The ecology of the large herbivore community in the Lambwe valley Kenya

Abstract

This thesis is based on a preliminary ecological survey of the Lambwe Valley habitat. The community approach was proferred to individual species study because this was the first ecological study conduted in the game reserve, and in this way some suggestions with immediate management applications could be extracted from the study. The basic unit of community was the herbivore population as a trophic entity. The common methods currently used in monitoring habitat utilization by wild herbivore species in East Africa grasslands, e.g. track counts, systematic ground sampling, ground and aerial population sampling have all been used. Vegetation has also been sampled by the Point-Centred Quarter and Line-Intercept methods, so that the herbivore distribution patterns can be related to the vegetation composition and structure