Hey Everyone!

I know it’s been awhile since my last entry.  I was on expedition in Tarangire National Park (TNP) and Arusha National Park (ANP) all last week.  It was a blast!!  I saw a lot of animals including two cheetahs and a leopard during my stay in Tarangire.  We conducted an elephant survey there with my Wildlife Ecology class and observed at least one hundred and fifty during our transect drive, not even including all those we saw during our game drives (just for fun).  In addition to seeing the two rare cats, I saw a lot of giraffes, ostriches, zebras, wildebeest, mongoose, impala, reedbuck, waterbuck, hyrax, dik dik, warthog, and cape buffalo. In addition to the elephant survey, we also conducted a large mammal count of TNP, practicing the survey technique of distance sampling which we learned in Wildlife Management.

After two days in TNP, we packed up and drove to Arusha National Park.  TNP had very open savannah type habitat while ANP was much more forested and green.  ANP houses Mount Meru and several lakes and is part of the Kilimanjaro-Arusha-Amboseli ecosystem.  We spent three nights camped here doing game drives, animal surveys, and a waterfowl count.  The lakes are utilized by both lesser and greater flamingos of which there were about 4,000 present in the park during our stay.  The forests there are home to chameleons and pythons but we did not see any.  Unfortunately, my camera battery died during our second day in ANP, but I will be getting photos from my friends later.  One of the coolest things we did in Arusha was a hike around the park with two of the rangers.  We were able to get within 20 yards of a group of giraffes and about 100 yards of a group of buffalo.  It was really awesome finally being able to experience Tanzania on foot and it was exciting getting that close to the wildlife on foot.  I also got to see some Colobus monkeys, which are what Arusha National Park is famous for.  One of the more exciting aspects of the trip was the invasion of safari ants in camp the last two nights.  My tent was one of the worse ones and we had to put up another one before we could go to bed.  Thankfully, my stuff was safe.  I was only bit once by the fierce little insects but many of the students were bit more frequently.  One of our drivers has been working for SFS about 15 years and has never experienced anything like it before then, but this is also the first time SFS has stayed in Arusha National Park.  Despite the annoyance, the overall experience was awesome!

Back to reality though.  Have papers to get done for Environmental Policy and Wildlife Ecology.  I have finals at the end of this month then I begin my Directed Research in April!  Really looking forward to it!!

I am really having a blast here and hopefully I will have another post up soon!

Location: Karatu, Tanzania