Lucy’s Online Journal

Time to wrap up my PhD thesis

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:35:16 +0300

I’m feeling rather sad today as I count down my last couple of days in Kenya before I head back to the UK to finish writing up my DPhil thesis. Although I know I will be back in Kenya in three months time, this is a milestone for me as I have now finished 4 years of fieldwork for my PhD. I can honestly say that I have had the most incredible, memorable and life changing experience doing my research out in Kenya with Save the Elephants and I wouldn’t change a single day out of the past 4 years.

As I write up each of my chapters for my thesis I am still amazed at just how much I have packed into the last 4 years. The writing up process is actually very satisfying and I am enjoying the analysis and results sections for each chapter the most. I am working on 7 chapters with an overall introduction and discussion chapter making a total of 9 chapters. Rather ambitious but there are just so many stories and experiments to write about and I know that I won’t be able to fit it all into the 50,000 word limit. My deadline is 30th September so I have 2 months ahead of me of sitting in Oxford University finalizing my statistics and enjoying the library resources to help make this the best thesis I possibly can.

I’m already looking forward to jumping back onto the plane in October and heading back to Samburu to check on my beehive fences but until then it is head down for me. Hopefully by the end of 2010 I will be Dr King! Thanks once again to all my sponsors and friends who have helped me get to this significant stage of my PhD research.

A final photo of Samburu at its most stunning, early evening with the Winds 2 family crossing the Ewaso Ng’iro river in front of me. Quite some image to hold onto as I sit in a stuffy room in England......

Disney sponsorship renewed

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:05:25 +0300

I am delighted to report that Disney’s Worldwide Conservation Fund has once again selected our Elephants and Bees project for an annual grant. This highlights the fantastic relationship Save the Elephants has with Disney and her staff both at the DWCF and at the Animal Programs Department in Florida. Thank you so much for your continued support and belief in our project.

With this grant we plan to put two tracking collars on two crop-raiding female elephants that we suspect are responsible for some of the crop-raiding in Ngare Mara. We hope the GPS tracks will help us understand how elephants are maneuvering around the beehive fences. Additionally I plan to write a Beehive Fence Construction Manual which will be freely available on line for other farmers or wildlife managers who would like to try out the beehive fence technology. An exciting year ahead!

Below: here you see the young son of one of our honey farmers who looks over the 28 jars of honey that his father and neighbour have gathered over the last 4 weeks. Cash from the sale of these jars will help feed and clothe this low income family.

Honey harvesting in ngare mara

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:10:47 +0300

Its honey harvesting season in Ngare Mara and we are delighted to report that so far the farmers with beehive fences have collected 106 kgs of honey from the hives. This is much more than I expected but it shows what a good rainy season we have just had. The bees are in approximately 45% of the hives at the moment which is good and with so many flowers around the honey is pouring out. We have designed some new labels for our honey which we have coined “Elephant-Friendly Honey” and we hope to raise some more awareness of the project through this enterprise.

We have been donated some old jars and pots from my friends in Nairobi which are now adding value to the cost of the honey when the farmers go to sell in Isiolo so they are delighted with the gift. So far our record hive has given 15 kgs of honey from one hive which was occupied for 6 months before it was harvested.

Below: Angelina holds a pot of acacia honey. She has 16 beehives protecting her farm in Etorro community.

PRESS RELEASE FROM ANIMAL PLANET CHANNEL

Tue, 11 May 2010 17:05:41 +0300

 ANIMAL PLANET PROVIDES A PORTAL INTO THE SECRET LIFE OF ELEPHANTS
On May 16, Experience the World of Elephants Through Their Eyes
(Silver Spring, Md.) - We see elephants as mammoth beasts; they're prehistoric looking with incredibly large features that distinguish them from any other animal we know. They are majestic in their demeanor; they seem to rule the African landscape, living and traveling within large herds. To the unknowing eye, this ancient beast will live forever on Earth. Many still do not know that the African elephant is highly threatened. Sure, their sheer size seems to intimidate all who share their land; however, this behemoth's existence is being threatened at an alarming rate...by both man and nature.
On May 16, at 8 PM, join Animal Planet in a two-hour journey through the lives of more than 900 elephants that roam Kenya's Samburu Reserve. From the producers of LIFE and PLANET EARTH, SECRET LIFE OF ELEPHANTS, shot in glorious high definition, provides an intimate window into what it's really like to be an elephant by focusing on several dozen of these creatures. Stripping away their incredible size and their unique appearance, they are surprisingly like humans. They exhibit distinct emotions, from sadness to anger and from jealousy to concern for their loved ones. They live in family groupings - herds - and make difficult decisions that affect all the members of the family. They seem to want nothing more than to survive and keep their loved ones close.
In SECRET LIFE OF ELEPHANTS, a unique research team from Save the Elephants gets closer than ever before to the true nature of elephants. Founded in 1993 and led by world-renowned elephant conservationist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Save the Elephants combines the dedication and unmatched knowledge of Iain, his daughter, Saba Douglas-Hamilton and David Daballen, a leading elephant expert at the reserve. Together with a team of countless elephant enthusiasts, Save the Elephants believes the only way to save these African royals from impending threat is to get as close as possible to them - in essence, to see the world as they do and when necessary, intervene to protect the future of this dwindling species.
Save the Elephants keeps track of the elephants by affixing high-tech radio collars around a couple dozen elephants (at one given time), which sends text messages communicating their whereabouts. These locating devices help piece together their stories and shed light on their daily challenges and the risky decisions they make to stay alive. Whether it's facing nature's relentless blows (drought, flooding, poor vegetation); the struggles within the herd (adjusting to new family members, illness, injury, death); predation of the young; poaching; or angry farmers (crop-raiding), the elephants are in constant battle to survive and thrive.
• Meet Harmattan, the matriarch of the 18-strong Winds family. Harmattan just gave birth to the 19th member of the herd, baby Breeze. There's not a moment for pause; Harmattan must keep focused. The welfare of the entire family depends on her decisions, and she knows they must cross the river for the water and vegetation that lay on the other side. There's no time to coach baby Breeze through her first steps. It's sink or swim - quite literally - as the newborn hobbles her first steps. She's so small and pitiable that no one really notices when she wanders off while the others are drinking. This is just the kind of slip up that predators anticipate; luckily, Breeze's mother realizes this mistake before it's too late.
• Then there's Buster, Breeze's older brother. He feels compromised by Breeze's arrival, and he'll do anything to keep his mother's attention, even setting up physical roadblocks to stand between Harmattan from nursing Breeze. The jealousy he feels is palpable but similar to human familial relationships; the bond between older brother and younger sister eventually develops, and soon little Breeze depends on her big brother for protection.
• Elsewhere, members of the Artists Herd, Chagall and her young calf Miro separate from the rest of the family as the mother slows her speed to accommodate her limping child. Miro suffers greatly from her injury as it impedes her physical and mental development. This is a situation that calls upon Save the Elephants' involvement - the team of doctors and researchers must quickly separate mother from child, assuring the mother she's in no danger while sedating the daughter to fix her fractured limb. What occurs afterward is both touching and heart wrenching as mom and child struggle to reunite.
• Some elephants face a different kind of danger - poaching - and when Mungu - the elephant with the largest-known tusks - turns up dead, the researchers believe that poaching was the cause. As the human population increases along with farming, the elephants' migration paths are wandering into threatening territory, and it's up to Save the Elephants to come up with brilliant ways to keep the peace.

With all things in life, there's a season for everything, including birth, mating, violence, maturation, aging, injury and death. As the pendulum swings to one end, bringing about the birth of Breeze, it swings back in the opposite direction, and death claims a mother elephant, leaving her male calves confused and orphaned. Rarely captured on film, these young bulls see their lifeless mother and gently nudge her with the most sensitive part of their foot. Nearby elephants hear their cries of anguish, and one by one in large numbers, they visit the fallen matriarch. Similar to how people approach funerals, the elephants "pay their respects" touch the matriarch and impart a message of farewell.
SECRET LIFE OF ELEPHANTS shows that every elephant is important for the future. With the use of pioneering technology and steadfast dedication to the survival of elephants, Save the Elephants and Animal Planet give viewers a strong understanding of how elephants perceive their world, how they think and how they make decisions...surprisingly a lot like us.
SECRET LIFE OF ELEPHANTS is a BBC/Animal Planet co-production. Series producer for the BBC is Nigel Pope. Mick Kaczorowski is executive producer for Animal Planet. The special is narrated by Novella Nelson and music is composed by Richard Fiocca, whose most recent credits include Discovery Channel's LIFE. Charlie Foley and Marc Etkind are vice presidents of development.
Animal Planet Media (APM), a multi-media business unit of Discovery Communications, is the world's only entertainment brand that immerses viewers in the full range of life in the animal kingdom with rich, deep content via multiple platforms and offers animal lovers and pet owners access to a centralized online, television and mobile community for immersive, engaging, high-quality entertainment, information and enrichment. APM consists of the Animal Planet television network, available in more than 96 million homes in the US; online assets www.animalplanet.com, the ultimate online destination for all things animal; the 24/7 broadband channel, Animal Planet Beyond; Petfinder.com, the #1 pet-related Web property globally that facilitates pet adoption; and other media platforms including a robust Video-on-Demand (VOD) service; mobile content; and merchandising extensions.

Press coverage of research

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:20:54 +0300

We’ve been lucky this week to have received some good press and PR on our recent paper that was published this week in PLoS One entitled “Bee Threat Elicits Alarm Call in African Elephants”. On monday we had a small front page article with the Daily Telegraph newspaper and a very nice write up on Science Now and BBC Online. Additionally I went into the BBC studios in Nairobi and did a short radio interview for the World Service that was aired on Wednesday. You can hear this interview on the right. Thanks everyone for your positive comments and support of our work.

Elephants have a word for “BEE-WARE”

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:25:08 +0300

For the first time elephants have been found to produce an alarm call associated with the threat of bees, and have been shown to retreat when a recording of the call is played even when there are no bees around.    A team of scientists from Oxford University, Save the Elephants, and Disney's Animal Kingdom, made the discovery as part of an ongoing study of elephants in Kenya. They report their results in the journal PLoS One.   'In our experiments we played the sound of angry bees to elephant families and studied their reaction,' said Lucy King of Oxford University's Department of Zoology and charity Save the Elephants, who led the research. 'Importantly we discovered elephants not only flee from the buzzing sound but make a unique 'rumbling' call as well as shaking their heads.'   The team then looked to isolate the specific acoustic qualities associated with this rumbling call and played the sounds back to the elephants to confirm that the recorded call triggered the elephants' decision to flee even when there was no buzzing and no sign of any bees.   'We tested this hypothesis using both an original recording of the call, a recording identical to this but with the frequency shifted so it resembled a typical response to white noise, and another elephant rumble as a control,' said King. 'The results were dramatic: six out of ten elephant families fled from the loud speaker when we played the 'bee rumble' compared to just two when we played a control rumble and one with the frequency-shifted call. Moreover, we also found that the elephants moved away much further when they heard the 'bee' alarm call than the other rumbles.'   The researchers believe such calls may be an emotional response to a threat, a way to coordinate group movements and warn nearby elephants - or even a way of teaching inexperienced and vulnerable young elephants to beware. Further work is needed to confirm whether the rumble call is used for other kinds of threats, not just bees.   'The calls also give tantalising clues that elephants may produce different sounds in the same way that humans produce different vowels, by altering the position of their tongues and lips,' said Dr Joseph Soltis of Disney's Animal Kingdom. 'It's even possible that, rather like with human language, this enables them to give superficially similar-sounding calls very different meanings.'   Earlier Oxford University research found that elephants avoid bee hives in the wild and will also flee from the recorded sound of angry bees. In 2009 a pilot study led by King showed that a fence made out of beehives wired together significantly reduced crop raids by elephants. The team hopes that the new findings could help develop new ways to defuse potential conflicts between humans and elephants.   Despite their thick hides adult elephants can be stung around their eyes or up their trunks, whilst calves could potentially be killed by a swarm of stinging bees as they have yet to develop this thick protective skin.   For further information contact Lucy King [PLEASE NOTE: LUCY IS CURRENTLY IN NAIROBI, KENYA, THIS IS HER KENYA MOBILE NUMBER] on +254 720 275561 or email lucy.king@zoo.ox.ac.uk or visit http://www.elephantsandbees.com   Images and audio can be downloaded at http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_releases_for_journalists/elephant_word.html   A video is available at: http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_releases_for_journalists/elephant_rumble.html   Alternatively contact the University of Oxford Press Office on +44 (0)1865 283877 or by email at press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk

ngare mara river flows again

Mon, 2 Nov 2009 16:03:54 +0300

Great to visit Ngare Mara again after the rains have come and to see water flooding down the river again - see above photo. Its been so long since I saw water there I had forgotten what it looked like! Already, within, a week of the rains we have had 7 new beehives occupied with bees! Hurray! This is super news and will really encourage the community who have been suffering so much in the drought. Unfortunately most cattle have died, every field we visited had a dead cow carcass in it, not at all a nice sight. Imagine seeing your bank balance rotting and disappearing under a tree and thats what our friends in Chumviyere feel when they see their cattle die off one by one. At least the beehive fences are all looking nice and smart again after a maintenance session during October. Thanks to Wilson and Lucas for all their hard work.

Below is a photo of a stunning turquoise egg we found nestled on top of one of the beehive roofs! It looked so stunning we left it where it was for the mum to return later. Luckily there were no bees in this hive so the chick should be safe if it hatches. Another interesting creature we have found in the thatching was a beautiful chameleon who had changed its colouring to look exactly like the straw!

rain has arrived in samburu!

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:00:48 +0300

What a huge relief! After pretty much an 18 month drought in Samburu the rains have arrived and brought such relief to the desert-like reserve. The river is flowing again and there are green shoots all over the ground. Unfortunately there are so many animal and cattle carcasses littering the reserve but hopefully these will be washed away or swallowed up into the soil providing nutrients for the next generation of plants.

New Beehive fence project near tsavo

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:54:06 +0300

During August-September we have been working hard setting up a new beehive fence project in a community called Sagella which is just a few kilometers from the town of Voi. The community are sandwiched between the two famous and huge Tsavo East and Tsavo West National Parks and as such, they get a lot of elephant activity in the farming areas. The elephants can crop-raid while they pass through the area and we were approached by Cliff Evans from the Kileva Foundation who wondered if it might be a good area to try the beehive fence design. Lucas, Wilson and I spent 10 days down in the community building two beehive fences around two farms. A small study but hopefully if it works for these two farms the fences can be used as demonstration sites to encourage more farmers to take up the idea.

Many thanks to the Kileva Foundation and Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund for sponsoring this project.

Tribal clashes in ngare mara

Wed, 5 Aug 2009 12:58:03 +0300

I've just come back from a 4 week break from the project site (UK and China visit) and went to visit Ngare Mara on Monday. It was quite a shock to hear what had happened in my absence.

As described before, the study area is undergoing a severe drought which has hampered the project and meant that no crops are being grown. In addition all the beehives are now empty. Unfortunately the worst news is that security in the area has really fallen apart. On the 10th July the Borana
tribe who live over the river from our study site raided our Turkana community and stole 490 sheep and cattle. There was a huge battle and three of our community members were killed. They attacked first at Attir which is where I had planned to build a third fence and where I have been
supporting an orphanage with food parcels. The women and children just ran as fast as they could away and all the residents of Chumviyere and Etorro also ran away leaving some men to fight off the Borana. Unfortunately 3 were killed and the entire community abandoned their homes and trekked the 9Km to Ngare Mara town.

On the 17th July the Turkana warriors from our community ganged together with some Samburu warriors and raided the Boranas back. They stole about 900 head of goats and cattle back and killed 9 Borana men in the process.

When I arrived on Monday of this week we drove through a line of refugees walking slowly back to Chumviyere with donkeys laden with goods and trunks and chickens. I helped about 15 women and children with their supplies and dropped them back at their huts in our study area. As we arrived we heard that the ACK (Anglican Church of Kenya) was doing a huge food distribution at Attir where the battle had been. We drove there to witness the spectacle. Amazing scene of about 1000 stunning traditional Turkana women, children and men gathering around the food aid trucks being given their supplies. They only had enough for 300 families but they have promised to return every month if its secure. They each received 50kgs maize, 10kgs, beans and 3 litres of cooking oil.

The problem is that they anticipate the Borana to raid back again any time and so most of these families were gathering their food aid and walking back to Ngare Mara. Quite a disturbed time for the community and the women were looking particularly haggard and weary.

With regards to our beefence project. We checked half the fences and some of the fences need repairing but I'm going to wait until September when the winds have died down and the security has improved. Wilson will continue to visit every week. No beehives were stolen at least during the two raids. No bees. Instead I am heading to Tsavo on the 16th August to start building two beehive fences with the Taita tribe in Sagella near Voi. Should be fun and a good break from the dry north. I'm very glad I decided not to build in Attir which is now the centre of these tribal
clashes.

visit to beijing, china

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:23:06 +0300

I have just come back from a very interesting trip to Beijing in China to attend the Society of Conservation Biology Conference. It was a fascinating, eye-opening and sometimes extraordinary week but well worth the effort. The most interesting and valuable two days that I had was attending the Asian Elephant Specialist Group Task-Force Meeting which was discussing and formulating a document on the Human-Elephant Conflict mitigation methods for Asia. I was able to sit in on all the discussions and I was able to talk about my bee work which was of great interest to some of the Asian elephant specialists attending the workshop. I was so happy to meet so many fascinating and enthusiastic elephant specialists at the meeting from Cambodia, India, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Four members are now trying out my bee sounds on their Asian elephants to see if the sounds will deter them from entering farms and plantations.

In between busy conference days Shivani and I managed to visit the Great Wall of China (above) which was one of the best days of the entire trip! We walked for about 2 hours along the wall and marveled at the construction capabilities of the ancient Chinese labourers.

The most eye-opening aspect of the trip was being confronted by the Chinese appetite to eat “anything with 4 legs (except a table) and anything that flies (except a plane!)”. Although I have to add to that quote that they don’t stop at 4 legs! I saw ghecko, starfish, grubs, locust and scorpion kebabs for sale which shocked me not only because the stings were still attached but the 4 scorpions attached through the abdomen onto a kebab stick were all still alive! Shocking really but not as horrendous as seeing some rare and endangered sea horses skewered and fried, selling on several street stalls. Shivani was also served up a sea cucumber in her vegetarian lunch-box which really was taking the ‘eating endangered animals aspect’ a tad too far. Not entirely appropriate fodder at a conservation biology conference....

Photos of scorpion kebabs in Beijing market as well as lovely sea horses and star fish being fried in large vats of oil. Not my favourite place...

I also spotted some fake ivory for sale in the market in Beijing which was very interesting to see. Most of our poor African elephants’ teeth end up in China and this has only recently become an even larger problem with the opening up of the ivory trade in 2008.

Disney sponsors our project

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:11:13 +0300

Excellent news to tell you all! Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund have awarded our Elephants and Bees project with a project grant for 2009/2010. This is fantastic news and means we can implement some of my new ideas and we can carry on with the task of monitoring all the beehive fences that are presently set up and waiting for rain to come. Thank you once again DWCF for your ongoing support and generosity.

If you are interested in learning more about DWCF and how it helps to fund important conservation work all over the world have a look at their website: http://www.dwcf-rfp.com/

Publication of beehive fence design

Tue, 2 Jun 2009 07:35:50 +0300

Good news! The results of our pilot study conducted in the community of Ex-Erok in 2007 have finally been published in the Journal of African Ecology today!

Please click on the link below for a pdf of the paper:
King et al 2009 Beehive Fence Paper AJE.pdf

As you can see from the study we had a small sample size but the results and community responses were so positive we thought it was worth publishing so others could try the idea. We have since set up a large scale trial of the design using 60 farmers and 1700m of beehive fences (using Kenyan Top Bar beehives) in Ngare Mara but the desperate drought in Northern Kenya means we've had no real rain in our study site since last March. Therefore my latest experiments have rather stopped until the november rainy season arrives (we hope!). Hopefully we will have some more data to support the idea of this beehive fence for small scale farmers once this large scale trial is completed.

We hope other wildlife managers or farmers will try out the design for themselves so please pass this paper onto anyone who may be interested.

collaboration beehive fence project

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 15:34:03 +0300

In our study site of Chumviyere village there is a new project underway funded by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to help the villagers master the art of water retention. This is an excellent form of ‘aid’ to communities as it teaches farmers to manage their land better and therefore become responsible for their own increase in harvest.

The consultants managing the project (ADCL) have set up three demonstration sites throughout the community where they hope to trap enough rain water to grow tomatoes, sorghum, peas and even watermelon. When I saw these demonstration sites I was very impressed but also immediately worried that all the hard work could be destroyed overnight by raiding elephants. Together we have now decided to erect a new 230m beehive fence along one of these demonstration sites to see if we can deter elephants from damaging the crops. This is nice collaboration where both parties should benefit from the experience. Many thanks to ADCL for arranging funding for this new Beehive Fence.

Yesterday I dropped my two field assistants, Lucas and Wilson, off at Chumviyere where we set up a camp and workshop in Peter Ekerri’s manyatta. The rains have JUST started in the area (hurray!) so we had to make it all water proof. The fence should take 2-3 weeks to complete (21 beehives in total) and be ready for when the crops start to grow and become attractive to the elephants.

Elephant communication study

Sun, 1 Mar 2009 10:56:20 +0300

We have just finished an intensive 3 week field experiment working with our study herds in Samburu and Buffalo Springs investigating how elephants communicate about the presence (or threat) of bees. We were very happy to welcome back Dr Joseph Soltis from Disney’s Bioacoustic team for his second visit to Samburu. Dr Soltis is our key collaborator in this study and brings with him a wealth of experience and skills in recording infrasonic rumbles made by elephants. He works primarily with the elephants in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida and has been able to use unique data from these elephants to help us with our field trials in Samburu.

This is complex work and this year we were particularly stretched as a bad drought has hit our region of Northern Kenya. The project work involved spending 6 hours every day out looking for elephants - not such a bad task but the temperatures soared during our study period (10.30am - 4pm ) and we were practically boiled alive in my land rover! The hard work paid off and we have an exciting database to analyse.

The Elephants and Bees project receives funding and support from Disney’s Worldwide Conservation Fund and this scientific collaboration with Dr Soltis’ team has cemented a very productive relationship. Keep an eye out for future publications.