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Analysis of Road Kills in Tsavo-East National Park along
Mombasa Nairobi Highway
Joseph Mzozo
Email for correspondence: josephmzozo@gmail.com
Abstract
Highways close to and located within protected areas
have led to high levels of animal-vehicle collisions. Tsavo
East National Park is located along the ever busy
Nairobi-Mombasa highway. The highway has led to
killing of many wild animals including carnivores,
mammals, birds and reptiles thereby making the area
insecure and unsafe for movement of wildlife. The aim
of the study is therefore to assess the seasonal
frequency and species of road kills in the different
sections of the Nairobi-Mombasa highway. The study
was carried out between December 2009 and March
2010. This involved survey of carcasses, blood signs and
broken limbs of wild animals knocked down by vehicles
along the highway. The survey was carried out through
patrolling with a vehicle at 15km h -1 on the entire length
of the 61km highway. At each encounter, the necessary
information about the animal is recorded, GPS of the
points was taken and the carcasses were removed to
avoid double counting. Secondary data was also
collected from the Tsavo Research Centre Research
Station. It was discovered that the Mombasa–Nairobi
highway has resulted in high levels of animal vehicle
collisions. A total of one hundred and one animals killed
were encountered during the survey, mostly carnivores,
herbivores, reptiles, birds and primates respectively.
Carnivores were mostly affected in most of the
observed cases. On the overall, dry season recorded
high number of road kills. It was recommended that
mitigation measures should be put in place such as sign
posts, and both crossings on straight and curved
sections to reduce animal vehicle mortality through
speeding vehicles.
Keywords: Animal, vehicle, collisions, seasonal
frequency.
Bird Species Diversity and Abundance on Farmlands
Surrounding Amurum Forest Reserve, Jos, Nigeria
1,2 *Kambai Collina, 2 Ulf Ottosson, 2,3 Dami F. Danjuma
1 Federal College of Forestry, Jos, Nigeria
2 A.P Leventis Ornithological Research Institute, Amurum
Forest Reserve, Jos, Nigeria
3 University of Jos, Nigeria
*Email for correspondence: talk2nev@yahoo.com
Abstract
Increasing demand for agricultural lands to ensure food
security due to the growing human population has
resulted in massive degradation, fragmentation and loss
of natural forests. This study was conducted to
understand the farmland type that bird species are
associated with in a bid to ensure their conservation.
Four habitat types – farmland with trees (FWT),
farmland without trees (FWOT), rocky outcrop (RO) and
fallow farmlands (FF) were surveyed using line transect.
Bird survey was carried out in 435 transect of 100
metres each chosen using stratified random sampling.
The rank abundance of the bird species was determined
by the proportions of the occurrence of each bird
species in each of the farmland type. Post-hoc test was
used to determine if differences in bird species diversity
and abundance between each pair of farmland types
were significant. Shannon diversity index was used to
calculate bird diversity. Results show that presence of
shrub, water, hedgerow and trees were highly
significant in predicting bird species richness. There was
no significant difference in bird abundance, diversity
and richness between FWT, FF and RO, but there was a
high significant difference in FWOT. FWT had the
highest bird abundance and diversity while FWOT had
the least. Moreover, the presence of trees rather than
number of trees found on farmland is an important
predictor of bird species richness and this must be
understood in order to incorporate it into conservation
management plans. Birds with varying fielding guilds
which poses less threat to crop yield was high in FWT
while FWOT had high numbers of granivorous birds that
are harmful to crop yield. Economic trees could be
planted, which conserves bird species on farmland,
performs its role in ecosystem functioning and
generates income to the farmer.
Keywords: Conservation, Bird species diversity,
Abundance, Farmland, Vegetation
TAAG First African Student’s Conference, Nairobi. 2-4 July, 2013 19