East African endangered duiker

Duikers are small forest antelope species often gravely threatened by habitat loss and hunting for bushmeat. The most seriously endangered species are found in eastern Africa: Aders’ duiker Cephalophus adersi (Critically Endangered) found only on the island of Zanzibar and in two coastal forests in Kenya and Abbott’s duiker C. spadix (Endangered), endemic to the highland forests of Tanzania.

WWCT has been supporting and carrying out research and monitoring projects for Aders’ duiker in Kenya since 2002 and Abbott’s duiker since 2005 following on from our earlier duiker research in Zimbabwe. Our projects often also compare these endangered duikers with more commonly encountered sympatric species such as Harvey’s duiker C. harveyi and suni Neotragus moschatus.

Given the difficulty of studying rare and shy species such as duikers, WWCT has focussed on improving knowledge of species distribution and habitat requirements through the application of new wildlife surveillance methods such as camera-trapping and non-invasive genetic sampling. This research has lead to scientific publications modelling habitat-use for forest antelope using camera-trap data in the Udzungwa Mountains, Tanzania (Bowkett et al. 2008), testing the accuracy of species identity in dung count surveys (Bowkett et al. 2009) and developing a DNA-based method for identifying duiker samples from across Africa (Ntie et al. in press). New records have confirmed the survival of Abbott’s duiker in heavily-hunted forests in the Udzungwa Mountains and include the first ever camera-trap photos of Aders’ duiker (Anon. 2007; Bowkett et al. in press). These results are made available to the national wildlife authorities responsible for conservation in Kenya and Tanzania and will contribute to conservation action plans for the species.

Operating conservation research projects in remote locations and developing new survey methods would not be possible without collaboration with many partners including Kenya Wildlife Service, Udzungwa Ecological Monitoring Centre, Udzungwa Mountains National Park; Wildlife Conservation Society and the universities of Exeter, Anglia-Ruskin, Stellenbosch and New Orleans.