The Project
Marine Mammal, Primate and Coastal Habitat Environmental Internship in Kenya, Africa

The GVI Kenya expedition aims to contribute to the conservation of the Kisite-Mpunguti MPA, surrounding habitats, wildlife populations and natural resources. We work in close association with Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and other governmental agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) who direct our areas of research based on priority conservation needs. GVI provide support to both existing projects and projects which could not be conducted previously due to lack of resources.

At the most basic level, our primary objective is provide KWS and other national and local stakeholders with the scientific data needed to both plan and monitor long-term management strategies to ensure that natural resources are utilised sustainably whilst generating much needed revenue, and that habitats and species populations are effectively conserved in the process. Following on from this, the research data will be used as the basis for raising awareness and implementing relevant environmental education amongst local communities to engage them actively in the protection and responsible management of natural resources that they will depend upon for generations to come.

GVI offers assistance to community projects, including capacity building, environmental education, and English teaching. The objective of the school English teaching program is to raise the competence of students in English language and as a direct result the school’s performance in KCPE (Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education) examinations. A secondary objective is to empower students to engage in livelihoods related to tourism and wider business opportunities, which will become an increasingly important alternative to artisanal fishing. English teaching in adult classes is also undertaken with this in mind. The objective of our capacity building program is to develop additional skills within the communities to enable them to diversify income generation or improve their socio-economic condition through improved health and environment.

The marine research program focuses primarily on cetacean populations, with dolphin-based tourism being one of the major draw-cards for visitors (and tourist revenue) to the area. In the absence of any previous long-term dolphin research in Kenya, our initial objective is to provide KWS with baseline data on species presence, population size and habitat utilisation. The next stage will be to assess the impact that human activities, specifically tourism, may be having on populations. In addition we support research on sea turtles with the objective of assessing species distribution. A further objective is to collect data on the occurrence, seasonality and distribution of other marine species that are of conservation or management value.

The coastal forest program focuses primarily on the Angolan black and white colobus with the objective of assessing population status, habitat use and the impact of human activities. A broader objective is to assess the biodiversity of the area and hence the conservation importance of Shimoni’s coastal forest on a local, regional and international level. Integrated with this is the objective of assessing human resource use and the level of impact it may be having.

Community Development

Whilst the Shimoni archipelago is home to important populations of wildlife it also supports a number of small rural and impoverished communities. Shimoni village is the largest community, home to KWS headquarters for Kisite-Mpunguti MPA, a small but important port for trade between Kenya and Pemba. It retains a traditional conservative Islamic culture, but government offices draw a tribally diverse, better educated and Christian workforce, which in combination with the daily influx of tourists creates a more cosmopolitan atmosphere in comparison to surrounding communities. However the population remains primarily dependent on traditional fishing, limited subsistence farming and exploitation of forest resources.

Mkwiro village, at the eastern end of Wasini island is the larger of the two communities on the island with a population of around 1,400, yet is most notable for its lack of development and inability to capitalise on the tourism. With the creation of the Kisite-Mpunguti MPA, the community lost many of its fishing rights within the area, and the perception amongst the community is that they have yet to see the compensatory economic benefit from tourism. The community remains dependent on traditional fishing, supplemented by seasonal small scale arable farming, livestock keeping, traditional woven crafts and supplying the shell trade. The community is highly sedentary, insular, traditional and conservative with a strong Islamic cultural influence. Mkwiro boasts its own primary school, with an enrolment of around 230 children and an Islamic orphanage that takes around 34 boys from across Kenya’s South coast. There is also a dispensary but no government funding available to staff it, meaning it has spent much of its time closed, and there is no electricity supply or fresh water source on the island. Mkwiro is the predominant focus of GVI’s community development program as a direct result of our partner KWS identifying them as the community most in need of assistance.

Since November 2007, GVI has also been supporting a World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) project in 3 communities within the Taveta-Taita District, between Taveta town which sits on the border of Tanzania, close to Mt Kilimanjaro, and Tsavo West National Park. The communities are ostensibly dependent on basic agriculture in the absence of development in the area, however the semi-arid climate and unpredictable rains renders this a generally subsistence livelihood. Supplementary income has come to depend on illegal poaching of wildlife to support the bush-meat trade which crosses the Tanzanian border, and charcoal burning. The three communities, Kidong, Kasaani and Mahandakini historically poached wildlife for their own subsistence purposes, but increasingly supply the local and trans-boundary bush-meat demand, the principal threat to wildlife sustainability in the nearby Tsavo West National Park and local non-protected areas, an increasingly destructive and lucrative international practice surpassing habitat loss as the greatest threat to tropical wildlife. In order to negate the impact of this trade on local wildlife, and to simultaneously improve the livelihood options for ex-poaching communities, GVI implement capacity-building exercises in each of the three villages.

Community Development Aims

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for life”. The aim of the community development program is ultimately to increase the capacity amongst local communities to engage in alternative sustainable livelihood options, both reducing socio-economic dependence on the exploitation of limited natural resources and raising their standard of living. The primary focus is on teaching English where we aim to improve English language abilities amongst students of Mkwiro Primary School and so raise performance across all subjects, increasing future employment opportunities. Amongst adult education classes we aim to improve functional English to support alternative employment and income generation opportunities particularly with the tourism sector, and also build capacity amongst community-based organisations to develop proposals and seek outside support for initiatives.

Environmental education targets both children and adults to raise awareness of issues affecting natural resource use and conservation and enable them to become more active stakeholders in managing their local and national natural resources. Capacity building and skills development targets community-based organisations in both Mkwiro and communities on the edge of Tsavo West National Park to facilitate them to actively develop and effectively manage community development projects including infrastructure improvement and alternative income generation. Health, environment and domestic issues may also be addressed to improve standards of living. For example the introduction of fuel efficient stoves can reduce domestic spending on fire wood and charcoal, time spent collecting firewood, and improve the health of family members which in turn pays economic dividends in reduced healthcare costs and improved ability to earn income.

Marine Research

The Kisite-Mpunguti MPA lies south of Wasini Island and incorporates the 28 km² Kisite Marine Park, the largest marine park in Kenya, and the adjacent Mpunguti Marine Reserve, Kenya’s smallest reserve at 11 km². The MPA covers shallow waters around the Kisite, Upper Mpunguti and Lower Mpunguti Islands, encompassing some of the country’s finest coral reefs. The MPA offers excellent diving and snorkelling, as well as Kenya’s primary dolphin-watching location, and is the highest revenue-earning MPA for KWS, out-performing many of Kenya’s terrestrial parks and reserves. As a result nature-based tourism brings important revenue to the area. However, relatively little attention has been given to the conservation and sustainable management of East African marine and coastal habitats. This is now changing as governmental agencies and NGO’s appreciate the socio-economic dependence of coastal populations on natural resources and tourism. In 2007, with input from GVI, KWS introduced the first dolphin-watching code of conduct, regulating the interaction of tour boats with the dolphins and prohibiting swimming with dolphin activities that have been demonstrated to have negative impacts in other parts of the world.

The MPA provides important year-round feeding grounds for Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins, protects important coral reef habitats and the accompanying diversity of marine life, from corals and reef fish to turtles, and protects islands which are home to populations of the rare coconut crab and important breeding sites for bird species such as the roseate tern. With no fishing allowed within the marine park, it protects a vital recruitment ground for fish species in an area where traditional fishing is still the primary livelihood. The MPA is also an important habitat for seasonal, migratory species such as whale sharks and manta rays.

However of equal importance for long-term management are the habitats and wildlife in areas surrounding the MPA that do not fall under protected areas. The edge of the MPA where the sea bed shelves in to the deeper waters of the Pemba channel hosts Spinner dolphins and Humpback whales on their seasonal migrations, while the near-shore waters of the Shimoni coast are home to resident Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins and additional fringing reefs, with seahorses present in the Wasini channel. Areas of the coastline including Lower Mpunguti Island and nearby Funzi Island are known nesting grounds for sea turtles. A little further down the coast around Sii Island and Vanga, may be one of the few remaining refuges in Kenya for the endangered dugong (manatee). The mangrove forests along the shores are also critical habitats for water birds and fish nursery grounds. It is these areas, where fishing and mangrove harvesting take place, that the impact of human activities is most acutely felt and communities need to be engaged in responsible management of their resources to ensure both their livelihoods and the wildlife are protected for future generations.

Marine Research Aims

The aim of the marine research program is to create an extensive and comprehensive long-term cetacean monitoring project both within the Kisite-Mpunguti MPA and surrounding areas utilising daily vessel-based surveys to identify which species are present, population sizes, residency rates (how many are present year round and how many are migratory visitors) and habitat utilisation. With this baseline information we can begin to monitor the populations over time and assess the anthropogenic impacts (influence of human activities) to inform long-term management decisions. Collecting data on the interactions of tour boats with dolphins will assist KWS to understand and manage tourism and its potential impacts on local populations with the aim of understanding which species are encountered, where and how often, as well as how this may change seasonally.

In addition to cetacean research, KWS and other stakeholders, including Kenya Sea Turtle Conservation Committee (KESCOM) are keen to assess and catalogue the diversity of other marine life present, including globally threatened turtle species. Knowledge of other charismatic marine life can enable KWS to increase and diversify revenue generation from tourism, potentially reducing impact on current hotspots such as Kisite Island reef and facilitating a more holistic approach towards management. We aim to record incidental sightings of other marine mega-fauna including turtles, whale sharks and rays. Specific surveys also aim to monitoring turtle abundancy and habitat associations at key sites and the cataloguing of fish species. We may also assist in surveys of the coconut crab, birdlife and mangroves at the request of KWS and other stakeholders.

Coastal Forest Research

The African continent covers an area over 30 million km², with a human population of close to 750 million. To put it in to context, its area is equivalent to China, the USA, India, Europe, Argentina and New Zealand combined which support a human population of approximately 3,200 million. This relatively low population density affords Africa the luxury of maintaining vast areas of protected land; Tanzania has 25% of its land surface under some form of protection, the Selous Game Reserve alone equivalent to the size of Switzerland. However protecting areas of land, many of which were originally designated to preserve populations of large mammals for trophy hunting, does not necessarily protect the diversity of habitats or the larger ecosystems on which many of Africa’s plants and animals depend.

Coastal forests once stretched in a continuous belt from Somalia into Mozambique, and incorporate a range of forest types reflecting differing environmental conditions, one of the most widespread being the Northern Zanzibar-Inhambane floristic region, commonly referred to as ‘coral rag’ forest, in reference to the weathered fossilised coral substrate it stands on. This includes the forest remnants present on the Shimoni Archipelago.

The Eastern Arc forests, an ‘arc’ of mountain ranges in Tanzania from the Usambara mountains in the North East close to the Kenyan border, to the Udzungwa mountains and the southern highlands, have long been recognised for their exceptional diversity of endemic species that are found nowhere else on earth. Often they are restricted to just one mountain range. More recently the East African Coastal Forests, incorporating lowland forest, have come to be recognised as a single, broader region for the biodiversity it contains. It is now internationally recognised as a Global Biodiversity Hotspot, and is in fact the smallest by area but contains the highest density of endemic vertebrate species (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals).

Unfortunately coastal areas also support the highest densities of human populations, and increasingly so. The pressure for land, from subsistence agriculture to hotel developments, combined with unsustainable resource use of timber, charcoal and other forest products has had a massive impact on coastal forests, reducing them to a fraction of their former area. As forests are lost so is the habitat for many endemic and threatened species. Whilst areas of forest have been annexed as forest reserves, notably Arabuko-Sokoke on Kenya’s northern coast, which is now co-managed as a National Reserve by KWS, poor enforcement has meant the continued degradation of many protected areas. In addition to their biological value, coastal forests hold cultural value for the Mijikenda tribes that settled along the Kenyan coast. As tribes such as the Digo and Giriama saw their sacred forests destroyed, where traditional rituals once guaranteed their sanctity and protection, National Museums of Kenya took up their protests and initiated a process of annexing areas of ‘kaya’ forests as National Cultural Monuments, empowering local communities to manage them. Kaya Bogoa, in Mkwiro, has been protected as a result.

In Shimoni, important fragments of coastal forest remain unprotected, and the forest has continued to be lost to slash and burn for local agriculture, private development, timber extraction and charcoal burning since the middle of 2007. GVI’s research indicates that 10% of our surveyed area was lost to deforestation in just one year. The forest is known to contain rare plant species, the critically endangered Spotted ground thrush, and the vulnerable Zanj elephant shrew. Furthermore, following GVI’s participation in the census of the Angolan black and white colobus, what may now be the second most important population of this East African subspecies is also threatened. The Angolan black and white colobus has already lost its former range on Kenya’s northern coast, with fragmented populations on the south coast now representing its entire range within Kenya. This subspecies only occurs in Eastern Arc and coastal forests in Tanzania in addition to Kenya, where it is also threatened by habitat loss and hunting.

Undertaking research in Shimoni’s forest is critical to raising awareness amongst national institutions and local communities who will be the ultimate stakeholders in any attempts to seek protection and responsible management of their natural resources. This process now represents the most viable opportunity to conserve the unique and globally important diversity of plants and animals found here.

Coastal Forest Research Aims

The aim of the coastal forest research program is to promote the conservation value of Shimoni’s forests in terms of overall biodiversity and specific populations of conservation-dependent species. The primary focus is on the East African sub-species of the Angolan black and white colobus monkey, aiming to monitor its population size, demographics and distribution in relation to habitat and the wider primate community. Behavioural surveys aim to further our understanding of habitat utilisation and the impact of anthropogenic (human) disturbance. In addition we aim to assess the biodiversity of the forest through targeted surveys such as butterfly, bird and vegetation surveys, whilst casual observations of all fauna contributes to an overall species list for the area. Habitat surveys and disturbance surveys assist us to understand the relationship between species populations and habitat characteristics as well as enabling us to monitor the natural resource use by local communities and threats they may present to the habitat, biodiversity and species’ populations. Future research will address groups of animals and populations such as the Zanj elephant shrew.

Whilst the forest does not currently fall under any form of protection and is not actively managed by any government agencies, aspects do fall under the remit of government agencies including Kenya Forest Service with responsibility over forest resources and KWS with responsibility over all wildlife populations. In addition as part of a recognised Global Biodiversity Hotspot it is a critical natural resource both nationally and internationally, whilst natural resource use must be managed by the local communities that depend on the forest to ensure long-term sustainability. GVI aims to use the research data to promote awareness at all levels and support the community-based organisation Friends of Shimoni Forest, who seek community-based management and conservation.

Climate change

Climate change is thought to pose a significant threat to tropical coastal habitats and the numerous species that depend on the them. Increased sea temperatures threaten the very existence of large swathes of coral reef, the most productive near-shore habitat, on which numerous fish species and their predators depend. As predators at the top of the food chain, dolphin populations will be indicate habitat loss or reduced productivity in the marine environment. The coastal forest research program aims to engage local communities in responsible natural resource use, protecting the remaining forest cover left in Kenya and with it the soils and rain catchment of the area. Supporting communities in accessing revenue from non-consumptive use of forest resources will ultimately be the most critical factor in this.