- Farmers and conservationists in Kinangop, a meadow plateau in Kenya, are raising sheep to save a bird types that’s limited to the meadows.
- The 77,000-hectare (190,000-acre) Kinangop Plateau is the international fortress of the threatened Sharpe’s longclaw (Macronyx sharpei), a bird discovered just in Kenya.
- The meadows are made up almost totally of independently owned land, and the latest study reveals that less than 1% of what stays appropriates environment for Sharpe’s longclaw.
From his home on the Kinangop plateau, neglecting the Aberdare range of mountains, James Gichia can see thin fingers of smoke increasing from spread settlements, farmers at work in their potato fields, the darker green marking stands of eucalyptus trees, and flocks of sheep grazing on open meadow. Every year there’s a little less meadow — and more timbers and farmland.
In his 50s, Gichia, like most of his next-door neighbors in Njambini town, is hanging on to the income gave from his moms and dads who chose the plateau in 1964 when they moved onto what was previously became part of the White Highlands, scheduled for the special usage of Europeans throughout British colonial guideline in Kenya.
“Kinangop has always been known for livestock rearing, activity that was practiced during and after the colonial era. Being a cold region, sheep rearing in particular thrives and I have always been rearing sheep,” Gichia informed Mongabay.
Kinangop — A quickly disappearing meadow
The Kinangop meadow is a highland plateau nestled in between Kenya’s Aberdare range of mountains and the Great Rift Valley, at an elevation of around 2,400 meters (7,900 feet). Most of its 77,000 hectares (190,000 acres) are independently owned, offered over to animals and farmers cultivating crops like potatoes, maize and beans.
The montane meadow is likewise home to lots of types of birds, consisting of the biggest populations of 3 worldwide threatened and range-restricted types: Sharpe’s longclaw (Macronyx sharpei), the Aberdare cisticola (Cisticola aberdare) and Jackson’s widowbird (Euplectes jacksoni).
Unlike the savanna meadows that Kenya is popular for, Kinangop consists generally of tussock, a sort of turf that grows in tuft-like clumps sprinkled with other lawns. During the dry season, tussock turf offers fodder for grazing animals.
Tussock turf likewise offers sanctuary for Sharpe’s longclaw, whose international fortress is Kinangop. Longclaws search the meadow for bugs to consume. The clumps of tussock offer shelter, nesting and security from predators like owls and mongoose.
“Sharpe’s longclaw is a unique bird. Unlike others that can perch on trees, they do not. They build their nests within the tussock grass on the ground. They used to be spotted in numbers some years back, but are not as many currently,” Paul Kimani, a scientist and member of Friends of Kinangop Plateau, a preservation organization, informed Mongabay.
Friends of Kinangop Plateau unites more than 2,000 locals of the plateau, consisting of farmers, scientists, tourist guide, birders and conservationists. For near to 20 years, it has actually dealt with other preservation companies to keep track of the decrease of Sharpe’s longclaw.
Between April and May 2021, the group performed a study that tape-recorded simply 286 of the birds throughout 387 hectares (956 acres) of the Magumu/Nyakio, Njambini, Engineer and Murungaru locations of Kinangop.
“We estimate that our survey covered 80% of existing suitable Sharpe’s longclaw habitat in the Kinangop grasslands, suggesting that fewer than 400 individuals and less than 1% of the original 77,000 ha of suitable habitat now remain,” the report notes.
The study validated that the native meadow continues to be transformed to croplands while in other locations it’s been changed with unique tree types, mostly eucalyptus.
According to Wachira Kariuki, a tourist officer and member of Friends of Kinangop Plateau, the intro of eucalyptus here goes back to when white inhabitants presented the types to help lower the water level in marshy locations of the plateau.
With Kinangop’s human locals putting increasing pressure on the plateau’s environment, Peter Ndan’gang’a, a scientist at BirdLife International, surveyed Kinangop in 2000. At the time, he forecasted that tussock meadow would cover just a fifth of the plateau by 2010. This forecast ended up being too positive.
“The declining habitat of the Sharpe’s longclaw has adversely affected its populations even beyond the predictions we made then,” Ndan’gang’a said.
More than 90% of these highland meadows, some 69,300 hectares (171,200 acres), have actually been lost in the previous 50 years, progressively transformed to farms and timbers, diminishing environment for Sharpe’s longclaw and other wildlife. Because the plateau is all independently owned, securing this environmentally crucial environment depends upon the actions of private owners.
Sheep might be the response
Farming Kinangop’s meadows has actually produced blended outcomes, especially with potatoes, which have actually been a prominent money crop. The threat of frost and the seasonal excess as all the farmers gather their crops at the same time cut into farmers’ earnings.
Gichia acquired 4 hectares (10 acres) from his moms and dads. He’s meddled growing potatoes and commits a few of his land to growing veggies, maize and beans, however has actually gone back to raising sheep on most of the land.
“Compared to potato farming, I prefer sheep rearing because I do not get exploited by middlemen. The standard price of a mature sheep is 15,000 shillings [$106]. Keeping cattle alongside sheep is also profitable because I get to sell milk besides selling sheep wooI,” he informed Mongabay.
The problems challenging potato farmers might be opening the door to more locals going back to rounding up sheep as Gichia has. There’s a prepared market for sheep in the butcheries around the plateau, however Friends of Kinangop Plateau have actually found an extra worth: wool.
“Initially, sheep wool never fetched a lot of money even though there were a lot of sheep. In some cases, we would sell at 20 or 30 shillings [14-21 U.S. cents] or sometimes one could pay a shearer with the wool,” Gichia said.
Now, nevertheless, the wool can bring the equivalent of about $1 per kg, or 45 cents a pound, according to Gichia. “[I]n a year, one can earn up to 1,000 shillings [$7] per sheep from wool alone.”
The existing difficulties in the potato sector, has actually nevertheless offered an edge to sheep rearing that includes its own rewards-Njambini Wool spinning center in South Kinangop.
John Gitogo, chair of the Njambini wool crafters’ association, said that if farmers rear Corriedale sheep, a breed that produces large and high-yielding wool, instead of the conventional types, they can make substantially more from both meat and wool.
“Before, the welfare of sheep was not very good because farmers were yet to tap into wool. Moreover, the sheep have been interbreeding and sometimes one cannot tell the breed they have. Farmers currently have proper sheds that allow them to also collect sheep dropping to use as manure while keeping the wool neat. Farmers are also deworming their sheep to keep them healthy to get more wool and meat,” Gitogo said.
Friends of Kinangop Plateau have actually started contributing Corriedale sheep to farmers in exchange for a pledge to keep parts of their land as grazing for sheep — which is likewise environment for longclaw and other types.
To even more counter the hazard presented by conversion of meadow, the preservation group has actually likewise partnered with Nature Kenya to acquire land that can serve as a nature reserve for Sharpe’s Longclaw.
“We realized that the grassland was getting smaller and smaller, and being private lands, there is no control,” said Nature Kenya director Paul Matiku. “The surveys also revealed declines of the Sharpe’s Longclaw, which is a territorial bird. It thrived in these critical habitats in private lands that were undergoing fragmentation and we realized there was a need to secure nature reserves to be a refuge for the birds even in future.”
A very first fundraising appeal raised enough money to purchase a parcel as a meadow nature reserve in 2004. Today, there are 4 such reserves, covering an overall of 200 hectares (almost 500 acres) — almost half of the staying longclaw environment. These reserves likewise work as research study and education centers, host beehives for Friends of Kinangop Plateau members, and invite a couple of bird-watching travelers.
“Within the nature reserve, we also allow farmers to graze livestock at a fee during the dry season,” Kimani said.
Friends of Kinangop Plateau’s efforts to save Sharpe’s longclaw have actually influenced neighborhoods in other places to come together to secure threatened and range-restricted types, according to Paul Gacheru, a wildlife ecologist.
In the Dakatcha forest, in Kenya’s Coast province, the Kinangop technique of developing nature reserves has actually been duplicated to secure crucial environments for birds like the threatened Clarke’s weaver (Ploceus golandi) and Sokoke pipit (Anthus sokokensis), and mammals like the golden-rumped elephant shrew (Rhynchocyon chrysopygus). In Taita-Taveta county, environment for the seriously threatened Taita thrush (Turdus helleri) and Taita apalis (Apalis fuscigularis) has actually been protected through comparable methods.
Farming stalls after a century-long advance
Between the early 1900s and 1962, Kinangop, the Aberdares and Mount Kipipiri were amongst locations categorized as the White Highlands. Indigenous residents were expelled and ownership of land was limited to European inhabitants.
“The first colonialists arrived in early 1900s and they owned huge tracts of land that spread several miles,” says Wachira Kariuki from Friends of Kinangop Plateau. “After 1945, the white soldier settlers who fought during the World War II were awarded land in Kinangop and surrounding areas. By the time, most of the areas were soggy grasslands and wheat was a common crop. Livestock including cattle and sheep were also kept by the colonial inhabitants who with time, introduced eucalyptus trees to help in reducing water content.”
After Kenya got self-reliance in 1962, the brand-new federal government rearranged the highlands to Indigenous Agikuyu who had actually been displaced years previously.
Alongside broadening farmland, a study by Friends of the Kinangop Plateau discovered increasing quantities of land planted with eucalyptus trees, relatively stimulated by strong need for wood from these fast-growing trees for fire wood and fence posts. Samuel Bakari, director for natural deposits for Nyandarua county, in which Kinangop falls, says the collapse of government-owned milk-processing business in 1999 caused a decrease in the herding of sheep and livestock — an activity that safeguarded the meadows.
“Livestock rearing actually preserved the grasslands and livestock coexisted well with range-restricted birds like the Sharpe’s longclaw. Crop cultivation, however, leads to uprooting of the tussock grass which the bird is highly dependent on,” Bakari says.
Kinangop lost its location as one of Kenya’s leading milk-producing location in the late 1990s when the Kenya Cooperative Creameries, established in 1925, collapsed. Though the dairy cooperative was reanimated in 2005, the plateau’s dairy farmers continued to have problem with low costs and insufficient marketing for their fruit and vegetables, and the majority of changed to farming potatoes and other crops.
Then came the post-election violence in 2007 and 2008, which triggered lots of people residing in metropolitan locations to go back to their ancestral houses, consisting of Kinangop, inhabited otherwise in the past by the Agikuyu and other Indigenous individuals.
“The 2007/2008 period saw a lot of land subdivision in Kinangop where majority of the people who lived in towns moved in to purchase land to settle,” Bakari says.
The increasing usage of land in Kinangop for farming hasn’t enriched most farmers. Ruth Muringe, a potato farmer and member of Friends of Kinangop Plateau, says potatoes grow well in the location, however since farmers depend on rain for watering, there’s a harvest excess when their crop concerns market at the very same time, enabling canny traders to exploit them.
This, she says, can drive costs down to the equivalent of less than 3 U.S. cents per kg, or about 1 cent per pound.
“Given that we use a lot of pesticides to prevent potato blight and a lot more on land preparation, it is a loss,” Muringe says.
Adding to farmers’ concerns, Kinangop’s high elevation makes it susceptible to frost.
Banner image: A Sharpe’s longclaw (Macronyx sharpei) on the Kinangop Plateau. Image by Peter Steward through Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
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