My work within Kilombero Valley
As I mentioned in my article "Une grande aventure commence," I had the opportunity to work with the Kilombero Valley Ornithological Center (KVOC), a structure working on the conservation of wildlife and its environment in the Kilombero valley.
So, the KVOC is a small NGO that mainly conducts conservation studies on birds and their habitats, but also works on the preservation of all wildlife in the Kilombero Valley. This organization works a lot on the help of volunteers. It is located in a small village in southern Tanzania, called Kichangani. To visualize the place, it is about one hour and hald from Ifakara, the nearest big city, which itself is about 400km west of Dar es Salaam, the capital.
After some changes, my stay was finally on three months. During those three months, I participated in three studies.
My first month focused on two studies, initialy planned before I came, the first was to identify the biodiversity present in the territory of the Kilombero Valley Teak Company (KVTC), a teak forestry company. For this study, we worked on the inventory of birds and large mammals (including carnivores) present in this territory. Concerning the second study, it was based on a study of human-wildlife conflicts, using a questionnaire. We carried out this study with the inhabitants of the village of Kichangani, a village located on one of the Kilombero wildlife migratory flows between two protected territories (the KVTC and the Selous Game Reserve).
However, following a request from the government, we had to suspend our studies, to devote ourselves to a new project. So I spent the rest of my stay working on this project: setting up the study, protocol and sampling techniques as well as collecting data from the field. In fact, this study concerns an area that has recently been protected ("protected" from hunting, poaching, installations and human activities). This area is called ILUMA (in relation to the villages around, Ifakara LUpiro and MAng'ula), it is located along part of the Selous Game Reserve. The government asked at the KVOC to identify biodiversity and human disturbances within ILUMA. This is where our work begins, so we decided to focus on the same taxa as in the study with the KVTC, but this time with the taxon of reptiles and amphibians in more. We have therefore defined a protocol as well as adapted sampling techniques for each taxon. During this study, I was partly responsible for the planning and organization of the field. In terms of data collection, I handled taxa for reptiles and amphibians, as well as large mammals and carnivores. Our sampling took place over two and a half months, throughout the ILUMA area. We were camping on the ground, 3 to 4 days a week.
Following these sampling, we recorded the data and prepared a final report on the status of biodiversity and human activities in this protected area. In the report, ideas for managing ILUMA have also been proposed, as well as solutions against human disturbances.
In addition to these three studies, we also do outreach in primary and secondary schools in Kichangani and neighboring villages. Our visits were quite regular within these different schools. Thus, we have been able to give different courses on the environment and ecology such as the food chain and food webs, the importance of biodiversity conservation or the water cycle.
This work has really been exceptional and very enriching for me. I had great pleasure in carrying out or participing of set up these studies, to be able to discover and observe this wildlife. I was really amazed throughout my stay, see all these big mammals (zebras, elephants, monkeys, dik dik, etc.) and birds at each outing on the field. Unfortunately, I was also able to see the high proportion of human activities on the environment, the destruction of forests for charcoal, the establishment of settlements for agriculture and livestock, overgrazing, etc. In short, there is still much work on the raising public awareness of the importance of wildlife and its habitats. But by training and explaining the issues to the younger generations as we have had the opportunity to do, and with the writing of our study report (for the government), there is hope.
d