FoASF on Twitter
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Apr 30 2009 | By: davidngala
Friends of Arabuko Sokoke Forest is now on Twitter!
We’ll be updating our daily happenings on the newest social networking site, and David will be able to post his activities directly from his mobile as he continues work in the forest.
Check us out at www.twitter.com/foasf
Recent Snare Survey
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Apr 29 2009 | By: davidngala
On April 9th, our acting manager Lucy Kapombe, David Ngala, and Gede Forester Blessington Maganga and his rangers went on a snare survey in the forest. After traveling down the trail some ways they came upon three poachers carrying saws and a bag of bushmeat. Upon seeing the rangers, the poachers fled, leaving all their things behind. The team recovered a number of tools used to remove trees, and the cooked meat and skin of a red duiker. Along with the meat, they also disassembled 39 snares of various sizes recently set up by poachers in the forest, and uncovered 16 stumps of trees cut down by the poachers for timber.
The snare survey on April 15th involved no such run in with poachers, but did manage to dismantle 20 snares.
FoASF has benefited greatly from the help of the Gede division of the Kenya Forest Service. Mr. Maganga has been more than helpful in providing rangers for the snare surveys, and is quite adept at identifying them himself.
The team with the unfortunate catch of the poachers.
Community Outreach
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Apr 20 2009 | By: davidngala
Friends of Arabuko Sokoke Forest has teamed up with A Rocha Kenya and Nature Kenya Bush meat Project to organize a community education team, working towards informing the local community about the importance of conserving the forest. This initiative has recently resulted in a number of meetings, both with schools and local communities, on the dangers and adverse effects of hunting bush meat.
The dangers of bush meat are many. Certain diseases such as anthrax and Ebola can be transmitted to humans through the consumption of wild animals. These animals are also part of what draws tourists to the forest. Unfortunately, some of these mammals are both endangered and hunted, including the Adders Duiker, Sokoke Bush Mongoose, and Golden-Rumped Elephant Shrew. The loss of these animals to hunting will also mean a loss of tourism and revenue to the surrounding area.
The schools were happy to have us, and FoASF benefited from a number of volunteers from A Rocha in organizing the lessons. In total, we visited seven schools, reaching over 670 students!
The students were eager to join in on the lesson
Charo Ngumbao, Bushmeat Committee Member from the local community, assisted in the school sessions
A Rocha Kenya volunteer Laura Wise from Reading, UK was there to help out
The team also set out to make aware the community the laws against hunting bush meat. The surrounding villages of the Arabuko-Sokoke have depended upon the forest for hundreds of years as a source of food. Many are still unaware that hunting in the forest is now illegal. For this reason, FoASF, A Rocha and Nature Kenya have strived to provide alternatives to illegal poaching. We have helped to establish small groups within the local community organized to both breed and distribute domesticated animals like goats and chicken. Each group organizes a constitution stipulating the best way to distribute these animals throughout the community. Once the Bushmeat Committee approves these plans, they will distribute a number of animals to the groups.
The meeting in Malanga drew 364 villagers from the local area! We were glad to have such a great turnout and are excited that the community is taking an interest in conservation.
A Rocha even helped out with allowing us to use their projector for our presentation!
Thanks to all who volunteered and participated!
GIS training in Samburu
Category: FoASF staff, General | Date: Jan 30 2009 | By: davidngala
GIS Training in Samburu.
Geographical Information System (GIS) is a conservation tool that is slowly gaining momentum in today’s conservation world. Recently the Ecological Society of Eastern Africa also know as ESEA organized for a GIS training that was held at the Earth Watch Institute in Samburu - Kenya.
Participants at the GIS training.
The training targeted users of GIS in the field in conservation work, its aim was to help users become familiar with the use of GIS as a conservation tool and how to use it in mapping issues of importance in conservation.
Participants are shown how to use a GPS.
Elepehants at Sambur Nature Reserve, where we carried out our field work.
The training drew participants from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. This training gave the participants insight on the of GIS and the use of a GPS as a data entry tool. The FoASF manager, Caroline Lumosi was among the participants who benefited from the training. The new skill gained will be of a valuable resource for FoASF in mapping the illegal activities in the forest.
GIS training participants.
For more information concerning training opportunities with ESEA kindly visit www.ecsea.org
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Finland Geography students visit Arabuko-Sokoke and its environs.
Category: General | Date: Jan 28 2009 | By: davidngala
Finland Geography students visit Arabuko-Sokoke and its environs.
Arabuko-Sokoke recently received students from the University of Helsinki in Finland who were on a tour to learn on the conservation efforts in Arabuko-Sokoke and what can be replicated in Dakacha woodland.
The students in the Forest.
The students are carrying out a study in Taita on impact of community participation on natural resource management. Arabuko-Sokoke area has been taken as a baseline study to evaluate the impacts and outcome of community participation.
Illegal charcoal burning in Dakacha woodlands.
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Bush meat survey in Arabuko-Sokoke forest
Category: Forest surveys, Forest wildlife, Poaching wildlife | Date: Jan 28 2009 | By: davidngala
Bush meat hunting in Arabuko-Sokoke forest is a major problem. Past conservation actions did not fully address the problem hence its recurrence. The most targeted species include Aders duiker, Golden Rumped Sengi, and Sokoke bush tailed mongoose.
Illegal bush meat.
Two past surveys done in October and November, 2006 revealed an alarming situation on the game meat hunting. In just three weeks, 1087 snares were located and destroyed in the nature reserve. To estimate the number of traps in the entire forest may be difficult but there are all indications that there could be thousands of snares and other traps in which hundreds of animals are caught annually.
Local community has low awareness of the impact of their actions, the risk of catching insurable diseases and the legal implications of engaging in Bushmeat practices. Alternative sources of proteins do exist but they either are not aware of them or lack the resources and skills to adopt them.
Just three weeks ago David Ngala and Lucy Kapombe carried out a bush meat survey at the nature reserve in Arabuko-Sokoke forest and they were able to retrieve 113 snares.
David Ngala - facilitating a bushmeat awareness meeting.
With support from KNH-NABU (Birdlife Germany), Nature Kenya together
with the bush meat awareness committee are carrying out a bush meat awareness programme in Arabuko-Sokoke forest and the surrounding communities.
This programme is aimed to create awareness on the negative effects of bushmeat hunting to the community and alternatives the community can use. Bushmeat hunting has led to various health implications such as the Ebola virus, rift valley fever, rabies, yellow fever among others, these infection have jumped from primates to people on at least seven separate occasions in recent history.
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Teaching scientists to tell stories.
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 12 2008 | By: davidngala
Scientists always work on facts and figures, its either this or that, most of them are straightforward and to many people they are always termed as boring and don not entice anything. Well this past week a group of scientist, researchers and conservationist took part in a one week training held at Naivasha. The training was aimed to help them explore their creative and story telling side.
The workshop facilitators: Richard Brook, David Harper, Noah Lusaka and Mary Mwendwa
I was lucky to be among this interesting group of people and to learn first hand how to be more creative in presenting facts, be they scientific or others. This was part of the final stage of the Darwin initiative that seeks to engage young and vibrant conservationist in filming and story telling. The course was structured to help us gain more skills that will enable us tell good film stories and present our data or facts in a more appetizing way.
A group discussion.
The training gathered participants from three different countries in Eastern Africa: Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya. The participants have been engaged in conservation work in there home countries and are learning to involve filming as a tool to pass the message across.
Listening to the presenters.
This training was a good eye opener for us at Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke as we intend to use filming as a marketing tool for the forest and to tell the story of what has been going on. We look forward to use this skill in the next year.
Workshop participants
Caroline Lumosi
FoASF
illegal hunting of game meat in Dakatcha - Marafa.
Category: Forest surveys, Forest wildlife, Poaching wildlife | Date: Dec 02 2008 | By: davidngala
David Ngala accompanied Albert Baya of A Rocha Kenya to survey the Clarke weaver nests in Marafa. Marafa is located north of Arabuko- Sokoke forest in the Brachystegia woodland. This is where the weavers prefer to nest and feed. Dakatcha woodland is the main breeding site for the weaver. It is approximately 29 Kilometres from Sokoke forest.
The main problem in Dakatcha woodland is charcoal burning and hunting of game meat. David was able to find some young duikers that were hunted and sold illegally.
Duiker meat, hanged to be sold illegally.
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Final day of Darwin Film editing course
Category: FoASF staff, General | Date: Nov 25 2008 | By: davidngala
Final day of Darwin film editing course.
What has a beginning has an end, the final day of the five day editing course finally came. It was hard to believe that within a short time we were able to edit 9 different film all targeted to various audience. The beginning looked almost impossible, however the impossible became possible. We produced 4 - 5minute films and 5 - 9 minute films all on various aspects of the environment, wetlands, waste, forests, rivers and fish.
We will be soon uploading the videos.
The whole editing crew.
Caroline Lumosi.
Day three of film training and close encounter with hippos at camp
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Nov 20 2008 | By: davidngala
Day three of the training went on smoothly, we continued to work on our five minute film and the film was getting in shape slowly, we kept on learning new skills and what we could do to improve the film and to get our target audience.
After lunch I received a call from a former classmate telling me that my former class will be coming to Naivasha for a briefing on the lake and also on our projects, before I put the phone down the bus drove in to the lake shore and I was summoned to accompany them and I was latter to give a briefing to them on my work and the filming project. it went well and my lecturer was impressed with our project. we later continued editing.
the bus by the shore of Lake Naivasha.
me talking to them about the filming project.
back to editing.
Later on that night, as we burnt the midnight oil as we tried to edit, we had a close encounter with hippos three huge, massive hippos came to camp to graze, we all ran out of the editing room to try to get a close look at them, Elene our trainer had never seen hippos a part from the ones on TV, so it was quite exciting for her, some of us got too carried away that I think they did something to make them aggressive as one of us was charged by the hippos lucky it was a shy one so it just scared them and ran back to the lake, that was a pretty close encounter
Tags: community, Conservation, Film
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