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Enhancing Wild Life and Habitat Conservation
within the Shimba Hills National Reserve

CURRENT STATUS OF THE RESERVE’S PLANTS

THE SHIMBA NOTES (NUMBER FOUR:

In the draft Management Plan for the Shimba Ecosystem (2001), there is recognition for the often overlooked fact that this area’s greatest asset is its magnificent plant diversity.

It is proposed to capitalise on this and make much more use of its incredible plant richness in attracting and educating visitors to both the Reserve and the Elephant Sanctuary.

This Note details the history of compiling a comprehensive inventory of the plants found in the area and reveals that exciting discoveries continue to be made.

Published vegetation studies of the Shimba Hills began in the 1960’s with Moomaw’s Diani to Kwale transect as part of his “Plant Ecology of the Coast Region”, and Glover’s study of the Reserve’s ecology.

The Magogo and Clover plant list, or Digo Botanical Glossary, listed some 400 taxa.

Prior to this, many botanical collectors had visited the area, probably the earliest being Bishop Wakefield in the mid-nineteenth century.

In 1988 SA Robertson and WRQ Luke, working for the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) and funded by WWF, began a three-year study on all the coastal forests (Coast Forest Survey CFS).

Robert Schmidt, a PhD student, carried out a very detailed study of particular forests in the Reserve in the early ‘90’s, in which the Shimbas were shown to have some 1087 taxa and Mwaluganje 335.

The Coastal Forest Conservation Unit (CFCU) of NMK (the subsequent project to CFS and funded by the British Government and WWF-UK) continued to update the plant inventory of the Shimbas from 1992 to 2001.

In 1997, in a paper presented at a KWS workshop to discuss elephant problems in the area, the total count stood at 11.10 taxa for the main area, and 488 for Mwaluganje.

(This compares with a total for Kenya of c.6600).

Henk Beentje’s Atlas of the Rare Trees of Kenya (1988) was based mainly on records taken from Herbarium specimens.

Since then, field work has changed the status of many coastal plants.

Lists produced from the CFCU database reveal that 57 plants classified as RARE in a world sense exist in the Shimbas, and there are also 282 endemics within the Reserve.

The AETFAT 1991 meeting in Malawi formulated the criteria for listing an area as a Centre of Plant Diversity as an area holding over 1000 species, of which at least 100 are endemics.

Thus the Shimba Hills should be so classified.

So where are we to-day?

Combining both the Reserve and Mwaluganje, the very latest count is 1311 taxa!

New records continue to be discovered, many being firsts for Kenya or for Kwale District.

It is obvious that the count is not complete, and that there are still plants to add to the inventory.

- Quentin Luke

  A 'SHIMBA BONEYARD'

In late October 2002, during one of my habitual binocular sweeps of the hillside opposite Sable Valley, I noted a sable herd high up, near the summit.

Several animals appeared to have white objects in their mouths, and I realised that they were indulging in the documented but infrequently observed pastime of “osteophagia” or bone chewing.

Among African sable populations, this trait has only been recorded in the Shimba Hills, and it is theorised that it may be due to a possible calcium and phosphate deficiency in the soils.

Studying the pile of bones in the glasses, the size of the skull indicated that it was the skeleton on an elephant.

The old, long-tusked bull “Hamisi”, which has hung around the Sable Valley homesteads for years, had not been seen for many months and I assumed that probably this was he, albeit some distance from his usual patch.

Due to the dearth of true vultures in the Shimbas, my attention had not been drawn earlier to the carcase.

It had initially lain partly in a fold of the ground, but the bones were now being picked up and shifted to a more visible site not only by the sable, but by other visitors.

Later that same day a group of elephant purposefully marched across the hillside slope to the bone site.

They were two adult cows and three juveniles.

On reaching the bones they stopped, and then spent more than an hour dawdling there, trunks poking about, feeling different skeletal pieces, even picking up and fondling individual bones.

I wondered if they were passing on a message to their offspring:

"This was your Dad !"

Thereafter on an almost daily basis, the boneyard was visited by sable and elephant ; often a couple of scurrying little warthog accompanied these groups, but it was not possible to see what interaction, if any, the pigs had with the bones.

I eventually reported the bone site to KWS, and a patrol was sent out to recover the tusks.

These were found to weigh very little, proving that the dead animal was not “Hamisi”.

Sable frequently continue to visit the site, and to chew the bones, but since the removal of the ivory, no more elephant have been observed paying their respects.

Perhaps the animal’s identity vanishes with the removal of the tusks ?

 - FA

“AN IMPOSSIBLE DREAM”

You may be forgiven for believing that such a title implies a girly romance; thank goodness for the subtitle “Some of Kenya’s last colonial Wardens recall the Game Department in the closing years of the British Empire”.

With chapters by and about virtually all the old names in the game world of the Colonial era in Kenya, this book will surely be a ‘must’ for many folk; the Editors are two of these ‘old names’, Ian Parker and Stan Bleazard.

Here is an extract from Nigel Hunter’s review in SWARA:

“It is an excellent read. It is history. It is biography. It has information, and anecdote — and storytelling of the highest order by engaging raconteurs.”

If the footnote in SWARA is accurate, the only method of obtaining the book is by ordering from the publisher in Scotland, but we believe there may be some copies available from Text Book Centre in Nairobi.

Our Contact:   SHIMBA SUPPORT GROUP: P.O. Box 10587, Mombasa 80101.
Phone 5486607/ 5486155 Email: baobab.trust@bamburi.lafarge.com

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Comments and questions: coastwk@africaonline.co.ke