Ai^uS/December 1997 
27 
»ei! -perpetuating way of monitoring sites and taking 
krt’on to correct problems). 
Moving to Stage 3. and eventually Stage 4, requires 
e « n resources. Support to take the 1BA programme 
forward will come from the Global Environment Facility. 
Ten BirdLife Partners in Africa will be involved, in 
Burkina Faso, Cameroon. Ethiopia. Ghana. Sierra Leone, 
south Africa. Tanzania. Tunisia and Uganda (the 
EANHS again! ) as well as Kenya. The project. 'African 
S'GO-Govemment Partnerships for Sustainable 
tirtxliversity Action*. Is the lira major GEF grant given 
m a non-governmental grouping. As the project’s title 
uggests. die BirdLife Partners will be working closely 
•rilh Governments, but bringing in their special abilities 
ii advocacy and gross-roots Involvement to enhance 
lilting conservation efforts. 
In Kenya, the GEF project should work at two levels. 
Nationally, we will be advocating that IBAs be 
‘iKorporated as a central plank in conservation planning 
i as they have been now ucross the European Union, for 
example). This will also Involve expanding and 
formalising die IBA Advisory Council. Locally, we w-ill 
v helping to establish site-support groups that can 
monitor IB As and work with the district administration 
conserve them. Many activities are enmeshed within 
these main themes, including deciding which sites are 
■he highest priorities, drafting management plans and 
'u.*»ding proposals, training the members oflocal groups 
*Td Government staff, and so on. 
This will all be a great deal of work, and the Society 
recruited two new staff to shoulder the bulk of it. 
Af always, however, the hope is that EANMS member* 
themselves will step in to assist. For any member wishing 
to make a tangible contribution to conservation, the 
IBA project provides the opportunity. There are several 
ways to become involved: 
- jend in information on the status of particular IBAs 
that you visit or live near { for instance, conservation 
problems or improvements you have noticed, or 
interesting records of animals or plants) 
• if you live near an IBA. start, or involve yourself with. 
a site-support group affiliated to the EANHS. Site- 
support groups of one sort or another already exist 
for Arabuko-Sokoke Forest. Kakamega Forest, the 
Kinangop Grasslands and Lake Naivusha — 
eventually every' IBA should have one 
• if you have expertise in a particular area, volunteer a 
little time as a resource-person. The project is likely 
to involve a good deal of training at different levels 
and across a wide range of skills, from identifying 
plants, birds and butterflies to simple office 
administration and book-keeping. 
If you are interested in being involved, and you live 
ir xenya. why not contact the EANHS office in Nairobi 
ice more information. Similar work is beginning in 
l gandaand in Tanzania — members in Chose countries 
■bould contact the EANHS Uganda branch or the 
• ikllifc Conservation Society of Tanzania, respectively. 
Acknowledgements 
The IBA programme in Kenya has been generously 
supported by the Royal Society for the Protection of 
Birds, the BirdLife International Partner in the United 
Kingdcvn. 
Leon Bennun. Chairman, Ornithology Dept.. National 
Museums of Kenya. Box 40658. Nairobi. Kenya. 
THREE BUTTERFLIES OF TAITA 
Part II. Papilio desmondl taita 
(Editor’s note: The first pan of this article appears in the 
BAN US II til Id in Vol. 21 :2. p. 1 8. This part of the paper 
has been recovered from some files of our laic Editor. 
Mrs DaphhC Backhunit. Our apologies to the author for 
the long delay between pans.) 
Introduction 
While living in the luita Hills I became interested in its 
butterflies and have described my findings on Papilio 
nireus in a previous bulletin. I had found nireus larvae 
when I had been looking for the Taita endemic /’ 
ilexmniull («jt page 39) Yrt eventually I did find larvae 
different from nireus. which proved to be P. desmondl. 
In general P. desmondl is less abundant, and while it 
can overlap with P nireus, only on one occasion have I 
round more eggs or larvae of desmondl than nireus. 
The overall discovery rates of nireus. for eggs and larvae 
together, were 6,0 and 2.5 per hour respectively for 
Mwanibirwa and Choke Forests, but only 1.2 per hour 
for dexmondi on Mwnmbirwn nnd even less on Choke I 
have only ever found desmondi on Toddniia uxiutlea — 
and only once in Choke. So. the statistics for 
Mwambiiwu forest are the ones which help analysis, 
although there are places un Choke area where adults 
can Ik seen regularly, indeed probably all the year 
round The regular sighting of these feeding on 
Stavhyiaphda (and on Citrus higher up), is beautiful 
indeed. And the territorial features of some males could 
be observed; although I noted that the place was not in 
a westward lacing position as previously reported by 
ICBP— rather, it was at the south end of a north/south 
ridge, only partly protected by trees. 
Life History 
111 is has been worked out. both from larval specimens 
und eggs found in the wild, and from the eggs laid when 
a captured adult was sleeved. It seems that there arc 
four patterns of larval colouration, but I have been 
unable to see how this fits into 5 instnrs. Probably instars 
2 and 3 arc Identical The eggs took about a week to 
hatch, at an average temperature of 24.8°C and had been 
yellowish/grccn in colour, about 0.9- 1 .0 mm in diameter. 
The young larvae ore between 3.5 and 5 mm in size, and 
different from nireus. Nireus caterpillars, freshly 
hatched, are brownish all over, but with bands of 
alternate orange or brown across the body, which are 
