Worrying news on Timneh Parrots from Gola

Posted by Simon Valle & Stuart Marsden

The Timneh Parrot (Psittacus timneh) together with the congeneric Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus) has recently been uplisted, to Endangered based on the suspected decline due to habitat loss and trapping for the pet trade (BirdLife International 2018). However, the hard truth is that we have hardly any data on the size and trends of the populations that dwell in the remaining forest patches across its range. As part of a project generously funded by the Parrot Wildlife Foundation, successfully launched inaugurated with a productive workshop at the Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP), Dr Simon Valle (Bangor University) has spent four weeks surveying in and around GRNP to understand how abundant the species may be. 

Community guide Mohamed Nyallay (left) and porters Mustapha Kanneh (centre) and Keni Desmond on their way to set a base camp in the heart of Gola Rainforest National Park (Photo: S. Valle)

Preliminary results from the surveys have raised some serious concerns for the species in Gola, despite being probably one of the best preserved and managed protected areas in West Africa. Simon and his team often struggled to find any parrots even in the better-preserved forest at the core of the national park. Encounters were rare and far apart and judging from the extremely low encounter rates (0.3 parrots/hour), and, until the analysis is done, we can only assume that Timneh Parrots presumably persist at very low densities in the area as a whole. These figures are alarming if we compare them to those of healthy populations of the congeneric Grey Parrot such as the 30 ± 8 parrots per sq km in Lobéké National Park, Cameroun (Marsden et al. 2015), or the 59 ± 4 parrots  per sq km on the Island of Príncipe, São Tomé & Príncipe (Valle et al. 2017). 

A rare encounter in Gola forest. 
Community Guide Mohamed Mansare` listens to a 
group of Timneh Parrots feeding on a nearby tree.

Most encounters were from the 4-km buffer zone that surrounds the park, where the forest is under continuous threat from inhabitants of the surrounding settlements. The buffer zone holds pockets of reasonably intact forest and hosts some very successful wildlife -friendly cocoa farms managed in partnership with the park authorities. However, in some areas, the buffer zone still bears the clear signs of slash-and-burn farming, selective logging for valuable timber and mining for gold and diamonds. These are the areas where the work of the park authorities is the most difficult and the survival of the remaining forest most fragile.

A team surveys for Timneh Parrots in the 4-km buffer zone around the Gola Rainforest National Park, where large areas are cleared with fire to make space for subsistence farming (Photo: S. Valle)

The data collected in GRNP are an important alarm bell and shows us that a well-protected and carefully managed protected area may not be sufficient to guarantee the recovery of a population to a healthy state, or at least not before many years (Valle et al. 2018). Moreover, these results highlight the importance of performing similar surveys across the range to assess the true conservation status of this species and the need for consistent monitoring of the remaining populations. With this in mind, and following up on the successful training held in GRNP, Simon has delivered a further workshop at the HQ of the National Protected Areas Authority, the government agency which manages all protected areas across the country. Together with Prof Stuart Marsden (Manchester Metropolitan University), Simon will keep on working closely with the NPAA and GRNP to develop a long-term countrywide monitoring scheme for Timneh Parrot, probably the first of its kind in Africa.

References

BirdLife International (2018) Species factsheet: Psittacus timneh. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 12/05/2018

Marsden, S.J., Loqueh, E., Takuo, J.M., Hart, J.A., Abani, R., Ahon, D.B., Annorbah, N.N.D., Johnson, R., & Valle, S. (2015) Using encounter rates as surrogates for density estimates makes monitoring of the heavily-traded grey parrots achievable across Africa. Oryx 50(4):617-625

Valle, S., Collar, N.J., Harris, E., & Marsden, S.J. (2017) Spatial and seasonal variation in abundance within an insular grey parrot population. African Journal of Ecology 55(4):433-442

Valle, S., Collar, N.J., Harris, E., & Marsden, S.J. (2018) Effects of trapping method and capture rate variability on harvest sustainability in a heavily traded parrot. Biological Conservation 217:428–436