David Ngala

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 24 2009 | By: davidngala

David has been doing a lot of fieldwork recently and the elephants in particular are very active in the forest. He reports:

This month the elephants have come to one side of the forest - the north-eastern side around Arabuko and Mida. The reason for this is most likely due to human disturbance further into the forest where they are normally found - including pit-sawing, cutting poles for building, animal snares and camps for wood carvers [ed: wood carvers go into the forest, cut trees and then make a rough carving at a camp right in the heart of the forest so that their load to carry out is much lighter]. We are spotting elephants even in the day - something which previously was almost unheard of since they are so shy. On the 14th, just 400m from the junction near the main road we saw 5 elephants cross the road around 1pm in the afternoon.

We really believe the elephants are being chased out of the Nature Reserve area due to human disturbance - and we therefore need to get in there and check out what disturbance there is in the area. To do this I follow foot paths and using a GPS note all incidents of illegal activity - cut stems, snares and wood carvers camps. These are then to be mapped and distributed as reports to the forest management.

I have been using the FoASF motorbike to reach the very far inland side of the forest in order to survey foot paths near a place called Malanga. There were some well-used paths getting into the forest which I spotted and while over there I met an elephant fence controller who informed me there were tree poachers camping in the forest to cut Cynometra for carving. They apparently leave the forest at the weekends to bring out the wood carvings they’ve made and take them to Malindi or Mombasa through Kilifi using buses. On hearing this I came and reported this to the Forest Officer of Kenya Forest Service at Gede Forest Station who then asked me to take the fence controller to show me the paths that he knows the poachers use to reach their camps for cutting Cynometra trees so that I could take forest guards to follow the pathand take GPS coordinates of any destruction in order to evaluate how far the destruction has gone in that area.

Illegally cut tree for timber - Arabuko-Sokoke

I use the forest guards because to go alone is risky - the poachers can be quite dangerous as they are carrying these ‘big cigarettes’ which when they smoke they don’t worry about who they’re pointed at [Ed: this is David’s way of talking of pangas & other weapons which they don’t think twice about using]. Secondly it is then possible to arrest poachers with guards - something which is impossible alone.

Technorati Tags: illegal wood carving, pit-sawing, Arabuko-Sokoke, Kenya Forest Service, elephant, David Ngala

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