22 
Bulletin of the KANHS 27(2/3) 
IMPORTANT BIRD AREAS IN KENYA; PROGRESS 
AND PROSPECTS 
Biological conservation takes many different forms. 
Efforts may focus on a single species that is considered 
important for one reason or another, like the Black 
Rhinoceros or African Elephant. At the other end of the 
scale are attempts to conserve an entire landscape, often 
one inhabited by people, by regulating the type and 
intensity of land uses. The vast majority of conservation 
work His somewhere in between, and concentrates on 
particular chunks of land (or. indeed, water). This 
protected areas' approach assumes that by conserving 
a site and the habitat on it. we protect the biodiversity 
that it contains. 
Year by year, the human pressure on land grows 
inexorably more intense. Realistically, only a few ol the 
many sites we would like to conserve can be marked out 
for long-term protection. Which should these be? In 
East Africa, and no doubt elsewhere in the world, there 
used to be three main reasons for choosing areas to be 
protected. Either no-one wanted to live there in the first 
place (they were too arid or inhospitable or swarming 
with tsetse fly); or they were cluwk-a-block with large 
mammals that might be hunted or photographed: or they 
protected a water catchment and contained valuable 
timber. These criteria are reasonable enough by their 
own lights, but unfortunately arc quite hopeless when 
it comes to conserving biodiversity Except by a happy 
chance, there is no reason that sites selected in this 
way should contain exceptionally rich or distinctive 
fauna and flora. Ifbiodivcrsity is our real concern when 
making priorities for protection, we hud better focus on 
it to begin with. 
But how con this be done? We arc woefully ignorant 
of our biodiversity, and making even the simplest 
inventory of species takes enormous time and effort. 
By the time we had finished a full description of just 
one site, all the others would probably long have been 
lost. The rate at which biodiversity is being eroded, 
already breath-taking, is speeding up constantly; time 
is very short; we have no choice but to moke do as best 
we can with the information available. And for no major 
taxonomic group is more information available ihan for 
birds. 
Important Bird Areas (IBAs) arc places that are 
exceptionally important for bird conserve ion. Usually, 
therefore, they are also key sites for the conservation 
of biodiversity in general. Birds are far from u perfect 
indicator of biological value, but they are a good stnn 
- and these* of sites we identify lor birds, with minimal 
effort, can be expanded as information on other groups 
becomes available. 
The official aim of BirdLife International's IBA 
programme is “to identify and protect a network of sites, 
at a biogeographic scale, critical for the long-term 
viability of naturally occurring bird populations, across 
the range of those bird species for which a sites-based 
approach is appropriate." That includes most bird 
species that are not very thinly scattered over large 
areas. By protecting a large set of bird species. 
conservation of an IBA network should ensure the 
survival of a correspondingly large number of ocher taxa. 
IBAs have been identified across Europe and the Middle 
East, and the programme is well advanced in Africa. A 
continental directory is due for publication in the year 
2000 . 
IBAs are chosen using clear, quantitative and agreed 
criteria, which are outlined below. However, the network 
of sites is built up in a pragmatic fashion. All else being 
equal, existing protected areas are generally easier to 
conserve than non-protccred areas, so the protected 
area system often forms the network's backbone. Bigger 
sites are usually beret than smaller ones — ideally, each 
site should be large enough to support viable 
populations of the species for which it was identified. 
There can be difficulties in deciding the boundaries of 
sites, and how to classify clusters of small sites, but the 
oveT-riding criterion in all cases is common-sense If 
they arc to have any use. IBAs must be practical tools 
for conservation, so rules cannot he followed blindly. 
IBA categories and criteria 
There are four categories of IBAs, though a single site 
may qualify in two or more of these. Each category has 
its own criteria that set a minimal level for global 
recognition. 
I Globally-threatened birds. The site regularly holds 
significant numbers of n globally tlireatened or ncar- 
threntened species. These species are listed in the 
1 994 BirdLife International publication Birds to 
Hutch 2 by Nig-I Collar and colleagues. Kenyan 
examples arc birds such as Pupyms Yellow Warbler 
Ch! nr opt to grot' I tiros iris or East Coast Akalat 
Sheppordia gunairtgi. In total. 23 Kenyan species 
(not nil of which are recognised by the EANHS as 
full species) are listed as threatened in Bird* to watch 
2. together with 1 7 near-threutened species. The 
regional red-list exercise has added Sharpe s 
Longdaw Mocrcmyx sharp*, and Aberdare Cisticola 
Cutlcola aberdurr as provisionally threatened 
species: although not in Birds to watch 2, they arc 
both globally Vulnerable according to the IUCN 
criteria. 
2. Restricted-range birds. The site holds a significant 
component of a group of species whose breeding 
distributions define an Endemic Bird Area (EB A ) or 
Secondary Area (SA). EBAs are places where two 
or more species of ‘restricted range', i.c. with world 
distributions of less than 50.000 km 1 , occur together. 
Globally, more than 70% of such species are also 
threatened. A Secondary Area (SA) also supports 
one or more restricted-range species, but has less 
than two species that are entirely confined to it. 
Restricted-range bird species, and the EBAs and 
SA*. they occur in. are listed in the recently-launched 
BirdLife International publication. Endemic Bird 
Areas of the World . by Alison Stattersfield and 
colleagues. 
Several EBAs and SAs occur in Kenya, but the 
