Meeting went well

This morning was my meeting with Dan, Nathan (the research coordinator) and Mr. Mathenge (the assistant to the head cattle guy), and I think it went pretty well.

Dan arrived and I saw he had brought 3 girls from Mpala with him- 2 of the Princeton undergrads and one research assistant who is just starting a year-long position. I guess none of them had been to Ol Pejeta before and didn't have anything else pressing to do today, so he brought them along to show them the place. They just had to sit around during my meeting and then Dan took us out to try to find cool wildlife to show them, but sadly there was not much out today. So I hope they still enjoyed coming.

But back to my meeting... The most important part was for me to find out where the cows are now, and if they are planning to move any of them soon. With this info, Dan and I selected sites for me to focus on. In general, I want to see how wildlife behave before, during, and after cattle grazing. In practice, it would take a long time (more months than I am here) to see this full cycle at a single site (and I would want replicates, so multiple sites). Therefore, we picked 6 different sites that represent different parts of the cycle. For more info on that, read the next paragraph. If you don't really care about the details (and I don't blame you if you don't), skip to the last paragraph.

There are a couple of plains that already have cows grazing on them now and the managers are not planning to move the cows soon, so these will be my "during cows" sites. There are two places where there are no cows now, but they will definitely be moving cows to one of them soonish. So those will function as my "before cows" sites. Once they move cows to one of them, it will become another "during cows" site. There is also one plain where there are cows now, but the grass has gotten very low and they will be moving the cows off of that site any day now. So as soon as the cows leave, that will be my "after cows" site to see how the grass grows back and how the wildlife respond after the cows leave. I may also have a site inside the white rhino enclosure. This is a fenced off area, so no cows ever go there, but there is wildlife inside that I can study. So this may serve as a "no cows" kind of control area.

I will also be putting out grazing exclosure cages (1m x 1m x 0.5m of chicken wire on a frame) to prevent grazing inside these cages. That will let me know how the grass is growing on each plain when it is not being eaten.The frames are being welded in town now. They will not fit in my car, but there are trucks from Ol Pejeta that go into town often, so hopefully one of them can pick up the frames for me. I thought I was going to have to attach the chicken wire myself, but it seems they might be able to do that for me at the workshop here.

So the rest of this week will involve buying supplies, getting things made, and basically getting set up to start the project. Then hopefully next Monday I will actually put out the exclosure cages and the experiment will begin. It looked like it was raining off in the distance today, but didn't actually rain at the research center so far. So hopefully the roads will be able to dry out a bit-- although the rain is very good for the grass and the animals, so I shouldn't complain.