Viper Research in Kenya
Dickson Katana and Daniel Kane
Kenya is famend for its wonderful landscapes, vibrant cultures and numerous wildlife. Among its most enigmatic inhabitants are snakes, and in September I travelled there to go to Dickson Katana – an EDGE Fellow who’s venture focuses on the endemic Kenyan horned viper (Bitis worthingtoni). Together with Dickson and his venture supervisor, Mirthe, we frolicked refining the venture. The key part of this was looking for vipers, contributing to a media database, and utilizing state-of-the-art software program to determine individual snakes.
Kenyan horned viper
The Kenyan horned viper is a small species of snake – not often rising to larger than 50 cm lengthy – and is confined to Kenya’s rift valley space. Known populations exist from round 1,500 m to 2,400 m and seem like related to grassland and leleshwa forest. Very little is understood about this species within the wild, with easy life historical past traits akin to weight-reduction plan, microhabitat and every day exercise patterns remaining unknown.
The Kenyan Wilderness
Kenya’s different panorama ranges from humid equatorial lowlands, to savannah, forest, and alpine environments. This range of habitats supplies ultimate alternative for a variety of snake species to exist, together with vipers discovered nowhere else on Earth. The aim of the journey was to assist ship the outputs of Dickson’s EDGE venture, with a concentrate on the utilisation of pictures and software program for individual snake identification of the Kenyan horned viper.
Being based mostly close to Lake Naivasha, at roughly 1,900 m, put our small crew inside putting distance of the positioning the place venture work would take place. Due to the access to the first area location, in addition to the presumed early morning/late afternoon peak every day exercise instances of the snakes we had been looking for, tenting within the habitat was essential to maximise our probability of encounter. At over 2,300 m elevation the nights had been cool – down into single figures – although being on the equator meant that afternoon highs over 30°c weren’t uncommon. So, after arrival and organising camp we might walk our outlined routes between survey plots and report key information as we went, earlier than returning late afternoon in time to organize dinner and relaxation for the night time. The following morning we might be up at dawn to stoke the fireplace the place we might brew espresso and heat up earlier than heading out to examine our survey plots till noon. We had rangers – typically armed – with us ought to we encounter wildlife like buffalo at shut quarters within the dense forest or excessive grassland.
Photography as a Research Tool
Photography has revolutionised wildlife analysis, permitting each scientists and fanatics to doc animals of their surroundings. A serious part of the current research is photographic identification of individual snakes, and the hope is to verify repeated encounters with the identical individual snakes. Data taken can then feed into inhabitants measurement estimates, individual home ranges, in addition to estimating survivorship. Measures akin to these will assist to unravel the mysterious lives these snakes lead.
In preserving with the typical encounter price for this crew of round one viper per 40 person hours, it wasn’t till my remaining survey that we had been lucky sufficient to return throughout the elusive Kenyan horned viper. At 4pm, in mild rain, we discovered a juvenile in ambush on the base of an Acacia tree. Not one metre from this snake, on an adjoining publish, was a dwarf gecko (Lygodactylus capensis). While there exists no information pertaining to wild weight-reduction plan these geckos represent a probably enticing meals useful resource – one thing we hope to look in to within the close to future.
After the gecko moved off we had been capable of report the required information from this snake, in addition to take environmental measurements together with UV degree and temperature. Values akin to this are very helpful to assist inform captive administration of this, and associated, species. Should the necessity ever come up for threatened species to be held in ex-situ amenities then this information might show invaluable.
Technology in wildlife conservation
Once returned from the sphere we saved the photographs of the viper in our database particularly designed for viper identification. The software program analyses the photographs and searches for patterns to check with different photos within the database, producing a rating based mostly on the probability of the patterns matching. This similar methodology was developed first to be used in giraffe, however to our data this would be the first time the method has been tried with snakes within the area.
The herpetology crew at London Zoo have already efficiently demonstrated this method with fire-bellied toads and Lake Oku clawed frogs and trialled the identical technique on the Ethiopian mountain adders, and we’re at all times in search of the following alternative to additional increase this device’s usefulness. When the chance to make use of strategies developed with animals in our zoo on a wild species of EDGE reptile we couldn’t say no!
Threats to the Kenyan Horned Viper
Fortunately, a few of these snakes have been recorded inside protected areas, nonetheless none are but confirmed to happen inside any of Kenya’s nationwide parks. We do assume, nonetheless, that this might be a risk, and it could be an actual win for the conservation of this species if we might verify this – therefore our drive to develop a standardised survey protocol to verify presence of this elusive species.
What we do know is that populations of the Kenyan horned viper, in addition to different Kenyan EDGE species of reptile, are threatened by unlawful assortment for the worldwide pet commerce. Unfortunately, we witnessed this primary hand when an area landowner approached us providing to promote a horned viper which was seemingly collected on his land, adjoining to a protected space. This person would obtain lower than 1% of the sale worth of the snake, if illegally smuggled to European markets, highlighting the poverty skilled by many on this area. Furthermore, the recognized habitat of the Kenyan horned viper is beneath risk from the mixed results of burning for gasoline and charcoal manufacturing in addition to conversion of forest land to agriculture and the consequences of local weather change. Witnessing this primary hand opened my eyes to the necessity for community-level alternative to earn a residing in a sustainable means for each wildlife and folks.
Community schooling is a precedence for Dickson and his venture, so sooner or later was spent travelling to the neighborhood of Gatamaiyu to ship an schooling and consciousness session to round 40 individuals from the native space. This session was centered on snakebite prevention, applicable first assist, identification of the native widespread snakes, in addition to disseminating instructional books to be used at home. This session was well-received, and there may be hope to scale up the supply of those periods across the areas the place they’re wanted most.
Looking Ahead
This journey showcases the ability of expertise in unravelling the mysterious lives these snakes lead. EDGE initiatives akin to Dickson’s handle ZSL’s precedence space ‘back from the brink’ and it was totally a pleasure to have the chance to contribute to this most worthwhile enterprise.
