Jozani

For the last 4 nights we have been in Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park, learning how to conduct environmental field studies. The rangers at the park gave us lectures and taught us in the field how to conduct studies on mangrove biodiversity, bird population surveys, and primate behavior studies.



Jozani Forest is home to thousands of Zanzibar Red Colobus Monkeys, who are habituated to humans and would let us get inches away without noticing. Highlights of monkey watching included: seeing a mama and her baby, as well as an alpha male fight, and we learned that monkeys eat charcoal when they have upset stomachs.



The primary forest was incredible, the trees were bigger than I have ever seen (and that's saying something coming from Bainbridge) and we were able to see lots of Zanzibar Sombre Greenbul, Tropical Sunbirds, and Common Bulbuls, among others.



Spent a lot of time measuring DBH of mangroves, concentrating on the three main species in the area. Got to walk around in the muck but no pictures of that, bummer!



Sorry for the short post, but me and five other SITers are headed out in a few hours to take an overnight boat to Pemba to start our mini-indepentent studies on Pemba Island...so no internet for another week but stay posted!

-B