Protected areas in East Africa not conserving Acacia- Study

Protected areas in East Africa are not doing enough to conserve the iconic Acacia trees in the savannah, a new study have found.

The study found that majority of Acacia biodiversity in protected areas like national parks, nature and forest reserves receive little protection, a situation which may be exacerbated by climate change.

The researchers found that two thirds of Acacia diversity hotspots had less than 10 per cent coverage by protected areas. They also conclude that due to climate change, high-elevation, moisture-dependent species of Acacia may contract their ranges towards mountain peaks, where protected areas are dominated by forest reserves.

“The Acacia is one of Africa’s most iconic groups of trees, but our data suggest protected areas such as national parks do not really conserve them. This is most likely because most protected areas were originally established to protect big game rather than to protect biodiversity and plants.” Dr Andy Marshall on of the researchers from US said.

Acacia includes a number of species that dominate extensive areas of East African woodland, wooded grassland and bushland. It occurs across a wide range of ecosystems, from arid deserts to mountain forests, and ranges from small shrubs to large trees.

The study ‘The genus Acacia (Fabaceae) in East Africa: distribution, diversity and the protected area network’ is published at Plant Ecology and Evolution and included research in 771 protected areas in 65 world-renowned national parks and game reserves in five East African countries of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

“Data suggest that if we were to take the existing protected areas and place them completely at random across the area, we would get a better coverage of Acacia diversity than the current distribution,” says the study.

The study says governments should seek how best to deal with the potential mismatch between biodiversity and the current protected area network by effective means of biodiversity conservation by closely involving local people to protect both animals and plants.

“Acacia like other plants have been ignored in conservation in protected areas even though they harness Sun’s energy and providing nutrients for the entire food chain. Information on plant distributions and the ways in which ecosystems will respond to future climatic and economic developments is crucial,” Dr Marshall says.

The study which has been carried out by University of York, Flamingo Land Theme Park and Zoo among others will be fully published next year.

© Manuel Odeny, 2012

Africa: New DNA forensic tools to nab elephant poachers

Seized tusks by Kenya Wildlife Services, KWS.

A group of US scientists have developed a forensic tool that can help to catch elephant poachers by mapping out the animals’ mitochondria DNA.

The researchers collected mtDNA samples from 653 African elephants from 22 locations in 13 African countries including Kenya where elephant poaching is rampant to help determine where poached ivory comes from.

“The method developed in this research will be used by conservationists to determine the provenance of confiscated ivory since it is often hard to trace ivory back to where it came from,” lead researcher Alfred Roca, from University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences said.

“A ship may have left from a certain port in Africa, but that’s not necessarily the country where the elephants were poached,” he said adding that Sequencing the mtDNA can give a good indication of where the ivory is being poached, “then steps can be taken by that particular country to prevent the poaching from taking place.”

The research "Triangulating the provenance of African elephants using mitochondrial DNA" is published by Evolutionary Applications last week.

Following the research the Kenya Wildlife Services can use the finding to safeguard the country’s 37,000 jumbos which has been growing at 4% annually from 16,000 in 1989 when poaching for ivory was banned internationally.

Before being banned population of the jumbos in the country stood at 167,000 before poaching and reduced range are at current 107,113 Sq km, 33% of which is protected affected their growth.

“Our records indicate that Kenya lost 278 elephants to illegal killings last year. KWS will continue offering accurate and timely information on wildlife population dynamics to the public,” KWS states on its website.

It adds that the frequent seizures of ivory on transit at Kenya’s main airports “does not necessarily originate from local illegal killing of elephants” which the research is set to unravel.

From the research mitochondria DNA which is only transmitted by female jumbo who don’t migrate between herds and can be traced in seized ivory which when mapped from stored data can locate their origin.

“108 unique mtDNA sequences were identified which provided fine-scale information about the origin of the ivory. Among the sequences, 72 percent were found in only one locality and 84 percent of them were country-specific” the research states.

By combining the results with five earlier trans-national surveys it has helped to spot “81 elephant locations in 22 African countries with among the 101 unique short sequences detected, 62 percent were present in only one country,” which will aid in curbing poaching.

Other researchers involved in the work are Yasuko Ishida and Nicholas Georgiadis.