Kenya Summer 2011

(Photo: me last summer looking at a pool of hippos)

Hi everyone -- to those that enjoyed my blog last summer and have been asking if I am going to start it up again, Yes.

I have booked my plane ticket and am leaving for Kenya in less than a week. I fly Virgin Atlantic from Newark on Sunday, June 5 to London, then on to Nairobi. I will be in Kenya for nearly 3 months this time. My return flight is on August 24th.

I am not travelling alone, but escorting a group of Princeton undergrads who will be spending their summers at Mpala. I will be at Mpala for a few days when we arrive, then I will drive my vehicle over to Ol Pejeta for the rest of the summer.

For those that don't know, last summer I was working on a project on hybrid zebras that my adviser had started, but this summer I will be starting my own dissertation research. Some background: In a lot of places in East Africa today, people are trying to raise cattle while also maintaining healthy populations of wildlife on the same land. The wildlife bring in money from tourists who come to see them, and the cattle provide food for the community and additional income. In regards to conservation, I think this may be the only way to really preserve sufficient populations of many wild species going forward. There are too many people and not enough land to just fence off huge protected areas for wildlife where people are not allowed to use the land for food. If cattle-wildlife coexistence is managed properly, it appears it can work, but the key words here are "properly managed".

Since cows and wildlife seemingly eat the same grass, they may be in competition for food. Therefore, in order to manage land for both, we need to know how cattle and wildlife interact with each other and with the vegetation they are eating. Some of the interactions between cattle and wild grazers have been studied, but there are still missing pieces. I am planning to look at how the intensity of cattle grazing affects the behavioral response of the different wild grazers, and whether the response depends on the animal's body size and digestive strategy (whether it is a hindgut fermenter like a zebra, or a foregut fermenter/ruminator like cows and gazelles).

So the plan is to put these little GPS collars on cows to see where they herds are grazing, and how much. Then I will go to those sites and take detailed vegetation measurements and behavioral data on the wild animals grazing there. I want to see how the cows affect the grass, and then how this change affects the behavior of the wild animal species. I also expect large species to be affected differently than small-bodied species, and hindgut fermenters to react differenty than foregut fermenters because of their different dietary requirements.

This week will be spent packing. I have lots of gear to take over....