BY WANJOHI GAKIO
NEW plants and animals have been discovered at Laikipia Nature Conservancy.
A team of researchers who carried out a survey at the conservancy last week found 72 species new to the conservancy checklist.
Conservancy director Kuki Gallman said out of these, 26 were plants discovered by botanists at Kutwa and Mlima Kisu areas.
The most unique species were Raphionacme flanaganii (first record for the region), Zathoxylum chalybeum subspecies molle (a new subspecies for Kenya) and Vepris sp, which is new to science, she said.
Kuki said entomologists documented 122 species of invertebrates, 46 of them new to the Laikipia Nature Conservancy checklist.
She said the new discoveries survived, despite the “illegal grazers, the poaching of six elephants in 2015, and the extensive arson which raged for days on the pristine Rift Valley hills.”
The researchers included a team from the National Museums of Kenya and botanist Kennedy Matheka from the East African Herbarium.
Courtesy of the-star.co.ke