Shimba Hills National Reserve Research Articles

Sable Sighting in Tsavo East National Park

ABSTRACT The East African sable antelope (Hippotragus niger roosevelti) has declined considerably in its former range in the last 30 years. A remnant population exists in the Shimba Hills National Reserve on the southern coast of Kenya. Anecdotal records suggest some animals have existed outside this area over the past 20 years. This article records a single sighting of a mature male sable antelope in Tsavo East National Park.

Tropical forests in transition: ecology of natural and anthropogenic disturbance processes: ed J. G. Goldammer, (Birkhauser, Basel; Advances in Life Sciences), ISBN (hardback) 3 7643 2601 8, 0 8176 2601 8 (USA), price Sfr98.00 (DM114.00), 1992, 270 pp, index

Tropical Forests in Transition: Ecology of Natural and Anthropogenic Disturbance Processes - An Introduction.- Palynological Evidence Relating to Disturbance and Other Ecological Phenomena of Rain Forests.- Holocene Autochthonous Forest Degradation in Southeast Venezuela.- Vegetation, Megaherbivores, Man and Climate in the Quaternary and the Genesis of Closed Rain Forests.- Succession After Disturbance of Lowland Mixed Dipterocarp Forest by Shifting Agriculture in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.- Degradation of a Forest in the Shimba Hills National Reserve, Kenya, as Initiated by Man and Maintained by Wildlife.- Anthropo-Zoogenic Impact on the Structure and Regeneration of a Submontane Forest in Kenya.- Tropical Mountain Ecology in Ethiopia as a Basis of Conservation, Management and Restoration.- Forests for Integrated Land-Use Development in an Eastern Ethiopian Water Catchment.- Geoecological Consequences of Human Impacts on Forests in Sri Lanka.- Structure and Dynamics of the Upper Montane Rain Forests of Sri Lanka.- A Research Perspective on Disturbance and Recovery of a Tropical Montane Forest.- Process-Oriented Models for Simulation of Growth Dynamics of Tropical Natural and Plantation Forests.- A Finite-Element Model to Simulate Spacial Distributions of Populations of Large Mammals.- The Role of the Tropics in the Global Carbon Budget: Impacts and Possible Developments.- Modeling the Response of Terrestrial Vegetation to Climate Change in the Tropics.

Roan Translocation in Kenya

Between 1970 and 1972 the East African Wildlife Society removed 38 roan antelope to the Shimba Hills National Reserve, near Mombasa, because their habitat in central Kenya was about to be destroyed. Since then the author has visited the reserve several times to study the roan. In 1973 she could find only eight; in 1976 there were 13, but by 1978 numbers had risen to 22. She suggests that, while most of the practical problems of translocating wild animals have been solved, there are many species about whose social organisation very little is known, and this may have been the main reason for the initial lack of success with the roan. But now they are threatened by the Forest Department's policy of planting the grasslands with pines.