Ngong Forest

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jun 30 2009 | By: ngongforest

Last sunday we set out on a nature walk at Ngong Forest Sanctuary.We were escorting one our regular visitor,who always bring their two dogs for exercises in the forest as well as enjoying the forest breeze.

Visitors walking in the forest

We walked along different paths of the entire Winnie Duku trail, occasionally stopping to call out for the dogs whenever they went out of sight. Burny,one of the dogs got very excited by the syke monkeys and baboons,he really enjoys chasing them around,At some point ,we noticed that one of the dogs had dissapeared,it was like a hide and seek game,after calling out for the dogs,they kept appearing and disappearing, maybe the presence of animals exited them,we watched as Burny chased after two bush bucks which were grazing under a small Dombeya torida shrub.The good thing about Burny is that for several cases we have watched him chasing animal ,he has always done it for fun,unlike the wild dogs which does it to make a kill/survival.

Burny and his colleague enjoying the forest walk

We walked silently under the forest indigenous tree conopy from distance was a melodius call “kwee,kwee kwee,” with some notes longer than others.We headed to that direction for we knew that it was the call of the African crown eagle. I knew Ranger Goerge had sighted it when he raised his hand and pointed at the top of a tall croton tree. Our visitors had an excellent view of the African crown eagles perched next to their nest, this has been their home for over five years now.

Two African crown eagles perched near their nest

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jun 16 2009 | By: ngongforest

Kibera is one of the biggest slums in the world forms a good place for research on human health. A team from National Museums Of Kenya and Centre For Tropical Diseases (CDC) are currently carrying out a research on a virus called Lyssaviruses (rabies viruses) which is a pathogenic found in Bats.

Bats are in Rhabdoviradae family and there are over 100 species of it in Kenya. Since the Forest is just some metres from kibera slum, the team has extended their search to the forest where they are looking for bats and other animals which possibly could be carriers of this viruses.

Team Preparing To Set A Trap

On identifying sites, the team lay traps made of nets at night (targeting to trap bats) , For results, they get the blood, brain and other internal organs which are then screened at CDC for viruses.The team members are Benard Agwanda,from National Museums Of Kenya, Ivan Kuzmin and Mike Niezelgoda both from CDC Atlanta USA. We acknoledge their effort and we encourage more researchers to visit the forest since it a potential research site .

By. Nicholas Akach.

No responses yet