Thanks to everyone who has started sharing their ground-hornbill stories on a Thursday under the hashtag #thunderbirdthurdays. We are together creating a community of people who know, love, understand and protect these birds.
Conservation in the time of COVID-19
As ground-hornbills continue to play with no knowledge of what us humans are facing, we hope that our news will bring some light to your day in these frightening and uncertain times. We are doing our absolute best to continue our conservation work, despite the necessary limitations imposed in the effort to #flattenthecurve.
Compassion, kindness and love are what we hope this period will be remembered for
National Monitoring Plan
We launched the National Monitoring Plan in January, that will run in conjunction with a National Biodiversity Plan for the species. This was originally developed as a provincial monitoring plan, in collaboration with Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, but has been accepted as the most effective method to monitor the entire national population.
Ground-hornbills are extremely difficult to census given that they occur naturally at low-density and even up to 10 visits to a territory may not assure a sighting. The good news though is that they remain resident on what appear to be permanent territories – perhaps even inherited from generation to generation – along with good quality nests, and so we can monitor them in situ on these territories.
We are undertaking the monitoring at the same scale as the South African Bird Atlas Project, that of one pentad, five minutes of latitude by five minutes of longitude, squares with sides of roughly 9 km, which roughly equates to an average-sized territory. On an annual basis each pentad will be colour-coded as green, yellow or red, based on group presence and/or absence data received.
Using the above example, in pentad A, a record for the resident group is reported every year, thus this pentad stays green, and thus of no cause for concern. Pentad D however shows the other extreme. A group is reported in the first year, but no reports in subsequent years means this pentad must be red-flagged. A cluster of red pentads means we have a real problem. We can then target our resources to understand the problem, and, if possible mitigate for the threats, or if necessary even reintroduce birds into that area.
Wherever you live or travel, we would value each and every sighting record, and, with time, if we are successful, we will be able to paint their distribution map green!
Breeding season 2019-2020
The breeding season saw a mixed bag of productivity. The Limpopo River Valley population had only one fledgling this year – see the photo above of spiky little Kongo.
The nests monitored in KwaZulu-Natal had a better season with just over 50% of the nests both active and successful.
