A new study revealed that a drastic reduction of deaths of one of Africa’s rarest primates, the Zanzibar red colobus (Piliocolobus kirkii), followed the installation of four speedbumps along a stretch of road where the species frequently crossed.
Zanzibar red colobus are found only in the Zanzibar archipelago and classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List. Reliant on Unguja Island’s forests for their survival, around half of the species population is found in Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park.
In the study, published in Oryx – The International Journal of Conservation, primatologists from Bangor University, in collaboration with national park managers from Zanzibar and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), assessed mortality from vehicle collisions – a growing threat faced by primates living in increasingly fragmented habitats crisscrossed by roads.
They found that historic data from the road traversing the national park showed that one colobus was killed on average every 2-3 weeks by traffic. After speedbumps were installed, this was reduced to one every six weeks.
Read more at Wildlife Conservation Society
Photo Credit: DidierTais via Wikimedia Commons
