Bwindi Researchers

What a lifetime opportunity it is to volunteer with ITFC!

In the herbarium

I have been at ITFC for 2 months and I must say that I learned a lot: in theory (the library is incredibly complete and the staff of the Institute are like open books!) and of course in practice, for me the most exciting part.

I came here to work with the herbarium, hand in hand with Barigyira the herbarium technician. But apart from this, I had the chance to participate in other field-work, which included tree phenology (once a month flowering and fruiting of the same trees are being recorded to understand and monitor seasonality), phenology of mountain gorilla foods (almost the same as the other phenology, but just plants eaten by gorillas), camera-trapping (special cameras placed in the forest to record any animals moving in front), bird nests monitoring and ecological and monitoring research as a part of  TEAM (a global climate/ecological monitoring network project).

towards the forest

But I must add, that working as a volunteer in ITFC, besides being productive for my academic and professional training, it has also been a relaxed and peaceful life.

Life with the Ruhija community

Working in the office with lovely and welcoming people, living in a comfortable special house inside Bwindi Impenetrable National Park with nature and tasty food (of course take care that the monkeys don’t steal it from me!), and the best people to share the house with (I learned from them more about Uganda or Rwanda than in the wikipedia) or to go for a beer in the small village near our place (just for the pleasure of walking beneath an incredible firmament, or seeing the erupting Virunga volcanoes painting the night in red).

In two words:   Highly recommended.

Xiana

We joined our friends Jonathan Kingdon and Laura Snook – see previous blog for background – for gorilla tracking to the Bitukura group just recently. It was only the four of us and Stephen from UWA as our guide. The morning was sunny and we did not need to walk far from the Ruhija ranger post. A radio call from the trackers told us that the gorillas were close, but… there were also elephants in the same area. Apparently the gorillas were avoiding them. We had to be careful too as meeting elephants in dense forest is not advised. We had to skirt around the valley and wait.

Before setting off: Raymond Kato (Warden Research), Jonathan Kingdon, Miriam, Laura Snook and Stephen

Finally we got an “all clear” and we moved to the gorilla group. They had been only a couple of hundred meters away. They didn’t react to our arrival other than to glance briefly at us. They were peacefully chewing on dead wood and the usual shoots and leaves. There was no sign of the elephants.

Over the next hour we had a close view of most of the 14 Bitukura gorillas. Sometimes a good look meant hanging precariously on the thick vegetation that covers these steep slopes.

‘Silverback’ watching a Blackback!

Jonathan closely observed every move of the gorillas in view. He recalled that “In those days (the 1960s), when I was surveying and collecting here and in Mgahinga, gorillas had not yet been habituated and you would at most see a glimpse of a large black animal at a distance, hear grunts and chest beats but never had a chance to observe their behaviour close up for more than a moment”. This was a special experience even for a very experienced naturalist!

Happy gorilla trackers and rangers, on their return from Bitukura

Big smiles… after being presented with certificates

There had been a time, two decades ago, when the habituation of gorillas had been controversial. Habituation and daily visits would cause stress, make the animals vulnerable to poachers, and bring them into regular contact with human disease. But habituation also allows the gorillas to be seen and to provide a foundation for a major tourist industry. We asked Jonathan what he thought. He was impressed:

“I would not want to say that every gorilla group should be habituated, and be turned into a commercial commodity, but I am fully in favour of very tightly regulated tourism which allows people to have this experience. And I am very impressed by what I saw: it was strictly limited to one hour which I think is essential to maintain an acceptable level of stress of the gorillas. Careful judgement is essential. If, for any reason, a particular group appears harassed by the attention, then I think it should stop for a while while people try and understand what is happening, which individuals are being stressed and why. I think it is a question of endless learning, I do not think you will ever have answers to these things in a definitive way. It has got to remain flexible and judged against the ultimate objective — ensuring the welling of the gorillas.”

UWA’s guest-book now has the following entry from Jonathan: “The new skills with habituating gorillas are wonderful to experience. Stephen and his gang have transformed the experience. A far cry from my many trips in the 1960s”

Come and see the gorillas for yourself! According to Jonathan and Laura, this is an experience no-one should miss. It something everyone should do at least once in their lives.

As Jonathan said: “We people do not have a future if we do not respect gorillas and nature in general. And I think the required awareness is greatly enhanced by watching gorillas. I would press anybody from anywhere to make this a pilgrimage. Make a point in your life time to go and see gorillas.”

Miriam and Douglas

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I did not know about this until I saw it. Young birds get their toenails painted by researchers. Strange indeed but there is a reason.

The other day coming back from visiting the mountain gorillas we saw one of our staff, Narsis, up a ladder. He was looking into one of the nest-boxes that are scattered around the forest here. He had plugged the opening to the box and was looking inside. We stopped to watch.

Here are a few pictures.

Stripe Breasted Tits being removed from their nest box — the opening is blocked to stop the adults finding the young have gone

Each bird is weighed (watched here by UWA ranger Silver who was with us)

Recording the data

Birds are marked to allow them to be individually identified

The chicks are carefully replaced to their nest box and the parent birds will find them unharmed

So what was happening?

The brood had been discovered just the day before. Phil Shaw who coordinates the Stripe Breasted Tit (Parus fasciiventer) work (by email from Scotland ) asked Narsis to weigh the chicks in order to estimate their age. Marking the claws with coloured polish helps tell the individuals apart in future assessments — when they are bigger they will be ringed instead.

Why do they plug the box? If the parent birds find the nest-box empty they may not come back again thinking their chicks are gone for good. By plugging the box until we are ready for them we can be sure the adult birds don’t see inside the box until they can find their chicks unharmed.

These birds are only found in Bwindi and a few other forests in the region.  If you are interested to know more about them you can find out more at our web site here.

All part of the research in Bwindi.

Best wishes

Douglas

The site has been having a few problems the last few weeks. When I last put this up a few weeks ago it got lost. Let’s try again (again) and hope ….

Have you heard that the gorilla genome has just been sequenced? There has been some news coverage. Technical stuff certainly, but it offers interesting general insights too.

Closer than they look? Mountain gorillas in the Virungas.

The researchers sequenced the DNA from four animals including three western lowland gorillas and one eastern lowland gorilla. These animals are the last great-apes to have had this treatment and join humans, orang-utans, chimpanzees and bonobos.

Based on the genetic sequence data the human genome is closest to that of the chimpanzees and bonobos (these animals are closer to each other than to humans): the difference is only 1.37% in the raw genetic information. The orang-utan is almost twice as distinct with a 3.4% difference to humans. The new data places the gorilla in-between these other great apes with a 1.75% difference to humans.

Any surprises from the new gorilla data? Well, while the chimpanzees and bonobos are closer overall, it appears that whole tracts of our genomes, about 15%, are more similar to those of the gorilla than to any of the other great apes.

Only 1.75% divides us: a Mountain gorilla family in the Virungas.

The new gorilla data also suggest that ancestral people (and chimps) separated from ancestral gorillas about 10 million years ago. (Genetic data suggests humans and chimps separated more recently, perhaps less than 5 million years ago). Ancestral eastern and western lowland gorillas likely parted ways from each other much more recently: perhaps less than 500,000 years ago.

Its worth pointing out that these % numbers are based on very simple summary measures: they tell us nothing about just what the differences and similarities are, mean or imply … but methods to do that are improving. The new study offers some initial results. For example the researchers have identified evidence of unusually rapid evolution in several gorilla genes. These include genes involved in generating tough skin and possibly related to the hard knuckle pads that gorillas use for walking. Genes involved in hearing and brain development are also reported to have undergone rapid change in gorillas – we used to flatter ourselves that the similar changes observed in us were somehow unique to humans and reflected our language and cognitive skills, but we were wrong.

Perhaps we’re not so special after all. Our cousin gorillas wouldn’t think so.

Best wishes

Douglas

As long ago as 2005, a Norwegian scientist published research findings in a science journal stating that the lives of people living on certain slopes of Mt. Elgon were in danger because of looming landslides. However, neither community members nor local authorities got this information early enough to migrate from danger. On the 1^st March 2010, the settlement suffered from landslides that left 92 people dead, 300 people missing and 300,000 displaced.

“Just being able to conduct your research, write a thesis and publish a paper in a peer reviewed scientific journal isn’t enough. Most scientists are funded by the public, not by journals. Why then spend millions of public funds on a study, only to publish findings in a scientific journal and not in the relevant local press?” Martin Robbins of The Guardian (UK) mused.

Such is the tone of proceedings at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) science communication workshop, that took place in Nairobi last week. With about 25 science journalists and 7 communication officers (of research institutes) from various African countries, the main theme of the training was to equip journalists with a better understanding of science methods and skills to effectively report science. At the same time, it trained communication officers in ways to get research findings published in the mass media. INASP and their Nairobi partners – Information Africa Organization -facilitated the training. Media houses represented included Uganda’s Nation Group, New Vision and Observer, Namibia’s New Era, Nigeria’s Observer and Guardian and many others from Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia, Somalia and Kenya.

Science communicators from 9 African countries

In one of the sessions, communication officers and journalists were asked to air their opinions about each other. Interesting  issues were raised:

• Scientists and their communication officers only consider publishing in peer reviewed journals worthwhile and seldom consider contacting the local press about their study’s findings.
• While writing press releases, there is a tendency for research communication officers to emphasize their institution’s image rather than the actual issue of the release.
• Researchers are often uncooperative with the press. They only want to bring in journalists after publishing in a peer reviewed journal. Journalists on the other hand, feel they need to be informed from an early stage in the study.
• When researchers contact the press, they often provide expert information that is hard to be interpreted by a common journalist.
• Research institutes should outline duties and responsibilities for their communication officers that include attending to the public, through the media. Time and finances ought to be budgeted for this.

For over 6 hours, Owuor Otula (a veteran journalist and publisher of Science Africa) took us through drills of how to write publishable press statements, ways of managing excellent media relations, ways of regularly developing stories from research institutes to the mass media, and how to interest the mass media with the institutes’ researchers and studies. It was exciting!

The training closed with participants being awarded certificates and also being enrolled into a one-year mentoring program still aimed at enhancing the quality of science communication in Africa. This program is coordinated by INASP and the African Federation of science Journalists (AFSJ).

Certificates' award by AFSJ President

Going by the daily evaluations, our understanding and perceptions of science communication changed significantly during the training. Learning to communicate research better and to the right audience may be the basis for preventing fatalities such as the Mt. Elgon case mentioned above.

Greetings from a cool (and confused?) Nairobi.

Ivan

Last week ITFC and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA, the managers of Uganda’s National Parks) jointly hosted our annual ‘Information Sharing Workshop’, this time in Mbarara. 65 Participants from Uganda, Rwanda and Congo came to represent the students, hosts, partners and collaborators we work with. This workshop was a closing event for ITFC’s 3 year grant from the MacArthur Foundation. The timing coincided with UWA’s efforts to develop a new 10 year management plan for the Bwindi and Mgahinga Conservation Area and the workshop provided a good venue to discuss some difficult and pressing issues.

Attentive audience

Participants were treated to a packed two-day program of presentations and discussions. UWA staff laid out their challenges, ITFC students and staff presented overviews of our work while other representatives of conservation and community development organisations shared their experiences, views and plans.The audience fired off questions and comments and kept us all on our toes.

Break-out group discussing community surveys

One real value of these meetings is for the students and researchers to be able to place their work in the bigger picture and see how managers and others respond to conclusions and recommendations. Importantly too, these workshops are an opportunity to discuss management challenges with a diverse group of experts and practitioners. UWA led the Day 1 discussions, focusing on a) the problem of Mountain Gorillas increasingly roaming outside of the park, b) managing resource use by communities, c) assessing communities’ knowledge, attitude and behaviour towards the parks and d) monitoring wildlife in the park. On Day 2, the same groups decided on what capacity is required in all these fields, within UWA, NGOs and universities and what should be done to develop it.

At the end of it all we had a small party. The University Vice Chancellor shared a few words and then we ate, danced and celebrated ITFC’s 21st birthday: coming of age!

Miriam and Douglas

Frankly, I don’t know who makes the wildest or loudest noise to the world out there. I have had the opportunity to visit the mountain gorillas and witnessed them making the deafening “call me boss” noises. Similarly, I have had to endure several evening hours of “hey this is my territory” screams of chimpanzees, all in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (Bwindi). Cute conversations going on in the jungle every other day between mothers, fathers, juveniles and babies have continuously reminded me of how important every other animal is to the general ecosystem of the park.

To some extent I feel a current of shame rising up in me as some of these animals howl out their evenings in the jungle. Not that I would love them to spend a night with me in my relatively warm bed, not at all! My observation here is the amount of attention a few species (read mountain gorillas) may be getting compared to the other. Indeed only a handful of Bwindi visitors get to know that there is even a thriving population of chimps in the park. Yet an estimated 350-400 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthi Eastern Chimpanzee) live in Bwindi. It is only in Bwindi that we have both the mountain gorillas and the chimpanzees ranging in one habitat in Africa.

In my few months working in Bwindi and over five years in tourism, I have observed how the gorillas seem to get more “marketable” over the years than any the other primate species. Not only in terms of research studies commissioned in respect to each of these species, but also in terms of awareness and promotion for tourism and attention from conservation practitioners.

The eastern chimpanzee is classified as “Endangered” on IUCN’s Red Listed species occurring in South-West Uganda. Isn’t is a shame therefore that we don’t have any studies about the population trends, demographics, distribution of chimps in Bwindi?

Luckily from our camera trap fieldwork in the park we managed to get a few photos of these chimps and we continue encountering their nests frequently as we walk in the park.

somewhere in Bwindi as caught by our camera trap

Wouldn’t it nice one day to see a group scientists embarking on a census activity for chimps in Bwindi or better still group of tourist enthusiastically paying for their tickets for tracking chimps in Bwindi?

Well, until then, Bwindi chimps are crying; “hey calm down, it’s our world too”.

Let’s hear what you think.

Ivan

They came in the night. I woke with my hair full of crawling creatures. Ants. After that we didn’t get much sleep.

Army ants are swarming arount the ITFC station. Not a good idea to get too close.

We hopped about. We swept. We put down barriers. Paraffin and ashes work as repellents. Water can also be an effective obstacle. We improvised what we could.

There are estimated to be about 11,000 ant species. Most of these occur in tropical forests. But here in Bwindi, in the cool climate of 2,300 m above sea level, we lack the vast diversity of ants that characterise much of the warmer lowlands tropics.

Generally we dont have to worry about ants. We don’t have to protect all sweet foods in closed containers for fear of the ants you would expect elsewhere.

We only see one type on a regular basis: the aggressive columns of army ants that we often pass in the forest. We seldom linger. You learn not to stop until you are past.

Residues from a bad night

Sweeping out the dead and stunned ants. You have to be quick or they scatter.

There are hundreds of thousands more where these came from.

Nomadic “army” and “driver” ants occur in Africa and the Americas. The African Gorylus ants have among the largest colonies of any ant species with some having over a million individuals. Despite their large size, these colonies possess only a single queen that lays several hundred thousand eggs each month.

As we know from our experiences these ants are active both day and night. While they don’t sting the larger soldiers pack a vicious bite. Pull a biting ant off your body and you may leave its head imbedded in your flesh or clothes.

Army ants come in different sizes. The large headed soldiers are not bluffing: they bite.

Ants may be small but colonies of army ants are major predators. These colonies forage in an aggressive swarm overpowering animals in their wake. They are often followed by birds that feed on the cloud of fleeing insects that precede the invading hoards.

Army ants prey on and control other ant species so it is possible that our local dominance of army ants is, along with altitude, one of the reasons we can normally leave out sugar without it being overrun. The price for that is the occasional disturbed night.

Best wishes

Douglas

Frederick, Donah, Edson and Margaret of ITFC have been spending this last week in Edson’s home village. They are piloting some methods to see how the life of the Batwa (pygmy) people has changed over the last 22 years since the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park was created and how the people have coped. Miriam, Robert and I dropped by.

The story of Bwindi’s Batwa people raises a highly charged and often politicised set of issues. The Batwa livelihood and culture was largely built around the forest, so the creation of the park left them landless and destitute. They lacked the skills and aspirations to cope in a world without forests. But various organisations have tried to help, offering land, training and various support projects. Even so, most remain poor even now.

Our study is a trial to see if we can clarify the cultural heritage of the Batwa as well as their losses and gains over the least 3 decades. If nothing else the special culture of the Batwa is under threat and needs to be documented for posterity. But we hope for more than that. We believe that adding more substance to the claims and knowledge of the Batwa may help us all see beyond the often polarised debates that pit conservation imperatives versus human rights. There may be, at least in some instances, room for compromise. What might such compromises involve, you may ask? We don’t know yet. It may be a recognition of sacred sites and allowing the Batwa to visit these, it may be increased opportunities for Batwa to use their knowledge to help park management and guide tourists. It may simply be greater respect for the culture of these remarkable people. We won’t know until we try — and strangely enough until recently there have been few such attempts.

The start of our study is to use scoring exercises to identify the issues that matter most to the people themselves. So far the exercises are promising. Here are a few pictures of the ITFC team in progress.

Miriam and Edson from ITFC share a light moment during one scoring exercise with the men

Frederick, left, has been leading the scoring exercises with the men

Donah, second from left, has been leading the scoring with the women

Donah and Robert watch as the women score the value of different sources of products before and after the National Park was created.

To provide a break from the scoring and discussions we showed a video about life of people in Borneo’s forests.

We’re hoping that this kind of research can create a constructive dialogue among the various authorities and the Batwa. Let’s hope.

Best wishes

Douglas