Mary Iskra, an American cheetah scientist heads up a Kenyan team trying to find out why cheetahs have disappeared while promoting the conservation of these graceful cats. Started working in Kenya in the year 2001 to basically help the Kenya Wildlife service to have a better understanding of the cheetah population, its status, and the threats to the cheetah population. Conducted a national survey across the whole country between 2004 and 2006. All of that to help us better understand how cheetahs move across the country how cheetahs live with people and whether or not there is a future for cheetahs in Kenya. The question is whether Kenya's future will manage to preserve the best?
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Nairobi National Park was home to the number of wildlife and migratory animals formed varied ecosystems, unfortunately, are pretty much closed once now only get a few animals to get through. But it's really a gauntlet that categorized the land that the cheetah uses into four land use categories one of those is subsistence farming which is present in the Salama ecosystem another is commercial ranching which is present in the Athika Pedi region and then identified as protected areas and finally as Pastoral communities. Naropa National Park, it's outside Arabia national park, it's a very important area in terms of conservation. There is all the wildlife that connects that migrates from Nairobi Park to Athika pity and even down to Amboseli. Actually, the major changes are the number of wildlife has declined and there's the entire infrastructure that has come up the increase in human numbers outside the parking area. Those major changes really brought so many changes, even on the environment and the ecosystem in one way or another they've contributed to declining in wildlife numbers.
In the past, this land was all contiguous from the national park through Kitangala, at the river all the way down to the Salama area. It was one big chunk of land and all the way to Aldona's initially ranches ranching societies like Leukemia Granville Brymer, the wind also lost Mali kimaku ranching, lost Konza ranching that in total is about 200 000 acres of land. There's also a lot of commercial speculation especially the ICT which is about eight kilometers straight out and a lot of people have come looking for urban plots. Because of the promise of having a big technical city the fever spread all around basically not taking into account any of the environmental factors moving from the Nairobi National Park through the Cajiado ecosystem and Angada range area where there's a massive development. It makes it a big barrier for cheetahs to be able to be move.
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In those pastoral communities that lead up to the Ambiselli community, there’s a much higher population of cheetahs. The same thing goes for the Salama area where development is happening at a very rapid pace with the highway and the little subdivisions that are happening in there and with the ICT being developed the cheetahs have pretty much moved out of that system and have moved into the Ethicopedia and into the surrounding Maasai land. The biggest differences are the linear infrastructure a lot more major roads where people travel at higher speeds. The biggest documented deaths to cheetahs outside of protected areas have been from road kills, a lot of cheetahs have been hit by a car. Just in this section between Mali and Chuumvi, the Machakos junction had 18 cheetahs that have been hit by cars in the past 10 years. Kenya's rapid development of highways and railroads is helping the country leap forward but it's blocking the traditional migration routes for wildlife recently the SGR is also blocking a lot of the corridors for the animal movement.
In the past, you couldn't possibly go into Nairobi National Park without seeing cheetahs and also out in the Cagiato ecosystem. It was primarily pastoral communities and only small settlements, so the cheetahs could actually move quite freely between the Nairobi National Park and the ambassador ecosystem, and the Salama and Athi Kapiti area had resident cheetahs. This would be where those migrant cheetahs would pass by and exchange genetics and some of them would change their minds and live in these areas. The Athekapedia and Salama ecosystem is quite important for that migratory corridor and the migration of genetics and keeping healthy populations today. Hover, people will go into the Nairobi National Park for a year or more at a time without even seeing a cheetah and it's mainly because that corridor getting into the Nairobi National Park has been cut off.
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The survival rate of baby cheetahs is only about five percent so that means 95 percent of cheetahs die before they reach the age of one year and that's historical even before the human influence was so big, but now, that the human influence is so big it makes it even more difficult for those cheetahs to survive in human-dominated landscapes and human development has made it hard for wildlife. Cheetahs need much more widely space in parks and know animals used to migrate in and out in a very relaxed manner. Nowadays lots of buildings have come up, hampers the migration of most animals and it has affected cheetahs more than any other cats. The reason why cheetahs have declined is ecological reason and had the long reign of elnino and most a good number of animals. Most of the herbivores and even the lions and most of these cat families move away from the park for a very long time because lions and zebras know how to manner and come back to the park after the long rain, cheetahs never come back.
The first national cheetah survey estimated that there were between 1 000 and 1 400 cheetahs in Kenya. To determine which populations breed with each other and where conservation efforts can prevent population isolation. That's a really big part of understanding, how should manage a cheetah population for the future. Because, if those genetics are starting to show big signs of inbreeding actually have to change management style in order to look at that as how can physically help connect the genetics between the pocketed populations.
One of the biggest failures in Kenya is the fact that a lot of people do not know the reality of wildlife and conservation. Many people think that Kenya's wildlife resides inside national parks and reserves and apparently, it's fenced in. Whenever there's a humanoid life conflict issue and animals run away from some zero sorts. The truth is actually that over 70 percent of our wildlife is found outside parks and reserves. It's found in community land, private land, and government land outside. This wildlife lives with people on a daily basis. People had the cattle for example, in the landscape, they find lions as a daily occurrence; they find hyenas as a daily occurrence. Normally this is where they belong this is where they live to coexist with them. Because since the beginning found them here and have herdsmen who had the animals during the day and they make sure that they are there but no lion no cheetah or hyena should be killed, they are there is their place it's their right
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Having good vigilance as a herder, a lot of times either children or old men are the ones who are assigned to watch over the goats and the sheep during the day. Make sure that whoever is assigned to take care of the goats and the sheep are being very vigilant to the presence of the other predators. Wildlife in different countries, facing a lot of challenges, but there is hope because people are more aware now that conservation is an economic, wildlife is an economic resource in the country that people can utilize wildlife to generate income through tourists and do equal tourism projects through conservation. Like some of the programs out in Kitangela the lease program where people are benefiting getting some money. So, they don't fence their land and allow free movement of wildlife in and outside the park cheetahs and wildlife
a cheater conservation agenda should be a foremost thing in our political system and also our school kids should be taught conservation from an earlier age in their schools they should be visiting these parks more and more often so as to create awareness because do not want a future whereby a story should be told that there are once animals like cheetahs elephants like rhinos.
Kenya has one of the largest connected populations of cheetahs right now and that connectivity is very important for the future of cheetahs so as landscape-level development is happening the biggest thing that can be done to protect cheetahs is to make sure that those corridors where those cheetahs can move still exist maintaining those and doing sustainable development that comes from both a local level and from an administrative level from the government having an understanding as they're making planning for future development which is very important in Kenya that if don't maintain those corridors where these animals can move and get them into these pocketed populations are not going to have them in the future
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