Weather patterns impacting on wildlife behaviour — scientists

Scientists undertaking the first ever national wildlife census have found out that change in weather patterns has impacted wildlife behaviour.

Wildlife Research and Training Institute head Dr Patrick Omondi told the Star on  Thursday that the finding is unusual.

Omondi said they anticipated finding wildlife such as elephants outside the Amboseli National Park as the ongoing census ought to have been a dry season count.

"But because the rains were not enough, most wildlife were inside the park. That was an unusual finding," he said.

Amboseli National Park has about 2,000 elephants that the ecosystem cannot be enough to maintain.

Here, wildlife spends most of their time outside the park during the rainy season. This is because there is a lot of food and water outside the park where there are communities.

The National Wildlife Census covering both land and aquatic wildlife was launched on May 7.

Tourism CS Najib Balala presided over the official launch of the drive at Shimba Hills National Reserve in Kwale county.

The two-month exercise is fully funded by the government and will be executed by the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, the Kenya Wildlife Service and the newly created Wildlife Research and Training Institute.

The Sh250 million drive will enable the country to have refined data on wildlife and find out where they are.

Balala recently said the country has 35,000 elephants, 1,600 rhinos, 100,000 giraffes, 2,400 lions, 2,000 Grevy zebras.

However, data on some wildlife such as cheetahs, leopards, spotted hyenas and the endangered pangolins are not there.

Omondi who is the immediate former Director of Biodiversity, Research and Planning at Kenya Wildlife Service said during rainy seasons of March-April, Amboseli normally becomes a big Lake.

He said wildlife during this time ought to have moved out to group ranches and other dispersal areas outside the park.

"But during this census and because there were no many showers of rain, we found more wildlife inside Amboseli park including large herds of elephants. This is a new finding indicating there is some change in the weather pattern that has an impact on wildlife behaviour," Omondi said.

He said the finding is part of some of the interesting outcome of the census.

This, he said, will inform the deployment of wildlife rangers in addressing human-wildlife conflict because authorities know where wildlife is.

Omondi said census has already been done in Mara and Amboseli ecosystems, was  was going on in upper Kapiti  on Thursday which are areas outside Amboseli and Nairobi National Park. Wildlife within these areas will also be counted.

Early next month, a census will be done at Tsavo, Kenya's largest ecosystem.

"We are moving on fine. We are still tallying the results, cleaning it up and taking them through peer review," Omondi said.

He said the final tally of the status and distribution of Kenya's species will be released together once the census is over.

However, some findings have to be released to wildlife managers immediately.

"Like when we know the high concentration, we share GPS points with managers, we do not wait until the numbers are tallied. If we see like for example there is any encroachment, maybe livestock is inside, we will inform the managers so that they can take action. There are some immediate reporting but the real answers will be after all the census is done," he said.

Omondi said the move will inform security deployment.

The exercise will count terrestrial, freshwater, marine mammals, key birds (ostrich and kori bastards), endangered primates (Tana Mangabey and Tana red colobus) and reptiles (crocodiles) in the 47 counties in Kenya.

In 2020, Kenya marked a milestone in conservation by recording zero rhino deaths, as a result of a collaborative multi-sectoral security approach in dealing with poaching.

KWS said the census will enhance conservation efforts by determining the exact numbers of all wildlife including the endangered species and their exact location.

Every three to five years the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife is required to provide information as outlined in the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act (WCMA), 2013 as well as the status of wildlife resources monitoring report respectively.

These reports are supposed to be presented to Parliament by the Cabinet Secretary responsible for Wildlife Conservation and Management as stipulated in sections 49(4) and 64(3) of the WCMA, 2013.

The collected data will be verified by experts.

-Edited by SKanyara