Meet the Secretary Bird

Secretary Bird, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson.

The Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) is a mostly terrestrial bird of prey found throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Secretary Birds can stand as tall as four feet high, much of that height taken up by their long, crane-like legs. They are determined predators and they use their legs and claws to stamp and tear at their prey — snakes and other reptiles, rodents and other small mammals. While they spend much of their time on the ground, scrabbling for prey, they roost up in acacia trees and will occasionally take to the air to find alternate hunting grounds.

The Secretary Bird’s common name is sometimes thought to derive from the quill-like feathers poking out from behind its ears, which are not unlike the pencils or pens that might poke out from behind a real secretary’s ears. The more likely explanation is that the name is derived from a French corruption of the Arabic word for “hunter-bird” (saqr-et-tair). As for the scientific name, “Sagittarius” apparently does refer to the bird’s quills, which kinda sorta do resemble a quiver of arrows, and “serpentarius” reminds us of the bird’s favorite meal.

Birders and others looking to catch a glimpse of the Secretary Bird should head for the drier areas of East Africa’s grasslands. The Kenya Wildlife Service suggests Aberdare National Park, Nairobi National Park, Tsavo East and West National Parks, and Mt Kenya National Park. For its part, the UK based birding group Kenya Birds suggests Samburu National Park as the best place to strike the Secretary Bird from one’s list.

Northern Acacia-Commiphora Bushlands and Thickets Ecoregion

The Northern Acacia-Commiphora Bushlands and Thickets cover much of Kenya.

Continuing our survey of East Africa’s ecoregions, we now turn our attention to the Northern Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets ecoregion. The ecoregion is bordered on the south by the wetter Southern Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets ecoregion and on the north by the drier Somali Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets ecoregion. As such it hosts many of the species of plant and animal found in both. However, it’s not wet enough to support the large migratory herds that roam the Southern ecoregion, but it’s too wet for species adapted to the drier climate of the Somali ecoregion. Large tracts of the region are protected within Kenya’s system of parks and reserves (ie, Amboseli, Tsavo East and West, Nairobi NP, Samburu).

Mammalian diversity and density are both high in the protected areas. In fact, the familiar grasslands predominate because the big mammals, particularly the elephants, control the growth of trees. Without the steady attention of these grazers, the trees would soon transform the landscape into woodland. Species endemism is low however, limited to a few gerbils among the mammals and several birds and reptiles.

Species that once thrived in the region have diminished in number as a result of the usual suspects — diminishing range, competition for water and forage from domesticated animals, poaching. Black Rhinos have been especially hard hit. Wild dogs, which once roamed the breadth of sub-Saharan East Africa, are rare even in the protected areas. Some conservation efforts, in contrast, have succeeded too well. There is some evidence that the growing population of big grazers in Amboseli National Park have altered the mix of both plants and predators. How? Competition from nomadic Masaai cattle — now banned from the park — probably played a role in the evolution of the region’s familiar blend of plant and animal. An ecoregion is not simply a plot of earth upon which certain plants and animals exist. It is a complex system of interactions among landscape, climate, flora, and fauna. Each participant contributes to the creation of the whole. Changes to one necessitate changes among the rest.

AWF and Starbucks Announce Coffee Quality Lab

Kenya is the world’s largest exporter of black tea, but coffee is Kenya’s top export earner. Back in 2005, the African Wildlife Foundation and coffee retailer Starbucks formed the Kenya Heartland Coffee Project, with the aim of maintaining and improving the quality of central highland coffee while promoting ethical business practices and sustainable agriculture.

The AWF and Starbucks have recently announced the creation of the Coffee-Quality Laboratory on the campus of Kimathi University College of Technology in central Kenya. The Lab will allow farmers to taste the coffee they produce, many for the first time. More importantly, the Lab will introduce local growers to the latest coffee growing practices and techniques.

Most Kenyan coffee is grown in the Central Highlands region, near Mt. Kenya and Aberdares Forest National Parks. Travelers to Central Kenya cannot yet easily add a Kenyan coffee plantation to their itineraries. That should change soon, as the Kenya Heartland Coffee Project and the Kenya Wildlife Service are currently developing jointly operated tourism facilities.

Google Earth Layer of East African Protected Areas Available

A couple of years ago a group of Africa enthusiasts set out to digitally map all of the continent’s major protected areas. After a slow start, Mapping Africa’s Protected Areas Project (or MAPA) secured support from Google while dedicated volunteers relayed on the ground data — map coordinates — of key conservation areas. Yesterday the MAPA Project announced the completion of Phase 1, a digital map of protected areas in East and Southern Africa.

The map is presented as a Google Earth Layer and is available through Google Earth’s Outreach Showcase. The layer includes geographic data such as park locations, including gate and lodge locations, links to geographically tagged photographs, geographically relevant blog entries from wildlife conservationists, and photographs, video and details about the wildlife protected in each area via hyperlink to ARKive. Google Earth, available for free, is required to view the data.

The layer is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in conservation, and it’s a terrific tool for those considering a visit to East Africa.

CBS’ 60 Minutes Spotlights Wildebeest Migration

CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley doesn’t hold back when he introduces his recent story about East Africa’s wildebeest migration:

If you could go just one place, anywhere on the planet, to see the most spectacular wildlife, you’d want to head east to catch a sight that comes around every year, but only for a short time.

It’s called the “great migration,” an endless march of life, and death and rebirth for millions of animals. When you see it, you might agree this is one of the greatest shows on Earth.

If you are at all interested in East Africa or its wildlife or safari travel, you are familiar with the migration — and the greatest show on Earth hyperbole that usually accompanies it. But Pelley included a sour note, too, reminding us of the precariousness of natural spectacles such as the wildebeest migration:

We thought you should see it now, because there’s no guarantee that it’ll be around forever.

The wildebeest migration has been underway for thousands of years, having survived droughts, volcanoes, the arrival of Masai herdsmen, the arrival of Europeans, a devastating rinderpest epidemic and the steady encroachment of agriculture and civilization. Pelley’s story introduced his audience to a new threat — global climate change — that may at last prove the undoing of East Africa’s wildebeest migration.

The wildebeest migration is driven by water and grass. As the southern Serengeti dries out in spring, the wildebeest — a million and a half of them, joined by two hundred thousand zebras — move north to Kenya and the Mara Triangle, which is watered by the Mara River. During the dry season, the Mara and its tributaries are the only source of water in the region. The headwaters of the Mara River lie in Kenya’s Mau Forest — a dense equatorial rain forest that traps rainwater and regulates its release into the river (“like a sponge,” says Pelley). A growing population in and around the Mau Forest, combined with irresponsible land use practices and delicate politics, have led to deforestation of vast swaths of forest. Loss of forest canopy has hindered the forest’s ability to attract rainfall and hold it. This has led to erratic — and substantially reduced — flows in the Mara River. All of that eventually reaches downstream to the Mara Triangle and the grasses that grow there and the animals that depend on both water and grasses to survive.

What would happen, correspondent Pelley asked Colorado State scientist Robin Reid, if the Mara River stopped flowing?

If the river were to dry up completely, okay, in the very first week after it dried up we’d lose about 400,000 animals that would die.

If you missed the broadcast last night, catch it here. And if you would like to catch the wildebeest migration sooner rather than later, learn more about making that happen, here.

Meet the Gerenuk

Gerenuks browsing, gerenuk-like. Photo by Norman Myers.

Gerenuk (Litocranius walleri) means “giraffe-necked” in Somali and the long-necked leaf browser is also known as the Giraffe-necked Antelope or Waller’s Gazelle. The Lito of Litocranius means “stone” in Greek and cranius means “skull” because the Gerenuk’s small, triangular skull is especially dense. Walleri refers again to Horace Waller, a 19th century missionary, slavery abolitionist and friend of explorer Dr. Stanley Livingston, whose papers and books Waller edited.

Gerenuks are found in Somalia, of course, but their range extends across Kenya and into Tanzania. They thrive in dry scrub and bush and are a key species in both the Somali and Northern Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets ecoregions. East African safari travelers determined to get close to a gerenuk might consider adding Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve to the itinerary.

The slight antelopes subsist on the leaves of bushes and trees which they reach giraffe-like via their long necks or Gerenuk-like while standing upright on their hind legs. Gerenuks derive almost all the water they need from the forage they consume.

Hyenas, wild dogs, cheetahs, leopards and lions all prey on Gerenuks, but loss of habitat is their most serious threat. Nonetheless, the species is not considered threatened.

But Why’s It Called “Southern Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets”?

The Southern Acacia-Commiphora ecoregion includes most of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and the Masai Mara Reserve in southwestern Kenya.

The Southern Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets ecoregion is called that to distinguish it from the Northern Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets ecoregion , which covers most of Kenya, and the Somali Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets ecoregion, which is found in northeastern Kenya and Somalia and Ethiopia. The Northern and Southern varieties are wetter than the Somali variety, but not by much.

Iconic acacia trees predominate, joined by thorny commiphora trees (think myrrh). Grasses thrive, too, more so in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem than elsewhere due the effects of a million and a half wandering herbivores. The ecoregion hosts a dense accumulation of large mammals, most protected in several of Africa’s best managed reserves, including all those associated with East Africa’s wildebeest migration and everything else one expects to find in East Africa, from hyraxes to elephants, servals to lions. Despite the diversity and sheer mammalian poundage, there are no mammals endemic to the region. Several bird and reptile species are endemic, however.

For the curious, Kenya’s Masai Mara Reserve and Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater are probably the best places to see the Southern Acacia-Commiphora ecoregion up close.

East Africa’s Ecoregions

But before we get to East Africa’s ecoregions, what is an ecoregion?

The World Wildlife Fund, which has taken the lead in identifying and cartegorizing such things, tells us an ecoregion is,

a large area of land or water that contains a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities that

1. share a large majority of their species and ecological dynamics;
2. share similar environmental conditions, and;
3. interact ecologically in ways that are critical for their long-term persistence.

The WWF recognizes 825 terrestrial ecoregions, 426 freshwater ecoregions, and 229 marine ecoregions. From these 1500 or so ecoregions, the WWF has identified 200 priority ecoregions. The Global 200 are the planet’s most biologically distinct regions; conserving these would preserve the broadest possible diversity of plants and animals.

Ecoregions are grouped into Ecozones, of which there are just eight. Visitors on safari in East Africa will find themselves amid the Afrotropic ecozone, which encompasses all of sub-saharan Africa.

Depending on where their Safari takes our visitors, they may visit one or several ecoregions. In Kenya, they’ll probably travel through Somali Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets and Southern Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets and East African Montane woodlands and perhaps East African montane forests and maybe Eastern Arc forests or even Masai xeric grasslands and shrublands if they have included Samburu on their itinerary.

In Tanzania our trekkers might find themselves in Southern Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and thickets and East African montane forests and Eastern Arc forests but they might also wind up in Serengeti volcanic grasslands or East African halophytics.

Hominid Footprints Discovered in Northeastern Tanzania

Last spring, a group of conservationists and documentary film makers retracing the path of the northern slave route through Tanzania stumbled across a much older set of footprints pressed into the rock of the West Usambara Mountains. The footprints were discovered in hardened volcanic ash, samples of which have been taken for analysis and dating. The prints are believed to be 1.5 million years old.

In addition to making its prehistoric discovery, the expedition filmed at sites throughout the northern slave route, from the slopes of Kilimanjaro and across northeastern Tanzania and, eventually, to Bagamoyo on the Indian Ocean coast opposite the island of Zanzibar. Researchers noted that a branch off the main route leads to Tanga on the coast, through a region dotted with the ruins of slave collection centers. Tanzanian officials commissioned the expedition to collect film footage and historical data for educational purposes and to support tourism.

Kenya’s Aberdares Forest Fence Finally Finished

It took 21 years, but Kenyan conservationists have completed construction of an electric fence around Aberdare National Park in central Kenya. The fence will protect nearby farms and villages from large animals such as elephants and rhinos. The fence will protect those same animals from poachers, while the forest itself will be protected from illegal logging.

The conservation group Rhino Ark led the effort, with contributions from the Kenya Wildlife Service, Abderdare National Park lodge managers and private donors from around the world.