Off to Ethiopia
Category: News | Date: Aug 25 2009 | By: savingstripes
We’re off to Ethiopia tomorrow to meet with various NGOs and communities as part of the rangeland monitoring manual we’re trying to put together. We’ll be there for 10 days in various parts of the country. Internet will be sporadic but we’ll try to post some updates when we can!
Elephant kills cow
Category: Competition | Date: Aug 21 2009 | By: savingstripes
Here I am working on setting up an experiment in the hopes of finding ways to reduce competition between cattle and wildlife. But two days ago saw a form of cattle-wildlife competition I never expected: an elephant killed a cow, right in one of my experimental plots!
Nobody knows exactly why, except that this elephant is an angry lady (she also chased a herder, who escaped by removing his clothing, which the elephant attacked instead of him). It’s possible that the elephant and her family have come down into this region from an area further north where poaching is a problem.
One thing’s for sure: better watch out for elephants out there!
Carnivores!
Category: Predators | Date: Aug 10 2009 | By: savingstripes
We’ve started checking camera traps we recently put out in the field. One thing that’s blown me away is just how many carnivores there are out there! These are areas where I’ve been doing field work for many years — walking long distances on a daily basis through the bush. In terms of herbivores, I’ve seen most everything that’s out there. But it’s completely fascinating to see what creatures come out at night, and how many of them are the flesh-eating kind! (Needless to say, I’m not eager to start doing any field work at night!)
I also just continue to be amazed at the diversity of mammals in general, here in northern Kenya. It is, simply, astonishing.
Here are just a few samples of some of the carnivores we’ve captured on film (or rather, memory chip). Next time I’ll post some cool herbivore shots!
Serval:
Lovely leopard:
A non-zebra stripy creature! (striped hyena)
A curious cat… probably the same one on two different nights at two different cameras:
Rattels, or honey badgers, are notoriously ferocious:
Fun with cameras
Category: News | Date: Aug 01 2009 | By: savingstripes
Hi everybody, sorry we’ve been offline lately. They installed a new internet system at the research centre, and we can’t post to the blog. Until they resolve this glitch, we’ll have to post when we can get an internet connection somewhere else. Sorry!
Some news: I’ve recently been setting up a bunch of camera traps for one of my projects. Camera traps are great for "catching" wildlife on film! For my research, I’m deploying them inside an experiment I’ve got. The experiment is designed to test the effects of tree density on wildlife, grasses, and the trees themselves. Why should we care about tree density? Well, overgrazing (usually by cattle) tends to "make trees" — that is, overgrazed areas tend to get taken over by trees, instead of grasses. This is a huge issue not just in Kenya, but in savannas and grasslands all over the world!
In any case, before putting out the camera traps in my experiment, I tested them out in a friend’s yard, since she said she was getting a lot of visitors. We saw an amazing number of different animals just outside her house. Here are a few of my favorites. Hopefully we’ll get some good ones in the experiment, too! (good data, that is, in addition to fun photos).
Enjoy!
-Corinna
A curious vervet monkey:
A hungry hyena:
An eland’s elegant leg:
Two dikdik reacting to something (what?):
Holy spines, a porcupine!
White-tailed mongoose stretching:
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