Assistance) aid programme to the NMK.
Setting up the Ichthyology
Department was a considerable feat.
For the Nairobi Museum's entire
fish collection when De Vos arrived
amounted to just a few (mainly
marine) specimens in a backroom
in the Herpetology Department.
At the time of his death, the
department had grown so large that a whole
new block was being planned to accommodate the specimens collection. An East
African freshwater fish resource centre was
being developed, as was a breeding unit for
live fish. The Aquarium section in the nearby Nairobi Snake Park, meanwhile, has under De Vos - been greatly enlarged to
include (not surprisingly) many catfishes
and other indigenous species.
Like De Vos's other 'pet project', that of
producing the first popular illustrated
Guide to East African Freshwater Fishes,
these developments have (for now anyway)
been cruelly interrupted. Dr Luc De Vos
leaves his wife, Clotilde, and three children,
Nathalie (16), Joris (15), and Hadison (6).
- by Gordon Boy, with reporting by Elizabeth
Odhiambo, Research Assistant to Dr De Vos
at the time of his death
SWARA April - June 2003
authored a classic paper on the biology of
the Carpet Viper at Moille Hill, near
Laisamis in northern Kenya. With a team
of Turkana snake collectors, he and
Jonathan Leakey collected nearly 7,000 of
these snakes in 16 weeks; a database of
information unsurpassed in East African
herpetology.
At Moille, Alex became hypersensitive
to the viper venom they were collecting for
research. He desensitised himself in a way
that epitomised his attitude to the medical
profession. He made a cut in his own arm
and rubbed fresh venom into it. After a
Quintessential
museum man
ALEXANDER DUFF-MACKAY ( 1939 - 2003
)
a classic Kenyan
museum scientist and natural historian.
Stephen Spawls remembers
I
just inside the Nairobi Snake Park, with
remember
standing
once looking
on the steps
Alex
MacKay.
We were
at a
caged display of both subspecies of linkmarked sand-snakes. I was pontificating to
Alex, with the confidence of an 18-yearold, about how hard it was to distinguish
the two forms by scale counts.
"Has it occurred to you," said he, with
(as always) a touch of impatience for what
he viewed as a poorly-thought-out argument, "that if you studied the way they
behaved in life, you might more easily spot
the differences that separate them?"
This was an unusual piece of wisdom
from a museum zoologist. But then, Alex
spent much of his life observing and thinking about animal behaviour.
Alexander Duff-MacKay, who died on
6 March 2003, aged 63, from complications arising from long-term diabetes, was a
museum man through and through. Briefly
in overall charge of Nairobi's National
Museum, and its mammalogist for many
years, he was for most of his working life
the museum's herpetologist.
A Kenyan born in Mombasa in 1939,
Alex was educated at St Mary's School,
Nairobi, and at Rhodes University in South
Africa, where he took a degree in Zoology
and Entomology. He never left the African
continent, save for excursions in his threeton sloop out into the Indian Ocean.
As a schoolboy, Alex began collecting
specimens for the then Coryndon Museum
in 1950. After graduating, he spent some
time as Forest Entomologist with the East
African Agricultural and Forestry Research
Organisation at Muguga before joining the
museum. He retired in 1995, after more
than 31 years there, and in recognition was
subsequently awarded the Presidential
Honour, the Order of the Burning Spear.
A quiet, confident zoologist, Alex never
thrust himself into the public eye. He saw
himself as a behind-the-scenes museum
man whose business it was to assist the public, to collect and preserve specimens and
data, and to manage the archives.
He and I once wrote a popular article
on Kenya's lizards; Alex did the ground-
SWARA April - June 2003
work, I the writing. He suggested the article go out under my name alone. When I
demurred, he told me an interesting story.
Leslie Brown had once asked Alex to
analyse the debris from a Crowned Eagle's
nest, to find out what it had been eating.
This took several days, and Alex duly gave
Brown his report. Later, Alex saw the published paper, with all his data, only Brown
had not acknowledged either Alex or the
Museum. Asked if he was upset by this,
Alex shook his head. "I didn't mind his
severe local reaction, he repeated the procedure 48 hours later, with no reaction. Many
years later, troubled by a molar, and irritated by well-meaning advice from various
Nairobi dentists, Alex pulled the offending
tooth out himself using his grandfather's
tooth pliers.
Alex enjoyed field work, travelling in
his personally customised wooden-topped
Land-Rover, and with a boat he had made
himself, so that he could get out on to the
water to collect amphibians. In 1980 he
produced for the museum a conservation
status report on Kenya's amphibians, based
on the considerable data he had amassed.
This was to have led to a magnum opus,
a field guide to East Africa's amphibians.
Sadly, his deteriorating health precluded
this, but we did persuade him to join us as
a consultant on Field Guide to the Reptiles of
~ East Africa. He read the accounts and added
~ much data from his vast mental stock of
Singular honour: Alex Duff-MacKay with the
medal he received in 1999 on becoming a
Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear by
Presidential edict, in recognition of more
than 31 years of distinguished service to
the National Museums of Kenya.
leaving me out," he said, "but I was cross
that he didn't mention the Museum."
Although he did not publish much,
Alex was often mentioned in East African
zoological literature; he is quoted in the
1976 Guinness Book of Animal Facts and
Feats on Ahmed, the famous Marsabit elephant. However, with Arne Schiotz, the
Danish herpetologist, he described a new
tree frog from Tsavo East, calling it, apprnpriately enough, Hyperolius sheldricki.
With his wife Joy, he produced two
books, one on eastern Africa's poisonous
snakes and one of star charts for tropical
eastern Africa. Much enlivened by his dry
wit, both are still on sale in Kenya. He also
information on Kenya's fauna and flora.
~
Alex and his family moved to Tigoni
~
before his retirement in 1995. There, with
;;:
~ his son Ian (a talented musician) he pur~ sued another of his many interests - that of
mending and making stringed instruments.
A visiting musician once observed several
freshly varnished violins hanging from the
acacia in the front garden. "I'd like some
seed from that tree," he said.
Conversation with Alex was scintillating. His interests were wide, including
scorpions, physics and recreational mathematics, as well as geology and meteorology.
Over the last two years his eyesight began to
fail and he was often confined to a wheelchair. But his mind was as sharp as ever.
The last time we met, our conversation
jumped from the new politics of Kenya to
the reptiles reported from the Aberdares
during the Emergency, from the First
World War in East Africa to the honours
system in UK ... Alex was a genuine representative of the classic museum scientist
and natural historian, whose intention
always was to give the public service. There
are few of his ilk left.
if
47
form a relatively homogenous block
km2theof Machakos
mainly open ranches
plains
dividing
Kajiado
District's
'Masailand'
from the hill country of the Kamba that lies
60 km or so east and southeast of Nairobi.
Collectively,
of 1,100
Ecologically, most of this block is part of
the Athi-Kaputie
plains of which the
Nairobi National Park is now the northwestern corner.
At the turn
of the 20th
century,
this
plains system extended further north to 01
Donyo Sabuk near present-day Thika and
may have been comparable with the modern Serengeti for animal numbers.
The
southeastern
edge of the plains is rimmed
with the Acacia/Combretum
bushland
found
around
Sultan
Hamud,
which
in
turn gradually merges into the dry Acacia
ICommiphora
habitats ofTsavo.
Most of the Machakos ranches were
established
before the First World War.
Reserved for whites,
they formed
The Machakos
•
experience
the east-
ernmost
peninsula
of Kenya's
'White
Highlands'. At altitudes of 1,065-1,465
m,
they were better watered than most of pastoral Kenya, receiving between 500 mm
and 550 mm of rainfall annually.
After Independence in 1963, their ownership passed into the hands of indigenous
Kamba who continue to raise cattle of high
qualiry on them. After a century of ranching, 60 years in white hands and 40 in
black, the land is in good fettle and carries
some of Kenya's best beef herds. In terms of
land management,
the transition
from
white settler to indigenous Kamba ownership was seamless. To a degree unequalled
elsewhere in Kenya, basic attitudes towards
the land, livestock and game do not reflect
the changes in ownership.
Ecologically, the ranchers replaced wild
grazers with cattle. Consequently
there are
far fewer wild animals now than a century
ago. Rhinos vanished. Resident lions disappeared, although they do still
turn up now and then as raiders
(Bush
from
adjoining
.Masailand.
Hyaenas occur, but in much
reduced numbers. Leopards are
still present and cheetahs are
occasional
visitors. Yer while
wild animals on the ranches
may be less abundant now than
in 1900, in 2003 the Machakos
tanches
still carry more
'plains
game in unlimited numbers to feed themselves and their labour under what were
to providing
staff.
then known as landowners'
or employees'
licences. Yet despite this enormous latitude
The 1977 ban stopped all hunting.
Initially this made little difference to the
Machakos ranchers. Although their game
was now valueless, they still kept it on their
lands because (a) they liked it, and (b) it
was not costing them much. However,
to get rid of wild animals, they never did so.
The ranchers wanted as much wildlife as
possible on their properties, commensurate
with their production of domestic stock.
Throughout
the century,
economic
pressures to raise returns from the land have
nibbled
away at rancher
tolerance
of
wildlife. Aware of this, in the late 1950s,
meat) is
so significant
a proportion of
the average
diet that stopping it is just
not a political
option.
game' than, for example, Nairobi
National Park.
This makes a cogent point. As pointed
out in my previous article, the ranchers
were entitled to destroy any wild animal
causing them loss, to fence wild animals
out of their land, and - until 1977- to kill
48
Ian Parker begins his assessment tour of Kenya's Wildlife
Fora, thirteen years after their inception, with a look at the
Machakos Wildlife Forum.
the then Game Department
allowed ranchers
to shoot
quotas of wild animals and
to sell their skins and horns
(but not their meat).
It was
hoped that the income so
generated
would
furrher
enhance the ranchers' already
proven interest in looking
after 'their' game and offset
the pressures
on them to
remove It.
At the time, many of the
Machakos
ranchers
did not take great
advantage of this policy. A few sold some
impala, gazelle and zebra hides to generate
a little pocket money, but that was all. As
before, their use of game remained limited
meat for themselves
and their
times were changing, and over the next
quarter-century
rhis tolerance has come
under progressively greater strain.
The possibility
that tourism
mighr
relieve the situation was looked into by a
formal World Bank study in 1993. This
concluded that while game viewing tourism
can produce considerable returns, not all
ranches and farms have the scenery or the
abundance and variety of animals to meet
its demands.
The
developed
Machakos
ranches, with their flat grasslands, fences
and comfortable
but unexciting scenery,
were judged to have little potential.
With no latitude to sell game meat and
trophies, and no prospect of selling rights
for recreational hunting due to the 1977
ban, this left many ranchers with two
options:
( 1 ) Subdivide and sell up, turning
pastoral land to arable use; or
SWARA April - June 2003
AROUND AND ABOUT THE WilDLIFE
FORA
( 2 ) Maximise domestic stock returns by
eliminating all competing wildlife
The forum satisfied Leakey's request for
an organ through which local views could
be made known to the KWS, while at the
This regrettable situation was aggravated by
a problem that until the 1980s had never
seriously troubled the Machakos ranchers:
that of poaching and trespass. The ranches
lie alongside heavily populated agricultural
land where there is an enormous demand
same time enabling the KWS's views to be
communicated to local landowners. The
for meat: meat of any sort.
A study by the international agency
TRAFFIC showed that by the late 1990s in
neighbouring Kitui District, also peopled
by the Kamba, monthly consumption of
wildlife flesh (bush meat) averaged 14.1 kg
per family of seven (67 grammes of wildlife
meat per person per day). This is so significant a proportion of the average diet that
stopping it is not a political option. Some
alternative source of nutrition would first
have to be found. Suffice it to say, then,
that while such usage is unsustainable, no
outcry from conservationists is going to
resolve the conundrum.
Whereas 50 years ago the Kamba were
choosy over what wildlife they ate, now
their intake includes even small birds and
ground squirrels, as well as the larger
species. Where once the source of game
meat was the Kamba's own grazing and
farmlands, now it is the national parks,
game reserves and - closer still- the ranches of Machakos and neighbouring Kajiado.
forum's strength lay in its informality, in
its lack of bureaucratic commitment, and in obviating the need
for finance, registration and all
the paperwork that goes hand
in hand with forming a legal
entity. More important, however, participation
in such a
forum called for no surrender of
the landowner's rights as a
'competent authority' under
Section 2 of the Wildlife Act.
Since 1990, when the
Machakos Forum was estab-
Counting teams are allocated areas,
while 'referees' - mainly from the KWS act as umpires in verifYing the results.
While the KWS has provided some vehicles
and pays its own costs, the ranchers have
financed most of this work.
They set the snares so abundantly
cut ranches
fencing to
the
thatmake
theysnares.
very
The system used for the past 11 years is
often catch and destroy cattle. Poachers
rough and ready. But it produces annual
burn ranch pastures to drive game through
results that are comparable. Expressed as
animals/km2,
the data from the forum's
snare lines or to induce green flushes in the
grass to attract game to areas
ringed with snares. Such activities
interfere directly with ranch management, greatly increasing its
Nairobi.
costs.
National
For the first time in 100 years,
some Machakos ranchers are
speaking of getting rid of the
game. For, without it, the poachers now causing such havoc would
have no incentive to trespass.
While this logic may not be flawless, this was the ranchers' frame of
mind when Richard Leakey told
them about devolving responsibilities to them for managing the
game on their lands. This had an
immediate, positive effect on their
attitudes, and they duly set up
Kenya's first wildlife forum.
SWARA April - June 2003
Park
nine founding 'core' ranches appear overleaf From the start in 1991 to 1998, the
trend was a slightly rising density of wild
animals. Between 1998 and 2001 the trend
was downward, due largely to the severest
drought on record, which took its toll on
domestic stock and game alike.
Individual ranch records
Without the
game, the
poachers
now causing
such havoc
would have
no incentive
to trespass.
lished, it has held mote than 40 meetings.
Its members have annually counted the
game on their properties. Because the environment is open grassland, ground counts
are sufficient, and expensive aerial surveys
unnecessary. The ranchers form as many
counting teams as are needed, supplying
vehicles and completing the counting in as
few days as possible to avoid double counting where animals move from one area to
another.
Poachers
across
CONSERVATION
differ over the II-year period.
Two ranches - Machakos and
Yoanni - have seen overall
wildlife increases. Ironically,
these have made Yoanni ever
more attractive to poachers.
Snaring in 2003 is so intense
and widespread that in order to
protect its livestock the ranch
has to devote men more or less
continuously to the task of
removing snares. Four ranches - Game
Ranching Limited, Aimi ma Kilungu,
Portland, and Kapiti - have game that has
been stable or slightly declining. Three Koma, Malili and Lisa - show more definite declines. These were not unexpected,
as Koma and Malili suffered especially
severe poaching.
A further nine ranches are owned by
members who joined the forum after it had
been formed. Of these, four have undergone subdivision into arable plots where
game has no further place. On the remaining five, wildlife is in decline, partly as a
knock-on effect of neighbouring subdivisions and of the rise in poaching that
accompanies sudden influxes of people on
to nearby land.
When the results for all 18 ranches are
pooled, the increases outweigh the decreases, producing an overall slight rise in
numbers between 1991 and 2000.
This was pulled back to a net loss
of around 5 % during the 20002001 drought. In sum, these
results demonstrate a continuation
of the Machakos ranchers' tradition of tolerating and looking after
their wildlife in increasingly difficult circumstances.
At the same time as encouraging the formation of the wildlife
forums in Kenya, Richard Leakey
allowed ranches quotas of animals
that could be culled and their
meat sold. As had been the case
before, the rationale was that
income from meat sales would at
KAPUTIE
PLAINS
best produce profit, at worst ameliorate the costs of keeping the
wildlife. The Machakos quotas are
49
Machakos Wildlife Forum - 9 originating farms
Wildlife Density Logarithmic Trend no./km2 1991 - 2001
30
o
like. The problem is exacerbated when,
as has happened, armchair conservationists in Nairobi claim it is the ranchers
years
112]
density of animals / km21
set after the annual game counts, and the
forum plays the central role in deciding offtakes.
Meat sales from game cropping have
not produced impressive incomes. Take
1996 for example. Had the full annual
quota then been taken it would have yielded about 140 tonnes of meat for an income
ping were to be conducted more efficiently,
it would be unlikely to outperform wellmanaged domestic stock.
Significantly greater returns might
accrue if recreational hunting was reintroduced in Kenya. What hunters will pay per
animal is invariably far higher than its value
as meat. Off-takes of fewer trophy animals
would generate bigger returns, making the
presence of wildlife on one's land more
attractive.
of about US$ 63,636 per km2 (or US$ 0.08
per hectare) - to divide between 23 ranches. At best this would have been pin money.
In fact, far less was earned, as most ranches
did not take their full quotas. Yoani Farm,
for one, takes a quota on principle to assert
of about 200 buffaloes is costing the
Yoani
Farm is a US$
case in13,000-26,000
point. A herd
a right, but has never cropped an animal.
management
The performance of one operation,
annually - principally through having to
control the incidence of the East Coast
Game Ranching Limited, shows that modFever that buffaloes introduce to cattle, but
est returns can be generated, but overall and especially while no hides and trophies . also through having valuable dairy cattle
horned, fences broken, and so on.
can be sold, as is the case - game cropping
If, say, ten buffalo bulls at US$ 6,000
has done little to reverse an increasingly
each (a price attained in Zimbabwe) could
pessimistic attitude towards wildlife among
the Machakos Forum members. Even if
be sold to hunters, then the income would
returns from cropping could be substantialsignificantly outweigh such costs, and havly increased by the marketing hides and
ing the buffaloes on the land would be
profitable.
trophies as well as meat, and even if crop-
Meru's birth
- and rebirth
ForbirthKenya's
National
Park,
there -Meru
in the
first week
of the
April of a White Rhino calf, Rhineroceros
diceros, is being hailed as marking yet
another major turning point in the park's
steadily improving fortunes.
The calf, which has been given the
name Meru, is the first rhino - white or
black - to be born in the park for some
20 years. Both mother and calf are
reportedly in good shape.
Senior Warden, Mark Jenkins, is
understandably elated. "This is a very
proud moment for Meru, for the Kenya
50
If the uncontrolled and rising level
of trespass continues, however, it is
doubtful that any form of use will cover
the costs of suppressing it. At every
meeting the forum has held, the KWS
has been urged to suppress the poaching. This has been the most consistent
feature of the 13-year record. Yet nothing effective has been done.
And this issue, more than any other,
will turn tolerance of wildlife into dis-
Wildlife Service - and for the country as a
whole," he declares. "The fact that Meru
has again become habitable by the threatened White Rhino goes to show," he adds,
"that our efforts to rebuild the park to its
former glory are succeeding."
At present, Meru Park is home to nine
White, and eight Black, Rhinos. All these
have all been translocated over recent years
from as far afield as Solio Ranch near Naro
Moru, Lewa Downs in Laikipia District, and
Lake Nakuru National Park.
The Park's Murera Rhino Sanctuary
covers roughly nine square kilometres. To
avoid any repetition of the massacre by
poaChers (in the late 1980s) of the Park's
then small popUlation of introduced White
Rhinos, the sanctuary boasts the security
themselves who are the poachers.
To conclude this assessment of the
Machakos forum: its members' attitudes
towards wildlife on their land is reflected in the fact that after 100 years of
ranching, the game is still there. If they did
not care about it or wished it gone, it would
have vanished long ago. They have shown
their goodwill by creating the forum and
annually spending much more on conservation than they are obliged to.
While many members are not particularly enthusiastic about hunting - either for
cropping or recreation - they all believe
that, as tourism is not an option for them,
the income these activities can produce is
the only counter to the multiple and rising
pressures to be rid of wildlife. If 'their' wild
animals cannot be turned to profit, then the
case for continuing to keep game on the
land will go on losing ground. It is a pessimistic outlook, but one that has the
weight of history behind it.
iJ
IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF SWARA
The Laikipia experience
Ian Parker continues his assessment
tour of Kenya's Wildlife Fora with a
look at The Laikipia Wildlife Forum.
of an electric perimeter fence and is
subject to round-the-clock surveillance by
patrolling rangers.
Says Jenkins, "For years, my staff
and I have been concentrating almost
exclusively on wiping out banditry within
the Park and now, at last, we are starting
to see some of the fruits of our labours."
Today's presence on the ground of
well trained and very highly motivated
security and intelligence teams means
that visitors to this wonderfully scenic
870-km2 park can once again safely
enjoy its astonishingly diverse range of
fauna and flora.
- reported by Trupti Shah
and Gichuki Kabukuru
SWARA April - June 2003
ENVIRONMENT
Watch this
(green) space
Go
will be amazed (if you haven't been
therefor
anya day
of the
you
there
while)
byweek,
how and
popular
the place is.
There are people out jogging on the
leafy pathways at first light before going
to the office - and again at dusk, when
the working day is over. There are senior
citizens out walking their dogs; parties
of tittering schoolchildr~n on guided
nature walks; pairs of lovers arm-in-arm
on shaded lawns beneath towering Meru
Oaks and Podocarpus trees; sun-worshippers; students on pathside benches
taking advantage of the tranquillity to
catch up on their course work ...
There is birdsong, too, in the
branches overhead, and - in the dappled
shadows below - the continual flicker of
passing butterflies.
Then, over weekends, amid countless family picnics, the young (and
not-so-young) kick and lob balls about,
or practise at cricket or French skipping.
Motley church groups, gathered in circles around certain trees, go about
offering their worship, while wandering
God-botherers (and there are always
plenty of these) ululate and chant their
Lord's praises to the skies.
The scene of all this outdoor activity
(or repose, if you prefer) is the Nairobi
Arboretum, the 25-hectare 'green space'
at the heart of the Kenyan capital, now a
bustling city of three-million people.
Established in 1907, the Arboretum is
very nearly as old as the city itself But its
importance as a central public amenity,
accessible to all, has probably never been
greater, given the pressures of modern
urban living - and the need, growing
almost by the day, for a breathing space
amid the city's stifling crush and clutter.
That the Arboretum has survived to
become the vibrant place it is today, so
widely used and appreciated by so many, is
a tribute in large part to the Friends of the
Nairobi Arboretum (FONA). This voluntary group on 14 June celebrated its tenth
anniversary with a garden party held - naturally enough - on the Arboretum's
spacious Central Lawn.
FONA's coming into being on World
Environment Day (5 June) 1993 followed
the bleakest period in the Arboretum's long
history. Neglected and overgrown, it had -
SWARA April - June 2003
by the end of the 1980s - become a haunt
for thieves and ne'er-do-wells, to be avoided at all costs. Left in this state, it also faced
the very real prospect of being expropriated
by land-grabbers.
350-odd species represented - some selected
specimens now bear smart new, up-to-date
aluminium identification tags. The walkways are maintained and sign-posted, and
in some cases these have been re-routed to
provide for maximum visitor interest.
In Peter Irungu Mungai, the Arboretum
now has a full-time Environmental Officer,
as well as an on-site security presence of
guards and watchmen, and ten other attendants whose job it is to keep the place clean
and well looked-after. Bird and Tree Lists
are available, as are detailed annotated
guides to several recommended 'DIY'
trails. And there is a colourful 48-page
booklet, published in 2001, entitled
Nairobi Arboretum
- The Place of Trees.
All these improvements have been
financed either by donors, individual
and corporate, or out of the proceeds of
sponsored fund-raising events laid on by
FONA. The latter include the popular
annual outdoor concert, 'Wind in the
Trees', as well as monthly Tree Walks
and special Family Nature Days.
"In the beginning it was difficult,"
~ recalls FONA's founder-chairperson
;ii Ann Birnie, "to instill confidence into
:;:
~
~
~
:;'
Not to be missed: the exquisite flower of the
Nairobi Arboretum's sole Calabash Nutmeg,
Monodora myristica, which blooms each year
between September and November. In Kenya,
the natural range of this mainly West-Central
African species includes only the Kakamega
Forest.
Something had to be done. So FONA,
under the banner of the East Africa Natural
History Society (now Nature Kenya),
embarked - in consultation with the Forest
Department
Environment
of Kenya's Ministry
of
and Natural Resources
(which manages the Arboretum) - on a
series of ambitious rehabilitation projects.
The fruits, so far, of these projects are
plain for all to see: from the secure visitors'
car park and the broad, brick-paved
entrance 'boulevard' to the various toilets,
waste bins, benches, and picnic tables - not
to mention the permanent, sheltered banda
on the Central Lawn.
The inventory of the trees themselves
(all 5,600 of them) has been comprehensively updated, and - for most of the
people as to the potential value and
importance of this place. But then, little
by little over the years, and with the help
of some generous donors, our efforts
gained momentum, and today," she
adds, "the Arboretum has almost too
many visitors on some weekends."
That momentum looks set to con-
tinue gathering pace. A Masterplan,
adopted in 2000, holds the promise of
exciting new developments, including a
modern Resource Centre, a children's
playground and some water features,
coupled with upgrades to the toilets and
other existing facilities. These plans, spelt
out during June's anniversary bash by
Arboretum Management Board Chairman,
Lieutenant-Colonel (rtd) Julius Githiri, are
expected to become reality in time for the
Arboretum's Centennial in 2007.
By then, it is hoped, the place will be a
vibrant and wholly self-sustaining amenity,
eminently worthy of its role (articulated in
1958) as a "Popular resort for residents and
visitors alike ... who wish to pass a quiet
afternoon in cool, pleasant surroundings."
Only now, the Nairobi Arboretum is
perhaps also the most accessible place for
people to see, and to learn all about, some
of the threatened indigenous trees of
Kenya's precious remaining forests.
- by Gordon Boy
For further information on the Nairobi Arboretum, FONA's Peter Mungai can be contacted c/o
Nature Kenya on Tel + 254 ( 2 ) 3749957/86, or bye-mail via<[email protected]
>.
51
the forest lie calm and speckled in the
Thehumid
midday
the shadows
of
heat.light
Anandotange
butterfly,
buoyant and vivacious, glides effortlessly
between the patches of sunlight and
mottled darkness. Suddenly, a flash of
rufous plumage bursts from the sepia
shadows. It whirls and swoops, following a winding flight path.
Startled, the butterfly folds its wings
and dives steeply - but to no avail. In an
instant, the flycatcher has seized it,
returning to its perch among the shadows. All seems lost for this butterfly, ~
tightly gripped in the blue-black bill of ~
the young African Paradise Flycatcher. ~
Bobbing its head, the flycatcher prepares ~
to swallow its hard-earned meal.
~
This is not the end of the story for ~
the lazy butterfly, however, merely the
beginning.
As suddenly as it had seized the insect,
the flycatcher now drops the butterfly. The
young bird retches violently, shaking its
head vigorously from side to side. It looks
down, beak held open in obvious distaste,
at the fallen butterfly.
The butterfly is an equally young and
na"ive individual, having only recently
emerged from a sheltering pupa. Weakly,
she moves her wings, spreading them out,
torn and battered, in a pool of streaming
sunshine covering the rotting log on to
which she has fallen.
Puzzled, the flycatcher eyes the wounded butterfly intently, examining the bright
colou;s and bold patterns on the insect's
wings. That foaming, acrid taste, still burning its tongue, is something this bird wants
never to experience again. That tasty-looking morsel he had been about to swallow
has given him a dose of something quite
new - and unforgettably vile. This is one
mistake he won't be making again!
The young flycatcher will forever after
associate the colours and patterning of this
butterfly, now warming its bruised tissues
on the log, wirh this foul taste. This has
been an unpleasant lesson, but a necessary
one. And the flycatcher must learn it well.
The butterfly is an African Monarch,
Danaus chrysippus. Her resolve returns with
each minute of strengthening sunshine.
Slowly, gingerly, she opens and closes her
Mimics and models
Dino
J Martins
on nature's 'well-dressed' con-artists.
ual butterfly lost means, in this case, that
one more would-be predator has been
'educated', making life that little bit
safer for others of the species.
African Monarch butterflies belong
to a long-recognised group of unpalatable species. Their caterpillars feed on
toxic food-plants,
the milkweeds
(Asclepiadaceae). The toxic compounds,
which the plant has evolved for its own
purposes, are highly concentrated and
become a part of the body tissues of the
future adult butterflies. Milkweeds con-
'Wanabee': Through mimicking the
appearance of its Honeybee (Apis
mellifera) model, this stingless Hover
Fly (family Syrphidae), is secure in
being able to capitalise on the tendency among predators to avoid the bee,
out of respect for its painful sting.
wings. Then, dented but resilient, she rises
feebly and flutters away. But this effort,
Herculean arrer the battering she has taken,
carries her just a few metres. It is too much
for her tiny heart, and she falls to the
ground and sits there, perfectly still, wings
folded over her back, awaiting her fate.
The butterfly's death later on, during
the night, obscure and unnoticed, i!>not
entirely in vain.
The next day, the flycatcher returns to
his perch among the shadows. The mottled
light is warm and still, as before. A movement among the shadows, graceful and
confident, catches his eye. Instinctively, he
tenses in readiness to swoop. A butterfly of
a bright orange colour emerges into a pool
of sunlight. The flycatcher, remembering
how nauseating this bright hue tasted,
relaxes again, staying firmly on his perch.
The second butterfly, another African
Monarch, floats nonchalantly by. Her confidence is due, in part, to the sacrifice of her
predecessor. One individual lost helps to
ensure, in a small way, the genetic integrity
of all her siblings, cousins, indeed all the
other members of her species. One individ-
tain several complex cardiac glycosides.
Chemical analyses of adult monarchs
have shown that at least three of these toxic
glycosides are present in their tissues.
Birds such as flycatchers, bee-eaters and
drongos feed on butterflies among other
insects taken on the wing. That they should
very quickly learn to associate the bad taste
with the distinct colours and patterns of the
African Monarch butterfly is complicated
enough in itself But the puzzle does not
end there, for there is another whole level of
consideration: Mimicry.
As with all adaptations, in nature and
life, the association of colours with taste is
open to eXploitation by others.
A few days later, the flycatcher is again
at his perch. Life COJ;Desand goes around
him. He' watches everything: from the
movements 9f insects, his potential meals,
to the swoops of a ·sparrowhawk that may
yet make a meal of him. A succession of
butterflies, dragonflies, bees and wasps flits
in and out of view. Then a large sailing butterfly, black with orange and white
markings, drifts across the forest floor,
keeping to the shadows.
The flycatcher watches the newcomer
intently with his beady black, blue-ringed
eye. The but~erfly flutters on by, unmolested. Even to an inadequate human eye, this
is obviously a species totally different from
the unpalatable African Monarch. Yet the
flycatcher, wary after his mistake, chooses
to err on the side of caution and lets her be.
This
Hypolimnas
Spot the Impostors (facing page): The edible Diadem butterfly, Hypolimnas misippus, has
evolved a mimic to match each different form (and there are at least four of these) of its
model, the toxic African Monarch, Danaus chrysippus. Two of the Hypolimnas mimics (top
left, bottom right) appear here with their Monarch models (top and centre right). Faced with
such convincing Imitators, It Is little wonder the African Paradise Flycatcher, Terpsiphone
viridis (centre), learns to take no chances - and to give such lookallkes a wide berth.
Inset: Unpalatable/toxic
day-flying moths (family Agarastidae) are Mullerian mimics whose
many different speCies all look broadiy similar. Those shown here include (top to bottom):
Herac/ia superba, H. geryon, H.'africana, and H. signata
52
butterfly,
a female
Diadem,
misippus, is what is known as a
Batesian mimic - a species closely resembling another species that possesses some
survival-enhancing quality. Here, that quality is the foul taste of the African Monarch.
Gender is an important aspect of mimicry. In many mimetic butterfly species,
only the females are mimics. The gaudy
males remain as obvious and vulnerable as
SWARA April - June 2003
LIFE IN THE WILD
ever. There is a simple reason for rhis. Ir is
the females, laden with eggs, in whom
responsibilty
for the continuity
of the
species rests, and so who needs the added
protection. Male butterflies are dispensable.
But egg-laden females are incredibly precious. So distinct are male and female rhat,
in some cases, one butterfly
has been classi-
fied as two separate species!
African butterflies are noted
for their
elaborate mimicry complexes. This single
gtoup of butterflies,
the Monarchs,
has
more mimics, more complex and confusing, than any of the world's other butterfly
groups. Dozens of palatable species mimic
these milkweed-feeding
butterflies.
So a
young insecrivorous bird has a lot to learn
when faced with a bewildering plethora of
lookalike species! Even experienced naturalists are sometimes
fooled.
Many
a
collection has the odd mimeric species
you are protected
toxins?
anyway
by unpalatable
The answer is simply one of statistics. If
one, two, three, or more toxic species share
a common 'suit', then fewer individuals of
anyone
species have to be sacrificed to
teach predators
that
they taste bad.
Predators
will have to learn only one
colour-pattern-taste
association for several
species, rarher than a separate one for each
different species.
Mimicry is not limited to toxic and
palatable butterflies, however. Among the
true flies (Order: Diprera),
some whole
genera are mimetic. Flies mimic bees and
wasps, whose ability to sting is enough of a
deterrent
to many would-be
predators.
Mimicry is one of those aspects of nature
that never ceases to amaze. Ir is always
predators learn to associate the colours
with an unpleasant
taste. So, if rhere
were more mimics than models, the
colour-taste association would be harder
advantage in nature.
Unpalatableltoxic
mimetic
association
species also engage in
among themselves.
Many unpalatable species share one another's colours and patterns. There are distinct
species, even genera, whose members all
look the same. Mimicry of this sort, among
unpalatable species, is Mullerian
Mullerian
mimics include
mimicry.
numerous
species of Acraea butterflies, some day-flying moths and several close relarives of the
African Monarch butterfly. Why, though,
would you all want to look the same when
'Femme fatale': This stingless Robber-Fly,
Hyperechia consimilis, profits from mimicking the black-and-white female Carpenter
Bee, Xylocopa nigrita, not only for its own
protection, but also to lure male bees,
excited by the prospect of a potential
mate, which it then kills and eats.
thrilling
to come upon a crearure, assuming
ir to be a honeybee or wasp, only to find
that it is really something completely different, a mere sheep in wolf's clothing.
This is rrue of a recent encounter
in
western Kenya. In the hor, tangled bush
fringing
the southern
shores of Lake
Victoria's Mfangano
Island, I am busy
watching a profusion of flowering creepers
for the comings and goings of bees and
other pollinators. The lake is sparkling and
winking
beneath
me, the steamy heat
cooled by intermittent
light puffs of humid
air. Bees on view include familiar honey-
Uniformly unpalatable (facing page): Many Acraea butterfly species (top), while protected by
toxins, also look broadly similar, so spreading the benefits of the colour-pattern-taste
association in what is known as Mullerian mimicry. Shown here (left to right) are Pogge's Wanderer,
Acraea poggei; Aurivillius' Acraea, A. aurivillii, and A. macarista. Second row: Edible species
that rely for protection on their resemblance to toxic species are called Batesian mimics.
The Layman Butterfly, Amauris albimaculata (left), is the model for the Pseudacraea deludens
mimic (right), while Marshall's Acraea Mimic, Mimacraea marshallii (centre), mimics the
African Monarch (previous spread). Third row: The female Carpenter Bee (left) is the model for
the Robber-Fly mimic (centre), which uses the resemblance to prey upon the yellow-ochre
male Carpenter Bee (specimen right). Bottom: The stingless Hover Fly mimic (left) and its
model, the Honeybee.
SWARA April - June 2003
sured by her familiar presence.
She circles and lands on a leaf. Hmmm,
why is she not interested
in the flowers?
Puzzled,
I step in closer. She remains
motionless on that leaf. So I move in yet
closer. But still she does not move. This,
surely, is not the way of a feisty bee. So I
squat down, until I am eye to eye with her.
And what I now see, clearly, is that this may
not be a bee at all.
not want to risk being stung. Heart racing, braced for the piercing sting if I am
~ wrong, I seize the insect. Ir struggles, but
~ does not sting. I am right: It is a mimic,
~
an incredible mimic; a robber-fly!
en
and model species is a crucial aspecr of
mimicry. The ruse works only where
simple association - is to stand a greater
chance of not ending up as somebody's
lunch. Any edge, however slight, is an
and on orchids in the Kingwal Swamp
(SWARA Vol 25:1). I feel confident, reas-
Could this be a Xylocopa mimic, I
begin to wonder. Still not sure, I reach
out. The insect, confident of its deceptive guise, ignores me. Surely I should
either labelled as or lumped togerher
with the more abundant model species.
The relative abundance
of mimic
to maintain, as predators would fail to
learn the 'system'. The odds of a bird's
eating a particular
(palatable)
individual
must be weighted in favour of the mimic.
The model, then, which possesses the
defensive characteristic,
must always outnumber the mimic, if the latter - through
bees, tiny black stingless bees, and some
leaf-cutters with their large mandibles.
A large black-and-white
carpenter bee
arrives. I know her well. This is Xylocopa
nigrita, one of Africa's largest bees. I have
watched
her before on yellow-flowered
Ochna in the forests of Arabuko-Sokoke,
~
Later, in the languid afternoon, I get
~ to see the wicked behaviour of this bee!<' mimicking
robber-fly. The fly resembles
the black-and-white
female carpenter
bee. The bee males are bright yellow-ochre.
They spend most of their days diligently
patrolling a small patch of bush: marking
the leaves and twigs with special scents. Any
female they encounter is quickly courted.
The male carpenter bees can spot the bico loured females from a distance.
The robber-fly, dressed like a potential
mate, quickly attracts the attention of the
males. Glowing with ardour, they buzz
towards what they think is a mate. The
ruthless robber-fly seizes them in its hooked
legs and stabs them, piercing and sucking
out their body juices. Even their crops are
emptied of nectar. These male bees do not
stand a chance. Blinded by their own lust,
they do not know what has hit them until
it is too late.
Mimicry,
as an area of adaptation,
remains wide open to exploration.
Many
mimetic species resemble not only their
model's
colours
model's behaviour
and patterns,
but the
as well. The evolution of
these complex synergies of pattern, colour
and behaviour rank among nature's greatest
complexities.
Many mysteries have yet to be solved
regarding the involved
between models and
levels of association
mimics. Only one
thing is certain: In the natural world,
not always believe what you see!
do
it
55
z
faI
W
=>
z
:g;
z
~
W
I
@
Far
mountain
Marsabit, then and now
massif rises dark and cool
of Kenya,
a forested
out in ofthethenorth
blindingly
sun-scorched
stony desert. In 1921 an enterprising
American couple climbed its slopes and
made it world famous.
Cynthia Salvadori on the changing face of the mountain
and of the crater lake thereon that some have likened
to paradise itself.
I looked around me, slowly, breathlessly. I
saw a spot of unsurpassable beauty - a cool,
turquoise lake surrounded by clean virginal
forest where fantastically beautiful birds
coloured the trees. I listened, and knew that
if I could hear all the ageless echoes which
had resounded against these cliffs, it would
be no familiar human sound ... It was as
Sokorte Guda, the Big Crater Lake) since
time immemorial,
but - thanks to their
world
too for
though we had been dropped into the
Garden of Eden, which had never before
known Man.
nearly 30 years. The first western
traveller
guidance
- to the outside
to visit
"the
splendid
called Marsabit,"
In 1924 Osa and Martin Johnson
returned
mountain
group
rising some 1,000 metres
above the surrounding
desert, and to see
the lake was, coincidentally,
another
to live there, building on the lake's rim an
extensive camp they used as a base to fulfil
their dream of "preserving the wild life of
American,
Africa in [their] films," a sojourn that Osa
described as Four Years in Paradise.
days there in 1895, after having trekked
south from Somaliland via Lake RudolE
Osa wrote that they had heard about
the lake from the hunter-game
warden
Blayney Percival, who had shown them a
description in "a thin, worn book written
by a Scots missionary in the early part of
the nineteenth
century."
Her husband
described their "hunting for the lost lake
Paradise."
Being skilled publicists,
they
tended to be a bit fey with facts.
The lake had been well known not only
to the local
56
people
(who
called
it Gof
Arthur
the
Donaldson
wealthy
Smith.
young
explorer
He spent
two
of the crater form a semicircle about it, while
from another side a broad road leads from
the forest to the open meadows beyond. The
atmosphere is moist and cool. In the early
morning dense clouds are swept along by
invigorating blasts of cold air, combining
with the dew of night to freshen up the
plants and trees. Outside the forest the view
is superb.
In August 1897 the wealthy young adventurer Lord Delamere and his companion
Dr Atkinson,
also having come from
Somalia criss-crossing
Donaldson
Smith's
route, visited the mountain. Early the fol-
We left the Rendile on September the 9th,
with our water barrels well filled, as we were
told that the next water which could be
obtained was on the top of Marsabit. On the
second day we commenced to ascend the
mountain, but we did not reach the top until
after three marches. According to European
ideas, nothing could be more charming than
this Marsabit. Surrounded by a large forest,
and lying on top of the mountain, is a lake a
mile square, clear and deep. The jagged walls
lowing year they returned. Delamere never
wrote up his travels, but his biographer
Elspeth Huxley records that
By this time Delamere had almost given up
shooting. He stayed at Marsabit, however,
for three weeks for Atkinson's benefit. The
Doctor shot twenty-one elephants in twentyone days.
Atkinson
then returned
to hunt ivory and it
SWARA April - June 2003
ON SAFARI
'A spot of unsurpassable beauty': lake Paradise (facing page) is undeniably the
high point of any visit to Marsabit. Above: One of the mountain's many verdant
glades, ringed by old trees draped in 'Old Man's Beard' (Usnea) lichen and
favoured by animals like this female Greater Kudu (right).
was his unscrupulous
behaviour that precipitated the first visit to Marsabit by an
East African Protectorate official, in 1902.
Charles
Eliot,
the then
Protectorate
Commissioner
an Assistant
(later Governor), dispatched
Collector,
Harold Tate, to
investigate Atkinson's
vicious murder of
some Rendille for refusing to part with their
ivory at the price he offered. While making
his investigations,
Crater Lake.
Tate
spent
six days at
The stories of ivory galore got around.
Abyssinian hunters, newly equipped with
firearms (courtesy of European arms dealers, then as now), swarmed down from their
highlands, while Europeans came in from
the south. Since 1900 Marsabit had been
the north-eastern
corner of
the great
Northern Game Reserve, set up to to prevent hunting by outsiders, both Abyssinians
and Europeans. Blayney Percival, who later
told the Johnsons about the crater lake, was
then the country's only game ranger.
Also in 1902, an avid young entrepreneur named Jack Riddell trudged up from
Nairobi with an employee/companion
to
set up his Boma Trading Company on the
rim of Crater Lake. Initially the Nairobi
administration
encouraged his enterprise as
a foil to the Abyssinians,
but soon they
came to view the young men's 'trading'
activities with mistrust
and decided to
establish colonial law and order themselves
in the newly demarcated
District.
':>VVf\nM
1"\1-'111
.JUIlt::
L.VV-.J
Northern
And
so
Commissioner,
in
1909
the
Frederick
Protectorate
Jackson,
dis-
patched his nephew Geoffrey Archer to take
control of the situation. He set up a staging
post on the banks of the Uaso Nyiro (to this
day the nearby village is known as Archer's
Post), before continuing north to Marsabit.
Riddell obviously saw the handwriting
on
the log walls. For, as Archer
memoirs
wrote
in his
He lunched amiably with me as I marched in
and his caravan marched out. His caravan
consisted entirely of 'chop boxes' filled with
illicit ivory sawn into small pieces to avoid
detection.
Archer
demolished
the
remains
of the
Boma Trading Company's
structures and
built in its place the government's Marsabit
Station, a tidy little settlement oflog cabins
complete
with military blockhouse
and
lines for his soldiery, the locally recruited
Northern Frontier Constabulary, 80 strong.
The Johnsons were not even the first to
write of the lake as paradisiacal. In 1910
Lord Cranworth
walked from Nairobi to
Addis, and Gnthe way he stopped briefly at
Marsabit, where Archer had just established
himself. Cranworth noted that
Indeed, from whichever side of the inhospitable wastes one approaches the station, it
seems little less than Paradise.
Frontier
Although
his Kenya Chronicles was not pub-
lished until 1939, it still came out two years
before Osa Johnson's book - which was not
published until 1941!
Fortunately for the future of the forest,
the station was later shifted from Crater
Lake down to the edge of the forest, a few
kilometres
below a smaller
lake, Gof
Sokorte Dikka (Little Crater Lake). In 1937
Gerald
well,
with
their
book
Reece, who already knew
the area
was posted to Marsabit and brought
him his bride, Alys, who recorded
eleven years there in her delightful
For My Wife - 50 Camels.
[Gerald] painted a wonderful picture of
Marsabit Mountain where the government
station was. It was a mountain oasis, covered
with thick virgin forest that was the home of
elephant and greater kudu ... always green
beneath the low clouds. It rose in the middle
of the vast, empty Northern Frontier
District, and the forest and flowers were all
the more striking for the desolation which
lay all around beyond the first slopes - the
lava deserts, the bleak wastes and the thin
sparse scrub ...
There were flowers even in the forest; some
slopes were carpeted with red fuzzy lilies and
along the water courses the yellow bauhinia
grew, all the more beautiful for the vast
numbers of butterflies and dragonflies which
flickered and hovered over it. There were
ferns everywhere, and sometimes one had the
good fortune to find a cascade of perfect
little orchids with an exquisite scent. There
was also a very common tree in the forest
3T
that flowers like lilies of the valley, and had
the same perfume. When the flowers began
to fall they formed a thick creamy carpet and
every step one took released more perfume.
And besides all these flowers there were
culture, reducing the reserve to 1,198 km2•
The park, however, remains intact.
The only people who ever lived in the
forest were small bands of Waata hunter-
ridges which were white with mushrooms.
gatherers, but the surrounding
pastoralists
- Samburu and Rendille to the south and
By the Reeces' time at Marsabit, the forested summit of Marsabit mountain
was a
360-km2 Forest Reserve under the Forest
Department's
protection. Towards the end
of their stay there, most of what had originally been the Northern
Game Reserve
became the Marsabit
National
Reserve
under the control of the Trustees of
the then
Royal
National
Parks
someone
in the
has - for the time being at least - been
stopped. (The venerable little Harry Thuku
Forest in the town was completely obliterated, however.)
previous week a leopard and her cub.
There are said to be nearly 1,000
a:
buffaloes permanen tly resident in
the park, and in the morning I saw
some of them grazing at the lake's
edge, before the mist came in and
shrouded them. One day I was rid-
~
Marsabit forest must have contained more
elephants, buffalo and rhino to the square
mile than any other spot in Africa, particularly in the dry weather when the water on
the plains had given out. From one coign of
vantage on the eastern slopes I have observed
through field-glasses as many as four separate
herds of elephants moving up the mountain
side and converging on the forest ... [In
making surveys] rhinos were often the first
difficulty. Every rocky hill lower down the
mountain-side was infested with rhem, and I
have counted as many as thirteen in the
course of a day.
Marsabit was noted for the immense ivory
carried by its elephants. Two individuals
became especially famous. The first, in the
late 1940s and early 1950s, was Mohamed,
long. Next
was Ahmed, who in the I960s was protected by Presidential decree.
In 1959 the
Committee
ruled
country's
Game Policy
that the vast Marsabit
National Reserve
1,728 km2 of
Mountain below
also decided that
be reduced to take in only
the slopes of Marsabit
the Fotest Reserve. It was
the Fotest Reserve should
become a National Park, although it took
some years of internal government
wrangling before the decision became fact. In
the early I990s, 530 km2 of the eastern
slopes of the National
R~serve were
58
of 2000,
ager told me that two nights ago he
had seen a lioness come to drink, the
tury in eastern Africa and was a ::'
renowned
naturalist
as well as ~
to provide
part
But all is not lost! My tiny
Suzuki had to weave through a herd
of elephants when we drove up to
the lodge to write this story. And, as
I sat talking with the manager on the
verandah
at dusk, the elephants
came to mill around at the salt lick,
almost within arm's reach. The man-
Archer, who spent a quarter of a cen- ~
<!
degazetted
increasing illegal logging of precious hardwoods, though so far not to the devastating
extent as in other more accessible forests. In
the latter
ao
whose tusks were exceptionally
forest. The collecting of dead firewood is
legal and somewhat controlled, but there is
Marsabit County Council began selling off
plots along the forest's western
edge.
Fortunately
this raised a hue and cry, and
of
that during
on the
slopes of the mountain (which they called,
and still call, Saku) for dry season grazing
for their camels, sheep and goats when the
plains became desperately dry. Then came
the Borana with their cattle, moving south
from their high savannah to escape the well-
In the two days that we remained at
Marsabit, Dodson and I collected
many rare species of birds and
mammals, though we could catch no
fish whatsoever in the lake. I also had
administrator,
remarked
his time 0907-1913)
encroachment
west, Gabra to the north and east - used the
Kenya. Explorers
had appreciated
the mountain's wildlife from the very
start, for as Donaldson Smith says
some good sport with elephant.
There is constant
more land fot agri-
Northern point of entry: This sign, with
the Marsabit massif in the distance,
shows how extensive the Reserve is.
armed Amharas' conquest of their land at
the turn of the last century.
on the mountain
in the 1920s and
pressure
began administrato be put
the colonial
Permanent
'30s when
tors encouraged skilled Burji farmers from
the eponymous area in Ethiopia to take up
farming to supply the station with maize
and fresh vegetables. Slowly, very slowly,
some of the pastoralists too began to take
up agriculture, encouraged after independence
by the Kenyan
administration,
international
NGOs
and (most of the)
Christian missions, all of whom, for their
various reasons, prefer people to be settled.
Poaching has increased drastically in the
reserve and the surrounding desert. The last
Marsabit rhino had to be removed to a private rhino sanctuary in the 1980s. The area
is seasonal home to several hundred ele-
ing my pony near the forest's edge, when he
and I were startled by an equally startled
greater kudu, which came bounding out of
.the bush. Several times we were surprised
by bushbuck and warthogs. And there were
also countless smaller mammals scurrying
about.
Although the high point of the park, of
the whole range, is Mount Marsabit itself,
which rises to 1,707 metres (5,599 feet) on
the west side of the range,
looming
over
Gof Sokorte Dikka and the lodge (a rough
motorable track leads up to the transmitting station at the top), the real high point
is the lake. When the Johnsons left their
lovely lakeside home, Osa wrote
Dtiving over the rim of the crater, we
stopped for a hnallook. 'It's a Garden of
Eden, Martin. I hope it never changes. 'I
hope it never will,' he said. 'I hope that
Lake Paradise will always remain just as
God created it.'
So far the Johnsons' wish has held true. But
to ensure that it continues to hold true will
phants. In 1999 the official figure was 400,
but the number is rapidly decreasing. For,
after a lull, eleven elephants were poached
in 1999, four in 2000, an appalling 19 in
require dedicated supetvision by the Kenya
Wildlife Service, coupled with the co-operation of the local people, and greatly
increased publicity to raise tourism revenues, so the people come to realise that
2001. Kudu and smaller animals are everywhere hunted and snared for bushmeat.
conservation really can be made to payoff
r1
in hard cash.
SWARA April - June 2003
REVIEWS
Tanzania's avian riches
Tanzania's birdlife, with more than
wealth
and country
diversitylist of
1,100great
species
on the
at
IMPORTANT BIRD AREAS
IN TANZANIA
The
last count, is often overshadowed
more renowned mammalian fauna.
So, while
by its
by Neil and Elizabeth Baker
the lions and wildebeest
of
the Serengeti may be familiar enough (from
Discovery Channel documentaries,
if nothing else), it is much less widely known that
the Tanzanian
Serengeti is home to five
endemic bird species. These include the
Grey-breasted Spurfowl, found only in and
the Serengeti ecosystem.
An even more extraordinary endemic
Wildlife Conservation
Society of Tanzania,
2003303
Reviewed
pp.
by Fred Nelson
is
with
International
criteria for designating
important bird areas (IBAs) focus on sites
supporting species restricted to certain biomes or habitats (endemics or near-endemics)
CRITICALLY ENDANGERED:
Uluguru Bush Shrike, Malaconotus alius
Long-billed Apalis, Orthotomus moreaui
ENDANGERED:
Udzungwa Forest Partridge. Xenoperdix
udzungwensis
Spotted Ground Thrush, Zoothera guttata
VULNERABLE:
Lesser Kestrel, Falco naumanni
Taita Falcon, Falco fasci/nucha
Wattled Crane, Bugeranus carunculatus
Corncrake, Crex crex
Sokoke Scops Owl, Otus ireneae
Usambara Eagle Owl, Bubo vosseleri
Blue Swallow, Hirundo atrocaerulea
Sokoke Pipit, Anthus sokokensis
Grey-crested Helmet Shrike,
Prionopspoliolophus
Swynnerton's Robin, Swynnertonia
swynnertoni
SWARA April - June 2003
range from the seabird colonies of Latham
Island, 60 km east of Dar es Salaam in the
Indian Ocean, to the highland pastures of
the Kitulo Plateau in southern Tanzania,
where threatened Blue Swallows breed, to
the arid Lake Natron
basin near the
Kenyan border, nesting site of most of the
world's Lesser Flamingos.
Each site account is divided into six
components:
a basic description,
a review
of conservation
issues
and rarely visited sites will prove fascinating
even to those laying claim to long-term
familiarity with Tanzania and its birdlife.
and sites with significant populations
of
particular species (of gregarious waterbirds,
say, like flamingos).
Inventories based on
these criteria can then be used to prioritise
conservation actions - determining right of
passage on to the ark, so to speak.
The book's collection of descriptions of
Checklist
Globally threatened bird species cited in
Important Bird Areas in Tanzania:
climatic,
topodiversity. IBA sites
further reading on the area.
Each IBA account is accompanied
by
an elegantly clear and simple map showing
the IBA's delineation and basic geography.
While these site accounts take up just two
or three pages each, they pack a wealth of
information
into every paragraph.
This
book is now undeniably the best compact
source of general information on Tanzanian
birds and their conservation. No such synthesis has ever been available before.
Accounts of some of the more obscure
Birdlife International,
Important Bird Areas
in Tanzania is a component of the latter
organisation's effort to "save all the birds of
the world from extinction." An initial step
on such a daunting mission is to determine
where the most important
bird populations, globally, are found, and what threats
these species and their habitats face.
reflects the
followed by ideas for addressing these with
future actions, and finally references and
the subject of Neil and Elizabeth Baker's
detailed and informative new production.
Published by the Wildlife Conservation
in partnership
country's
extraordinary
graphic, and ecological
wildlife, a discussion
the Udzungwa Forest Partridge of central
Tanzania's
Udzungwa
Mountains.
Only
discovered in 1991, this species belongs to
a genus whose other members all occur in
Asia. The presence of such rare endemic
species is just one measure of the enormous
conservation value of Tanzania's birdlife -
of Tanzania
IBAs - 80 in all -
of the area's birds and IBA qualifications, a
mention of other threatened
or endemic
around
Society
Tanzanian
East Coast Akalat, Sheppardia gunningi
Usambara Akalat, Sheppardia montana
Iringa Akalat, Sheppardia lowei
Dappled Mountain Robin, Modulatrix
orostruthus
White-winged Apalis, Apalis chariessa
Kungwe Apalis, Apalis argentea
Karamoja Apalis, Apalis karamojae
Mrs Moreau's Warbler, Bathmocercus
winifredae
Papyrus Yellow Warbler, Chloropeta
gracilirostris
Amani Sunbird, Anthreptes pallidigaster
Banded Green Sunbird, Anthreptes
rubritorques
Rufous-winged Sunbird, Nectarinia
rufipennis
South Pare White-eye, Zosterops
winifredae
Kilombero Weaver, Ploceus burnieri
Usambara Mountain Weaver, Ploceus
nicolli
Abbott's Starling, Cinnyricinclus
femoralis
- FN
For example, this reviewer had never heard
of, let alone visited, the Eluanata Dam IBA,
despite having lived within 50 km of the
site for several years.
Users of this book, ranging from visiting birders and naturalists to professional
conservation
planners, will benefit greatly
from the descriptions and from the wealth
of data and practical suggestions. In many
cases, even the general descriptions
sites and of the local conservation
of the
issues
represent the best synthesis of information
ever made available. This is especially true
of the more remote sites and of those that
receive few tourists.
The information
provided in the site
descriptions, and in a special annex on the
conservation
of critically
endangered
species such as the Uluguru Bush Shrike, is
likely to prove the most useful aspect to the
widest readership. But the book's aims go
much further. In their introduction,
the
Bakers stress that this work is ultimately
about preserving national and global bird
populations,
and that "If further conservation action does not follow, then the efforts
of this study will have been in vain."
This book thus serves not only as an
inventory, but also as a timely call to action
to save Tanzania's birds and their habitats.
59
Fortunately, in some instances the text has
been overtaken by events, as in the case of
the Kitulo Plateau. There, a National Park
has recently been gazetted by the Tanzanian
government (SWARA 25:1), a designation
that happily corresponds to the Bakers'
own recommendations for that area.
Anatomy of a crisis
EATING APES
by Dale Peterson
However, one problem with the book's
conservationist aspirations is that in almost
all cases it advocates creating new protected
areas or upgrading the status of existing
multiple-use ones. As the authors note,
Tanzania has already allocated about 25 %
of its lands to exclusive conservation areas.
with an Afterword
and Photographs
by Karl Ammann
University of California Press
(Berkeley, LA, London), 2003.
ISBN 0-520-23090-6
This total is among the highest of any
nation on earth, despite the fact that
Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in
the world and is still struggling to extricate
itself from the effects of the economic
implosion it suffered in the 1970s and 80s.
The combination of these two factorsan already extensive network of protected
areas and desperate rural poverty - create
considerable doubt as to the feasibility of
relying solely on more and bigger parks and
reserves to solve all conservation challenges.
In Tanzania, as throughout East Africa,
meeting these challenges will come down in
large part to finding ways of conserving
species and habitats within the context of a
human-dominated
environment
where
people and wild species are able to co-exist.
This weakness does not detract from
the book's achievements. In any case, the
conservation recommendations offered are
intended largely to provoke thought on
appropriate management actions, which
they certainly do.
lt should be pointed out that this work
is just the latest among the Bakers' contributions to Tanzanian ornithology and
avian conservation. They organised and
reported on the first ever co-ordinated
national waterbird count in Tanzania in
1995, which yielded much of the data for
the IBA designations presented here.
A much more epic endeavour is their
Tanzania Bird Atlas. When completed and
released, this atlas will doubtless provide
information on the countty's birdlife that
dwarfs anything in the IBA descriptions or
any other publication on the subject.
In the meantime, however, Important
Bird Areas in Tanzania will serve as the best
reference on Tanzanian birds and their conservation, and hopefully will stimulate
creative thinking and concrete actions to
if
conserve this priceless heritage.
Important Bird Areas in Tanzania is available
through the Wildlife Conservation 'Society of
Tanzania: < [email protected]
>.
60
by Deborah L
Manzolillo Nightingale
Reviewed
California Press. Peterson concentrates on
sumption of bushmeat is an activity
capture,
cookingapart
and from
conthatregular
has set
our species
others. Environmental and cultural consid-
The
erations determine the ways in which we
exploit and use this resource: as a result,
humans prey on a greater variety of species
than any other animal on the planet. Our
diet comprises most species of mammals,
including some very close taxonomic relatives and, occasionally, our conspecifics.
Bushmeat provided the major source of
animal protein for humans until the time
we began to domesticate animals roughly
10,000 years ago. Where the environment
permitted, the burden of supplying animal
protein shifted to livestock species. But in
places where domestic animals could not be
reared efficiently, people continued to rely
on wild animals for food.
An overwhelming advantage of domestic animals is that user rights, numbers and
product quality are relatively easy to control. Wild species are a different matter.
Global forces, including an unprecedented
increase in the number of human predators,
are now threatening the existence of many
of the wildlife species consumed as bushmeat. Among the most seriously affected
are nonhuman primates, apes in particular.
The result is a conservation crisis that is
becoming increasingly difficult to address,
not least so because of all the competing
interests involved and the shifting basis of
discussion, from economics and development to the environment and ethics. And
the clash between culture, economics,
development and morality becomes even
more of a 'hot zone' when the issue of great
apes is introduced.
Dale Peterson has bravely waded into
this quagmire in Eating Apes, the most
recent in a series of 'Studies in Food and
Culture', published by the University of
the use of apes for bushmeat, exploring
arguments as to why apes are special and
should not be eaten (on the one hand) and
why we have a politically correct obligation
to tolerate this activity (the other hand, as it
were). Here, I shall mention only one
example from each argument.
One of the most obvious objections to
humans' eating apes is their extremely close
taxonomic relationship (as in, 'eat other
stuff, but not apes, as they are too much
like us'). But relativity is at work here, and
humans like to view 'proximity' from the
aspect that suits them best. I spent part of
my childhood among people who, within
living memory, practised cannibalism on
more than an occasional basis. But they set
limits: they would not eat people they
called 'one-talk' (those who spoke the same
language). Cannibalism happened only to
people whose language was unintelligible.
'We are not what we eat, othetwise we
shouldn't eat it'.
Cultural sensitivity, on the other hand,
requires us to look away when people are
busy boiling up gorilla heads and hands,
because if we were to try to stop this we
should be changing their culture and this
might cause offence. All cultures have
value, and so should be allowed to exist.
(Of course, if we valued cultural diversity so much, then we shouldn't tolerate
missionaries, satellite television, the global
spread of Coca Cola, or the introduction of
crops - genetically modified or otherwise from one part of the world to another. Nor
should we tolerate arms sales across borders.
Moteover, we should all then agree that two
dozen people on horseback led by a pack of
hounds really is the appropriate way of preventing one fox from preying on chickens).
A consensus on the problem is unlikely
to emerge any time soon from arguments
SWARA April - June 2003
REVIEWS
revolving around culrure or erhics. But the
author does not stop at the obvious points
of the debate; he sets his sights on a more
pernicious aspect. This is where all the really useful stuff is, as the lessons apply to a
range of emerging environmental
issues.
Peterson takes aim at rhe wider set of
actors involved in the bushmeat problem:
multinational
corporations and the various
environmental
conservation
'collaborations'
exrernalities
they create,
NGOs,
'partnerships'
and
between the former and the
latter, and the use and abuse of the concept
of 'sustai nable development'.
The ammunition
is provided by Karl
Ammann,
a photographer.
A second witness is a former
gorilla hunter
from
Cameroon
named Joseph Melloh. Joseph
represents the small business end of the
bushmeat saga, one step up the ladder from
subsistence hunting. He has made a living
first by trading in bushmeat, and then by
hunting bushmeat, selling contraband
fuel
in between. Hunting was the most lucrative. All these activities were illegal, but the
authorities
usually looked the other way.
Joseph later became a kind of eco detective,
their livelihoods. Job creation is touted as a
major 'benefit' of investment, but the cost
of unemployment
creation at the same time
is rarely factored in.
Some
companies
are truly
masterful
(and shameless) at shoving the costs of their
operations on to everybody else, including
the most vulnerable communities.
We are
companies are actually getting others (conservation agencies and donors) to foot the
bill for cleaning up after them.
And so, explains Peterson, it is the traditional
hunters
and local communities
that are providing
cost to themselves).
the resources (at great
And, in some cases, the
opportunities,
and as his gruesome gallery
piled up, he began to take an interest in the
driving forces behind the growing quantity
of meat coming out of the forest.
support his or her position. Imprecise, easily misunderstood
and prone to abuse, it has
ness of some conservation
organisations
to
publicise the problem. In his attempts to
draw attention to bushmeat issues, he has
managed to annoy quite a few researchers
and their NGOs, and has done a lot worse
with some of the logging companies.
There are some very important lessons
here that we should commit to memory,
and then apply when considering the role
of international investors in our own part of
the world. One is that 'development'
in
poorer countries often targets a certain sector of the population,
while marginalising
and increasing the vulnerability
of other
sectors or groups.
In many cases, the marginalised
and
impoverished
communities
live where the
resources to be exploited (minerals, timber,
or wildlife) are located. These groups actually subsidise the large investors, by having
to give up their resources totally.·So while
some jobs are created,
SWARA April - June 2003
other
people
lose
LAST
COLONIAl..
DEMRTMENT
OF TH£ IN
BRITISH
THE CLOSING
EMPIRE
YEARS
WARDENS
RECALL
THE
GAME
D REA M
..
..
boosting company profits.
The 'partnerships'
between these large
companies and conservation NGOs require
closer scrutiny. Apart from getting a pat on
the back for handing back concessions they
never paid for in the first place, the logging
US taxpayer is underwriting
the price of
tropical hardwoods in Europe. Obviously,
the 'polluter pays' principle is being flagrantly ignored here.
The concept of sustainability means all
things to all people; it is used by anyone to
graphic documentation,
Ammann
amassing considerable
photodisillusioned
by the unwilling-
OFK£NYA'S
(either local communities,
or the host government) pay a share of workers' salaries,
documenting
illegal bushmeat hunting and
trading. And for this, he ended up in jail.
Karl Ammann
began taking the odd
bush meat photograph on his travels in West
and Central Africa. He became increasingly
alarmed at how easy it was to find photo
Afterwas
AN IMPOSiSIBLE
SOME
told of logging companies that promote the
hunting of bush meat, calculating it into the
wage factor, so that they pay their workers
less. This means that the owners of wildlife
become almost meaningless while conferring a certain aura of respectability on any
sort of activity.
In his Afterword, Karl Ammann warns
about 'feel-good conservation'. But as stakeholders, we should all be concerned about
'feel-good
sustainability'.
We should be less
gullible about claims of 'sustainably produced/sustainably
harvested' this or that,
and demand validation of such claims.
Peterson ends with a series of recommendations
for actions by individuals, as
well as by concerned conservation organisations, that we should all do well to heed.
Although the book concentrates on apes, it
must be emphasised that over eXploitation
affects other species as well (some of them
quite desperately),
and that we, as consumers, are responsible for this.
It is imperative that we take responsibility for forest products that we purchase,
ascertaining their origin, and doing without
carvings, furniture, panelling, fence posts,
or whatever, if we cannot be certain of their
origin. If we ignore this warning,
may very soon have to do without
then we
some of
the most fascinating and wonderful
we have ever known.
species
if,
An Impossible Dream
Thisbook, edited by Ian Parker &
Stan Bleazard, is a compendium
of writing by seventeen former
Game Wardens of the Colonial
Kenya Game Department. The
topics range from the historical
origins of the Department and
official attitudes towards
conservation a century and
more ago, to spending a night
haunted by ghosts in the
abandoned District
Commissioner's house In Kipini.
Some have written seriously,
others with humour, but this book
(reviewed overleaf) is an easy
read throughout and essential
for anyone interested in African
conservation,
Produced by the new digital
process of publishing 'on
demand', the book is available
both through the internet
(www.librarlo.com) and through
East African Wild Life Society
shops at Viking House and on
Riara Road, and also from the
Text Book Centre in Nairobi,
The publishers will pay the East
African Wild Life Society £1,00
Sterling for every copy of the
book ordered through the
internet as a result of this
advertisement. Evidence of
having ordered as the result of
seeing this advert should be
indicated by putting [EAWLS]in
the parentheses after the name
on the order.
61
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SOCIETY NOTES ...
FROM THE DIRECTOR'S DESK
use of natural
~
in Iraq, and terrorist sentiments have
ince
become
I last so
wrote
inflamed
there hasrhat
beenBritish
a war
resources
and do not men-
tion money?
Tourism has been a golden goose for us,
And, until recently, we had perhaps forgorten how extremely fickle, roo, this goose
can be. Jordan once lost its rourist industry
Airways has cancelled its flights ro Kenya.
So our rourism secror has taken a nosedive.
Because Kenya is a very open, multicultural
society, and because ours is an
easy country for rourists and terrorists alike
ro enter, we are seen ro be more vulnerable
in six days and Uganda in just one. There,
a dictaror's word was all it rook ro srop the
whole business dead in its tracks.
than many other countries.
As rourism is a major economic prop
for conservation, recent events have created
While
everything
possible must be
done ro revive the local industry, we cannor
blind ourselves ro political reality. If we put
severe problems for our conservation programmes. Inevirably my mind has been
drawn ro funds and funding and what can
all our conservation
eggs in the rourism
basket, then we place them at risk. Picking
up a strand from my last letter, we have no
be done about the calamity upon us.
My first reaction is a message for the
option but ro spread the economics of conservation over as broad a base as possible.
No prospective use must be tuled out.
prospective
visiror who is contemplating
cancelling, or has already cancelled, a trip
ro East Africa. Think again. I do not believe
the situation is as dire as had been made
out in the media.
This is not ro deny the gravity of terrorisr threats. But let me just bring ro your
attention three points. The first is that the
media thrives on sensation and so is always
inclined ro overstate matters. The second is
that Kenya does not have a sophisticated
'spin' machine in place ro counter this bias.
And the third point: Bear in mind that the
dollars you spend here finance conservation. Wirhout them, it might fail. So, when
balancing rhe risks, give this a thought roo.
Walking tall
Redanyway,
alert: when
That's21what
it looked
like,
of the
contestants
in Kenya's Miss Tourism 2003 beauty
pageant - all wearing identical bright red
'spaghetti' tops - dropped in on the East
African Wild Life Society on 28 March, for
64
That,
as I have indicated,
is my initial
reaction: a band-aid,
as you might say.
Beyond this, however, we have some very
serious thinking
ro do. One question
springs immediately
ro mind: Have we
overstressed the economic case for conservation in Africa? If we have stated, as we
often do, that we should conserve because
it is economically
worthwhile
ro do so,
then what happens when conservation
is
not profitable?
Do we simply give up? Are there
orher grounds for conserving? Have we
sight of the fact that, for example, both
Koran and the Bible urge continence in
no
lost
the
the
a talk on conservation by Executive Director
Ali A Kaka, followed by a guided tour of the
Society's premises.
The beauty contestants had come to the
Society in order to familiarise themselves
with conservation issues in the run-up to
the final, in May, of the pageant itself,
where they would face questioning on all
aspects of wildlife and its preservation.
@
landscape has been the push, supne
ray of
acrossAfrican
this gloomy
ported
by light
the East
Wild
Life Society, ro establish a trust fund ro
finance conservation in East Africa. Based
on the premise that the region cannot fund
its own conservation
and will need help
from the developed world, income from
the trust fund would be available to run
local conservation
various privately
programmes.
departments,
as well as
operated
conservation
We are not alone in sharing this vision.
Even in colonial times, when the world was
"The encouraging thing," says the EAWLS
Director, "is that this visit was entirely the
idea of the contestants and organisers,
who then raised some very pertinent questions while they were here."
Events like the Miss Tourism pageant
are highly visible in terms of the public
profile they command among young
people, who make up more than 60 % of
Kenya's population. "So the contestants
at such events can playa vital role in
helping to get the conservation message
across," adds Mr Kaka (who, at "five-footeight-and-a-bit", is in reality not quite so
short as he is made to appear in the
photograph).
Contestants flanking the Director in
the picture include (looking over his right
shoulder) the eventual winner of the
2003 Miss Tourism Kenya crown, Lisa
Maria Mwania, and runner-up (first
princess) Hazel Nzisa (third from the
Director's left). Hazel assumes the
mantle of Miss Earth Kenya 2003, and
will - later this year - be serving a brief
internship with the Society so as further
to expand her conservation knowledge.
- reported
by
Jacque Mwangi
SWARA April - June 2003
an altogether much calmer place, Mervyn
Cowie, Kenya's first Director of National
Parks, foresaw that East Africa's conservation load was far greater than its economies
could readily carry. Nearly 40 years ago he,
too, argued that the best way of solving the
inevitable deficits was for the international
community to contribute to a conservation
fund that would help to finance the running of national parks and conservation
generally. He never managed to get this off
the ground,
however.
lent. Its management,
however, must be
the proposal
excelout.
After all, iswe
are
just emerging from a period of chronic
Uncarefully
principle thought
I think
mismanagement
and corruption, and thus,
throughout the East African region, we are
all rather sensitive to the need for transparency and accountability. Uppermost on
all our minds is a concern, were such a
fund to come into being, over who will
manage it, and how it will be managed.
In our understandable
state of suspicion, having also just got rid of the
post-independence
autocracies, we do not
want to fall victim to yet others. Since the
objective of the fund
Africa's wild resources,
is to manage East
the directors must
be not only East Africans, but also democratically
elected East Africans
wholly
answerable to East Africans.
It is perfectly
understandable
that
donors might want to see their donations
transparently managed and so may wish to
participate in that management
to a level
that assured them of probity. But, beyond
that, the control of actual policy and direction should be in elected East African
hands. The post of Administrator
should
be formally advertised and the successful
candidate chosen by an impartial panel.
Any lesser course, any effort to control
the Trust Fund from outside the region or
to have it run by a self-appointed
cabal,
would be self-defeating.
would be any attempt
Just as debilitating
on the part of the
fund's management to set itself up as a parallel department
to existing local bodies,
complete
with scientists
to advise on
policy matters and suchlike.
If East Africans can run for themselves
a fund with the economic muscle to control the management
and conservation of
the region's wildlife, then the proposal may
yet liberate us from the shackles of being
beholden unto fickle tourism. Any move in
this direction, surely,
wholehearted support.
deserves
everyone's
The 'lion crisis'
Conditions
dire for thehave
lionsnever
of thebeen
Nairobi
so
National Park. Starved of herbivores
on which to feed inside the Park,
most of these lions have been
reduced to piteous, emaciated
forms that - in pursuit of sustenance - have ventured out into
what remains of the neighbouring
Kitengela Dispersal Area.
Here, not surprisingly, they have
come into direct conflict with the
Kitengela's Maasai herdsmen,
whose livestock they have resorted
to killing as prey. To make things
worse, the wildlife agency, the Kenya
Wildlife Service (KWS), has been too
preoccupied with its own internal wrangling to intervene either decisively or
swiftly.
Faced with a mounting toll on their
livestock, and with no apparent sympathy from the authorities, some of the
Maasai groups have responded by taking
matters into their own hands, unleashing
an all-out war on the lions. The result is
that, over May and June of this year
alone, no fewer than ten lions were
speared to death (Report on page 7).
In some cases, the carcasses were
subsequently also mutilated, having their
heads, tails and paws hacked off, and
even some of their internal organs
removed. This gruesome spectacle was
clearly meant, in part, to force the
authorities to stand up and take notice.
But instead, what followed - ultimatums and threats of rooting out and of
arresting the lion killers - served only to
exacerbate existing tensions. And some
of the Maasai simply countered with
further threats of their own to step up
their war on the lions - and even to
extend this to include other competing
wild species as well.
Then came worrying signs that
'copycat' attacks on lions outside other
national parks may be spreading to
Maasai communities in Narok and
elsewhere in Kenya. So, clearly something needed doing - urgently - to stop
this acrimonious stand-off from spiralling
badly out of control.
This was the position when - on 23
June - the East African Wild Life Society
interceded, organising a conciliatory
meeting between the KWS and the
Kitengela's livestock owners, in a bid to
prevent any further killings of the lions.
Surprisingly, this was the first time
during the current impasse that the two
parties have come together to discuss
the issue rationally.
At the meeting, the Society offered
to seek funds to help revive the compensation scheme initiated by the Friends of
Nairobi National Park (FoNNAP), giving
livestock owners some redress for
losses of their cattle and goats to lions.
The KWS, for its part, undertook immediately to find, and to relocate back to the
Park, all those lions still at large on the
Kitengela - and to commence an emergency feeding programme for them.
To this end, FoNNAP has very kindly
agreed to help the Senior Park Warden.
Any additional assistance towards these
vital interventions (and remember, every
little does help) can be channelled either
through FoNNAP or through the East
African Wild Life Society.
Happily, since the 23 June meeting,
none of the Park's remaining lions has
been lost. But the problem - of finding a
long-term, sustainable solution to cases
of human-lion conflict on the Kitengela
(once a wildlife dispersal area, but today
increasingly settled and fenced by the
landowners) - is more urgent than ever.
The current crisis has been ascribed
to a combination of factors: the erratic
weather patterns (keeping herbivores out
of the Park for extended periods), sharp
declines in herbivore numbers due to
bush meat poaching, and pasture deterioration resulting from insufficiently regular
burning as a means of manipulating the
Park's grass cover.
The sad truth is that time may - now
- be running out for many of the ideas
tried (with some success) in the past.
These have included the construction of
lion-proof bomas (corrals) for Maasai
livestock, a FoNNAP lease scheme giving
landowners a financial incentive not to
sell, or fence, their land so as to allow
wildlife some space in which to roam
freely, and the afore-mentioned compensation scheme against stock losses.
Fencing off the entire southern area
of the Park is one of the options now
actively being explored. Of course, this
will be a hugely expensive undertaking.
All members who may be interested in
supporting such a programme are asked
to contact us for details. Your help is
needed NOW, if this unique Park and its
famed wildlife are to survive and to give
pleasure and pride to future generations
of people.
- AU A Kaka
- AU A Kaka
SWARA April - June 2003
65
East African
Wild Life Society
Worldwide
Representatives
Corporate
Members
Patrons:
Donor members
The President of Kenya
The President of Tanzania
African Safari Club, Serena Lodges & Hotels,
The President
Stefanatos
of Uganda
AUSTRALIA
Trevor Fernandes
Wildlife Safari (Australia)
213 Railway Road
SUBIACO WA 6008
J 0 V M, Kobo Safaris, Tanganyika
Wilderness
Camps Ltd, A FEW
(K) Ltd
UNITED KINGDOM
Corporate Members:
Abercrombie
AUSTRIA
Hans Norbert Roisl
& Kent Ltd; Across African Safaris;
African Horizons Travel & Safari; Africa Expeditions
Ltd; Africa Safari Specialists,
Uhlplatz 5/8
A-l080 WIEN
African Wildlife
Foundation (K); African Wildlife Safari PjLtd
Chairman
Dr. Imre Loefler
Vice-Chairmen
Tom Fernandes, Lota Melamari, John Emilly Otekat
Treasurer
Stanley Ngaine
Executive
Director
Ali A. Kaka
(Australia);
Agricultural
Productions
SRL; Alliance Hotels Ltd; Apollo
Insurance Co. Ltd; Aquasearch
Cropscience
Bauer Consulting;
Brooke Bond (K) Ltd; Caltex Oil;Carbacid
Cheli & Peacock Ltd; Chemicals
Africa; Conservation
James H. Webb
Elected Members of Council
Mahmud Jan Mohamed, Nicolas Ng'ang'a, Dan
Majanja, Beatrice Nduta Kiarie, Major (Rtd.)
Charles Masai, Jake Grieves-Cook
Executive
Committee
Dr. Imre Loefler, Tom Fernandes, Stanley Ngaine,
Julie Matiba-Wahome, Dan Majanja
Conservation Committee
Matt Rice, David Western, Edmund Barrow,
Richard Bagine, Moses Mapesa, Beatrice Nduta
Kiarie, Hewson Kabugi, Esther Kioko, Tom
Butinsky, Oliver Nasirwa, David Obura, Enock
Warinda, James Ndirangu, Geoffrey Howard, Kelly
West
Membership Committee
Julie Matiba-Wahome, Danstan Majanja
Fund-raising Committee
Dan Majanja, Andrew White, Julie Matiba-Wahome,
David Sanders, Kiran Suthar, Harry Hare, Duncan
Willetts, Yazmin Nanji, Wouter J Verwiel
Programme Areas
Conservation Advocacy, Species Conservation,
Corporation
Handling (K)
Ltd; Dream Travel Africa; East African Ornithological
Safaris;
Eastern & Southern Safaris;
East African
Group; Fairview Hotel; Farm Engineering Industries
Ltd; Friends of Conservation;
World Travel Ltd; Guerba (K) Limited; Mr. Harry
Mineral Water Co. Ltd; Highlight Travel Limited;
Holiday Bazaar Ltd; Hotel Adventure Travel; InCA
Repro Ltd; International
Head Office
EAWLS, P. O. BOX 20110 - 00200, City Square,
Riara Road, Kilimani, Nairobi
Tel: 254-2-574145
Fax: 254-2-570335
Email: [email protected].
[email protected]
Website URL: www.eawildlife.org
Netherlands Branch
Stichting EAWLS
Ridderhoflaan 37
2396 C. J. Koudekerk A/D RUN
Members are requested to address any queries to the Executive Director
Expeditions;
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Operators;
of tour
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Ltd; Prof
Shem; Provincial Insurance Company of
East Africa Ltd; Pyles Lumber Company Ltd; Reckitt
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S G S Kenya Ltd; SafariAfrica;
Hotel; Safaris Unlimited
(A) Ltd;
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Sarit Centre;
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Lawrence University; Securicor Kenya Ltd; Shades of
Ltd; Solio Ranch Ltd; Somak
Tours; Southern Cross Safaris Ltd; Stanley & Son
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Travel Ltd; Sunworld Safaris;
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HOLLAND
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Ridderhoflaan 37
2396 C J Koudekerk
A/D RUN
IRELAND
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30 Zion Road
DUBLIN 6
KENYA
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P.O. Box 208
MALINDI
Suthar Kiran
POBox 1000
MERU
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POBox 99200
MOMBASA
NORWAY
J.E Johnsen
Munkerdvelen 41 A
OSLO 11
Management;
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Tembo Game Holidays; The Ark;
Bank; Tropical Ice Ltd; Unga Group Ltd;
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Topeka
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Barre 01005
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Mr & Mrs Harry Ewell
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NEW YORK 14559-1839
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1067 N E Cochran Drive
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SPAIN
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c/o Nutria 26
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CALIFORNIA 94556
SWEDEN
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School of Biology
University of Leads
LEEDS LS2 9JT
Financial Representative
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Boulder
GERMANY
Fun Safaris INC; Guerba
Prof Bryan Shorrocks
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Conservation
Pemberton, B C
VON ZLO
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Bank of
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UGANDA
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United Millers; University of Nairobi Library; Vintage
The East African Wild Life Society was
formed in 1961 by an amalgamation of
the Wildlife Societies of Kenya and
Tanzania (both founded in 1956) and
Ugandan wildlife conservationists
66
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Television
SWARA April - June 2003
EVENTS
Safaricom Village. On being registered,
they were handed goody-bags containing a sponsor's T-shirt, sports drinks and
energy bars - and a Kikoy.com kikoi.
At 7:00 a.m. on Race Day, Kenya's
Minister for Sport, the Hon Najib
Balala, flagged off the runners. He along with other ministers and VIP
attendees - then took part in a 5-km
Dignitaries' Race.
Kenyan athletes make a habit of
winning most of the world's top
marathons. And'there was no shortage,
here, of world-class talent. But it was
fun-runners, as usual, who were in the
majority. At one point, a young
Reticulated Giraffe - hand-reared on
Natasha Breed left that for others to do, but she does
have this report on a marathon with a difference ...
northwest of Mount Kenya, was - on
Lewa
Wildlife
Conservancy,
28 June
- again
the venue
for one of
the world's most unusual marathons.
The
The Safaricom Marathon is the only
race of its kind run within a wildlife sanctuary. And the runners, while mindful of all
the usual hazards - of heatstroke, dehydration, exhaustion, and sudden collapse (not
to mention blisters) - know they run the
additional risk of encountering short-sighted rhinos, hungry lions, lurking puff adders
... you name it.
Running a marathon (42 km) is a
Herculean undertaking at the best of times,
requiring huge reserves of stamina and willpower. But when such a race takes place
right on the Equator at an altitude of
1,700 metres under a baking Mrican
sun, a degree of lunacy is also required.
Who, then, would want to run the
Lewa Marathon? A lot of people evidently, judging by the number of
entrants this year: more than 400 from
23 countries.
The route takes the form of a 21-km
circuit, run twice by runners attempting
a full marathon. It was devised by Race
Director, Bruce Tulloh - a famous
Olympian 'barefoot runner' and a
European 5,000 metres' champion in
the 1960s. Starting in shaded acacia
woodland, it winds around the edges of
Lewa Swamp, home to a small population of sitatungas, before heading out on
Stooping to conquer: the young
Reticulated Giraffe (right) that
joined competitors (above) in this
year's Safaricom Lewa Marathon:
SWARA April - June 2003
to the open plains where Grevy's zebras dot
the savannah.
Runners then descend a welcome slope
into a scenic valley where black rhinos lie
up, before climbing a steep 'killer' of a hill
away from the river. This hill's gradient,
one of the runners avowed, seems to
increase from 30° on the first circuit to at
least 45° second time around! A
meandering over gentle rolling terrain
further tests the runners, who must
tend with at least two more serious
loop
then
conhills
before completing the circuit's last 6 km on
level ground.
Competitors arrived the day before the
event, either pitching their tents around the
swamp's edge or checking in at the
Lewa - joined the race, much to everyone's delight, especially when she
stopped at one of the water-stations to
partake of a few refreshing orange-quarters and a drink from the sponge barrel!
Kenyan prospect, Simon Arusei, won
the Men's Marathon in an impressive time
of 2:25:40, while Callen Areba took the
Women's title in 3:07:26. In all, 310 runners completed the half-marathon, while
there were 107 finishers in the full
marathon.
In all, the event raised KSh 9.5-million
(about US$ 120,250). Beneficiaries include
the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and the
Lewa Education Trust, which supports five
schools, awarding annual scholarships for
secondary and tertiary education. The
Nanyuki Cottage Hospital is receiving support towards a fund for patients suffering
injuries inflicted by wild animals. The II
Ngwesi Group Ranch, the Namunyak
Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Bill
Woodley Mount Kenya Trust also benefit from the event's proceeds.
The UK-based charity, Tusk Trust,
which supports various African conservation projects, co-organised 2003's
event with Lewa Wildlife Conservancy.
This Trust, along with Kenyan mobile
phone service provider, Safaricom, has
provided the bulk of the Marathon's
funding since its inception in 2000.
Were it not for Safaricom and the support of its General Manager, Michael
Joseph, in particular, the Marathon
would not be possible.
Highlands Water donated thousands
of litres of water, while AMREF supplied ateam of medics. British Airways
and Air Kenya helped with air travel
and Land-Rover provided road transportation. A helicopter's services were
donated by Halvor Astrup to ensure
that no dangerous animals could disrupt
proceedings.
"
67
BACK WINDOW
Maasai Mara National Reserve - an
a littleof island
Kenya's
patch
green in
forest
sur-
There
is
isolated
rounding Kichwa Tembo Camp. Like other
forest patches here, this one seems afloat
upon the sweeping open seas of grass.
This island's close-knit trees and vines
are home to a rich variety of birds and
mammals. Among this fauna is a small
group of one of the most beautiful and
charismatic - if obscure - of all Kenya's
wildlife treasures, the Redtail Monkey
(Cercopithecus ascanius).
This tiny population is separated by
hundreds of kilometres from the Kakamega
and the Nandi Forests, which constitute
most of the remaining range in Kenya of
this particular subspecies (schmidtt), sometimes referred to as the Uganda Redtail.
Redtails are named for their unusual,
long copper-coloured tails, even if these are
hardly the most striking features of these
painted primates. A colourful coat blending white with shades of grey, brown and
red, is rounded off with a clownish heartshaped white spot on their noses, making
them look as if they had just pulled their
faces out of a bag of flour.
The whole ensemble is offset by a dapper black moustache and by white cheek
whiskers. And if you catch a glimpse of the
males from behind, you will notice a very
68
'Painted primates'
Paula Kahumbu catches up with the Redtails
of the Mara.
fine piece of advertising - in the form of
their shining bright blue scrota.
Infants are born grey and 'woolly', but
at three months of age they are already
adorable mini-replicas of their parents.
While Redtails occur throughout West and
Central Africa, they are not at all common
in Kenya. Most guidebooks place them in
forests on Mount Elgon, as well as Nandi
and Kakamega, but not (as a rule) in the
Maasai Mara.
I am embarrassed to admit that even as
recently as 2000, when Rob Eley and I
published Diani's Monkeys (a guide incor-
po rating notes on Other Kenya Primates),
we mentioned only rumours of there being
Redtails in the Mara. (For we genuinely
believed, then, that most of the sightings
claimed there were probably just wishful
thinking.)
Redtails are known to associate, over
much of their range, with various Gentle
Monkey species. And the Redtails of the
Mara, which very often hang out in mixed
troops with Blue Monkeys, 'Ire no excep-
tion. Indeed, both species are surprisingly
easy to observe around Kichwa Tembo. On
one recent visit, a mixed Blue/Redtail troop
dropped in on the camp, the bigger Blues'
bullying their colourful cousins as all dined
together in the local fig tree.
Redtails feed on a mixed diet of leaves,
fruits and invertebrates. They are inquisitive and adventurous, often chirping and
squeaking like birds as they forage nervously with one eye on the slightly larger Blues
in their midst. They are also said to have an
explosive cough.
Watching them in the Mara, one can-
not help but wonder how on earth they got
here in the first place. For there is certainly
no obvious forest corridor along which they
might have travelled. Or was there, perhaps, an ancient forest 'bridge' that once
linked the Mara with the great western
forests?
Might this explain the presence of these
delightful social monkeys in an area rather
better known for its thundering wildebeest
and cranky elephants?
if,
SWARA April - June 2003
•
town
l!I.
~
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:lIte Countr,! JJotel
in :lwn
Set wilhin 5 acre::l0/
luxurioU::ltrant'jui! garJen::l
:lhe perfect hotel for
tU::line::l::l
travel!er::l
Bishops Road, P.O.Box 40842,
Nairobi 00100, Kenya.
Tel: (254-2) 2711321, 2710090
Fax: (254-2) 2721320, 2711655
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.fairviewkenya.com
Kenya Airways
Ue-P~cf·~