David Ngala

Category: FoASF staff | Date: Jul 17 2008 | By: davidngala

Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest (FoASF) has, since it began in 1999, been pretty much run by volunteers other than having a Visitor Centre Assistant at the forest station to welcome visitors and explain what they can do in the forest - birding, walking, camping etc. Just a year ago we employed David Ngala who is the “main man” for this blog and who is passionate about the conservation of Arabuko-Sokoke. His job is ‘Conservation Officer’ but our struggle has been to really be able to channel his passion and fieldwork into something more structured and effective - simply for lack of time and resources amongst the FoASF Committee who have otherwise been doing the volunteering.

We are really thrilled, therefore, to have Caroline Lumosi joining us in August as the Manager for FoASF. The very generous donation from Nancy in April is what is allowing us to take Caroline on. It is a crucial position she will be filling as her job is to make all the wheels go round in the organisation and for things to really happen - to date they’ve been happening in fits and starts when we’ve had the time and space to do it.

I met Caroline in Nairobi on Sunday and had a long meeting with her explaining all about the ins and outs of the organisation. She’s currently finishing up some voluntary work in Kakamega forest in western Kenya and will go down to Watamu in the first week of August. She will be taking DAvid’s data he collects on illegal activity, mapping it and producing reports to circulate to stakeholders. She’ll also revive the ‘Friends’ scheme and help Mary at the Visitor Centre in her work. She’ll also be taking over the main updating of the blog - so watch this space!

A cut stump photographed by David using his new camera

Tags: Arabuko-Sokoke forest

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Category: Forest surveys | Date: Jul 11 2008 | By: davidngala

One of the tasks that David has been working on over the past month or so has been to follow the boundary of the entire forest and, using a GPS, mark each path entering forest and record how used it is. This is to get an indication of how used the forest is and to identify the most appropriate paths to follow in order to search for traps and cut trees. It is a very time consuming job as he usually leaves the motorbike at the edge of the forest and follows the path a short way to see if it really is a proper path leading somewhere or is just a very short one that peters out quickly.

Below is a snapshot of the data that I just downloaded off the GPS David’s borrowing to do the work. It’s downloaded into the Map Source program from Garmin and will later be properly mapped using a full GIS program.

You can make out the boundary of the forest where David has been following it. There are still two sections that he needs to do on the north west and the eastern edge. The mass of waypoints to the north-east of the forest is around the forest station and where David has done quite a few surveys for illegal activity.

Tags: Arabuko-Sokoke, GPS, surveys

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Category: Bird Surveys | Date: Jul 01 2008 | By: davidngala

Last week Albert and I went to the Mida area in mixed forest to monitor the elusive “SGT” - Spotted Ground Thrush. From the Mida gate we went into the forest for about three kilometers where we parked our motorbike by the track. Our transect was on the left hand (southern) side and started 10 metres in from the road. The transect we do is 1km long in the forest with stops every 100m to listen and look particularly hard for the bird. We began the work and when we reached about 400 metres away from the road saw a big branch of a tree just very recently broken by elephants…

However, we had a job to do and so did not care much allow ourselves to be scared of the Elephants and instead kept on with our work as we thought they were on the other side of the road. We managed to do the whole transect - with no sightings of an SGT - and began our way back towards the road.

Just 300 metres from where we commenced our transect we heard a bird song that was very unfamiliar that hence attracted our attention. Albert thought it might be a variation of the Red-capped Robin Chat which mimics many other species and can easily fool you, but I suspected it was a Ground Thrush as I’ve heard one sing once before briefly. The bird kept on singing which made it possible for us to creep through the bushes to find where it was that it was singing. Only about 30m in from the narrow path we were on we saw it on a low branch - still singing beautifully!! We were both very excited by it and watched the bird while moving closer excitedly and noting its behaviour. After a few minutes we heard the elephants breaking trees very close by hence interrupting our observing though we managed to take a GPS recording with Alberts GPS (mine is still broken). We were done and set off towards the road where we saw fresh footprints & dung of elephants at about 60metres along the transect we used!

Fresh elephant dung just near the SGT transect - a real sign you have to take care in the forest

We reached the piki safely and thanked God for enabling us to see the Spotted Ground Thrush and for protecting us from wild animals so that we therefore carried out our work successful.

Technorati : Arabuko-Sokoke, Spotted Ground Thrush, elephant

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