New Plan!

So Dan visited today and I think we have come up with a totally new plan for my project. The way I was trying to do it was just not working. Trying to have 5 set sites, it was too hard to get enough data on 7 or 8 species from each one. And of course there was the problem with cows being where I thought they weren't supposed to.

So now instead of having set sites, I think I am going to work on the whole Eastern side of the conservancy (but the eastern side only), so I can have collars on all cows on the eastern side. Then it won't matter where they go, as long as I know it from the collars. I will do censuses of where all the animals I can see on the eastern side are every 4 days or so. On the other days I will take behavior measurements on grazing animals of 6 focal species of different body sizes, 3 ruminants and 3 non-ruminants: Grants gazelle, Hartebeest, and Eland... and warthog, zebra, and white rhino.

I am going to test out the census method tomorrow, and then if it seems feasible, I will need to move most of my cages to spread them out across the eastern side to measure vegetation growth.

I feel much better now having a new plan. I sort of felt like I was wasting my time for the last week. Hopefully this works and goes much better. In addition, Dan said he is buying me a car and it could be here as early as next week! Then Blair's car can go back to Mpala until she arrives at the beginning of August to use it. I can't wait to see what it is!!!