I received an email this morning via the African Birding group from Michael Mills, reporting on his conservation work in a part of the world I know very little about - Angola, an extremely impoverished country in south-central Africa which is bordered by Namibia on the south, Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east.

I’ve been to the capital, Luanda, once (in 2005) and spent the entire one-day visit sat on top of the hotel roof trying to photograph swifts (not easy when you daren’t stand up or wander around too much in case you get seen by the authorities who may not understand what you’re doing perched high above the city with a long lens and camera!). It wasn’t the most inspiring of trips, but without guides, permission, or the necessary ‘cajones‘ to go out any further I had to make do.

Fortunately though, there are people willing to make a journey into the interior, and what they discover is usually extremely interesting - and almost inevitably these days in need of protection. Which brings us back to Michael Mills and Mount Moco…

View from the top of Mount Moco, above Kanjonde village, looking north-west.
Photograph copyright Michael Mills

Mount Moco is Angola’s highest mountain at 2620 m, and, Michael says, is arguably its most important site for bird conservation. Mount Moco is thought to contain half of all the Afromontane forest left in Angola, making it vital for the protection of birds dependent on these forests.

The most notable of these is Swierstra’s Francolin Pternistis swierstrai, an Angolan endemic listed by the IUCN as Vulnerable, though it’s more likely that it is in fact Endangered: Michael and his colleagues estimates that there are about 80 pairs on Moco - perhaps half of the extant global population. No other viable population of this species is currently known.

The photo of Swierstra’s Francolin left is one of the six skins in the Lubango Bird Skin Collection and is copyright Michael Mills.

A selection of other birds found on the mountain can be found on a new website, www.mountmoco.org, and includes endemic species like Angola Slaty Flycatcher, Ludwig’s Double-collared Sunbird, and Red-backed Mousebird, range-restricted species like Angola Lark, Black-collared Bulbul, and Dusky Twinspot, and a set of endemic forms of often localised African species including the bocagei form of Bocage’s Akalat and the margaritae form of Margaret’s Batis

Sadly, though, Mount Moco has no conservation listing whatsoever and it’s birds are severely threatened by deforestation. The few remaining forest patches are being eroded at a concerning rate, largely by the 330 inhabitants of a single, small village, Kanjonde who have no other local fuel sources. As Michael explains,

“The greatest threat to the conservation of birds at Mount Moco is unsustainable utilisation of wood, clearing of forest for subsistence agriculture, and deliberate burning of vegetation. The village of Kanjonde has no power, and all cooking is done on fuel wood collected from the nearby forests and miombo woodlands. The chief of Kanjonde confirmed that the village had been on the edge of a patch of montane forest in 1922, at the time of his birth, whereas now the nearest patch of forest trees was at least 500 m away; an old Ficus tree in the middle of the village is the only testament to this. Between our two visits in 2005 and 2008, one of the larger forest patches at Mount Moco, near the village of Kanjonde, had visibly been reduced in size, and a recent forest fire in 2008 had burned at least 2 ha of forest that was relatively intact in 2005. All forest patches inspected in 2008 showed signs of recent burning at the edge.”

Michael and his colleagues are hoping to turn the situation around in four distinct ways:

• By working with the community of Kanjonde to reduce their impacts on the remaining forest
• Lobbying for the formal recognition of the proposed Mount Moco Special Reserve
• Promoting sustainable tourism at the mountain, with the community of Kanjonde as the primary beneficiary
• Ultimately increasing forest cover at Mount Moco by establishing a nursery and a forest replanting project.

Anyone who reads 10,000 Birds with any sort of regularity will probably understand that that sort of community approach to conservation resonates strongly around here, and is somewhat analogous to the work we’re doing in Kinangop, Kenya with Dominic Kimani and the Friends of Kinangop Plateau.

Michael makes an appeal in his email for anyone interested to visit the Mount Moco website (or Mount Koco itself - the next field trip is planned for July/August 2010), and that he would welcome any help on offer.

If you’d like to contact him his email address is michael - AT birdingafrica - DOT - com

 

 

Work on Mount Moco is supported by:

This post has been written as part of our commitment to Birdlife International’s ‘Preventing Extinctions Programme‘, which we signed up to as Species Champions in January 2009.

Species Champions are ”a growing community of Companies, Institutions and Individuals who share our concerns and demonstrate their commitment to protecting the planet’s natural heritage by funding the work undertaken by our Species Guardians”.

There are different ‘levels’ of Species Champion (requiring different levels of financial commitment). Whilst we joined the PEP at a ‘lower level’ 10,000 Birds is now officially a Species Champion along with such conservation giants as Sir David Attenborough and the British Birdwatching Fair, conservation minded businesses like Swarovski Optik (who also sponsor 10,000 Birds of course), In Focus, and WildSounds (the Species Champions for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper), and a small number of unsung individuals like Dr. Urs-Peter Stäuble, Ed Keeble, and Peter Smith.

• For a full list of Species Champions please go to BirdLife Species Champions ‘Roll of Honour’.