10 thoughts on “Clarke’s Weaver (Ploceus golandi): Revise global status?”
This assessment is completely wrong. The population of Clarke’s Weaver has not been assessed since the 1980s. We know that 400-500 pairs of Clarke’s Weavers nested in Dakatcha Woodland in 2013. Since then only much smaller flocks or nesting colonies have been recorded.
There has been no recorded breeding events in the past two years, because of persistent drought. Most sightings of Clarke’s Weavers have been in Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, whereas the only nesting records are from Dakatcha Woodland.
There have been no recorded breeding events in the past two years, because of persistent drought. Clarke’s Weavers nest in sedges in standing water in seasonal wetlands. Most sightings of Clarke’s Weavers have been in Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, whereas the only nesting records are from Dakatcha Woodland.
Clarke’s Weavers forage mainly in Brachystegia spiciformis forest, and only nest in small seasonal wetlands. Both Brachystegia spiciformis forest and small seasonal wetlands are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate in Dakatcha Woodland.
Most of the Brachystegia spiciformis forest land is being allocated as private land, and even before allocation, has been sold to investors from outside Kilifi County. Some investors have already turned their land into fields of chilli peppers or pineapples. Others have just cleared roads and built walls or fences. Land allocation is done in faraway offices and wetlands have not been set aside for community use, they are simply divided among the allocated plots.
I am the person who, together with Dakatcha Woodland Conservation Group, found the first Clarke’s Weaver breeding site known to science in Dakatcha Woodland in 2013. Since then I have frequently visited Dakatcha Woodland, observed several much smaller breeding events in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019, and seen occasional flocks of about 50 birds. On this basis I cannot estimate the size of the population. Because of persistent drought in coastal Kenya, we have no records of breeding in the past two years; we only hope that the birds live long enough to survive such droughts. However, I can inform you that in Dakatcha Woodland, the Brachystegia forest and seasonal wetlands sites, critical to the Clarke’s Weaver survival, are being rapidly decimated. Clarke’s Weavers are still observed in Arabuko-Sokoke forest, but are certainly still endangered, perhaps critically.
See
First Clarke’s weaver breeding record Jackson et al. Scopus July 2015
PS
Arabuko-Sokoke National Park consists of a few acres outside the large Arabuko-Sokoke National Forest where Clarke’s Weavers are observed.
Down listing the Clarkes Weaver (Kilifi weaver) is the worst decision that can happen in the year 2022. Nature Kenya is working to safeguard this species and possibly have it removed from the IUCN redlist. However, this decision is for the future not now. The Clarkes weaver is obviously more threatened today than any other time in the past. The bird only breeds in Dakatcha woodland. It requires special very small rare wetlands that must have papyrus/reads after rains. These provide the nesting material and ambience to breed. In the last two years in 2020 and 2021 the bird has not bred due to drought. Also, the woodland is totally unprotected. The survival is literally in the hands of local land owners. The land owners are selling land everyday. The land is converted into crop land. Commercial charcoal is a huge threat and the land is undergoing rapid transformation. This has reduced the suitable habitats to scattered fragments. The wetlands are not set a side for the public. They will disappear. The Clarkes weaver population is likely to crush in the near future. To help the situation, Nature Kenya is buying land. Nature Kenya is working to enthuse communities to set up conservancies. If this action is to be successfully done, the Clarkes weaver down-listing does not help its plight. Estimating the population needs a good study in both the Arabuko Sokoke and Dakatcha as the species is found in either one of these two nearly contiguous places. Suitable habitat in Arabuko is mainly limited to small section covered by brachystegia but they do not breed there. Monitoring has been undertaken but actual estimation of the population has not been done due to challenges related to the unreliability of the data collected from year to year. More of often than not, observers see nothing along the monitoring transects. Sometimes for a long time, searches of the bird do not yield any data. When flocks appear, they are very few and far apart and monitoring transects fail to capture these flocks making scientific population estimation not easy. However, based on my many years observing this species and its habitat I would estimate that the Clarkes weaver would be possibly reduced by over 60% and the decline is continuing. The total population is likely less than 1500 breeding pairs. A decision to down-list from endangered to any other is ill advised, untimely and dangerous. An immediate impact of this misinformed decision would be reduced funding on land purchase or set up of community conservancies or introduction of sustainable land use practices. This will be at a time when land buyers are buying any land they can find and turning their land into charcoal and crops.
The decision the assessors are taking to down-list will push the Clarkes weaver closer to extinction. You may not listen or say there is no data but then, you MUST take the precautionary approach–if population data is missing, but every threat has increased, the current status needs to be maintained.
Couldn’t agree more with the above. This is a species that needs the highest level of conservation concern. Despite some of the successes of Nature Kenya field workers in recent years, this species is far from being out of danger, and I am surprised to see a suggested downlisting.
1) there is no evidence the species breeds in Sokoke (only in Dakatcha Woodlands), with birds at Sokoke moving to Dakatcha to breed. Birds in both of these areas are therefore all part of the same single population.
2) the breeding wetlands at Dakatcha are few and far between, breeding is intermittent and does not always take place when it rains as might be assumed. There has been active monitoring of these wetlands for several years now and breeding is now unreported for some time.
3) the land pressure on the woodlands north of the Galana where this species breeds is increasing steadily. Most land has now been subdivided and speculators are buying at a frenzied pace. As more people settle in this area, the level of habitat degradation and disturbance at breeding wetlands is certain to increase.
4) the species is not forest dependent when breeding but outside of that season I would argue that it is. And further, that the preferred Brachystegia forest habitat is very limited in extent both in Dakatcha and Sokoke
5) eBird data are not useful here in the manner they have been applied. Observation effort is extraordinarily skewed south vs north of the Galana, and observers at Sokoke specifically target this species so it is present on many many lists at the right time of year. However, these observations are invariably of small numbers and they are restricted to small areas of suitable habitat within the wider forest. Records from Sokoke may consistently involve counting of the same individual birds from the same mixed feeding parties at the same “guaranteed” locations.
In my opinion, 4000 is large overestimate for the population size of this species. Perhaps four times too much. It is also a species with a distinctly different breeding and non-breeding ecology and it is still being squeezed at both ends.
If Birdlife is looking to downgrade something in Kenya, Hinde’s Babbler should be set at Least Concern. It is a dirt bird across a large swath of central east Kenya, present in numbers in all historic locations, with small range extensions being found periodically as well.
While yes, there are no real data to base any serious discussion on in terms of actual numbers and estimates (surveying the species for population estimates is extremely difficult given the nature of its movements and habitat), there is sufficient evidence, I would say, to strongly oppose the suggestion of down-listing Clarke’s Weaver to anything other than Endangered. The figures we do have available to work on are the size of flocks being encountered, the frequency of encounter and also the few recorded breeding events. Of the latter, the first was far and away the largest event with an estimated over 500 nests in the colony. Subsequent observed breeding events have been much smaller and while it is not possible to say the weavers did not breed at all the past two years under drought conditions as the colony may have been overlooked, it is likely that there were fewer breeding due to the conditions and therefore were not encountered. This, in itself would imply that numbers are down, however, not up.
Numbers of birds encountered are rarely in large flocks – speaking with the guides who see them most often, it is normally relatively small flocks. This again would suggest a relatively small population particularly as it is not guaranteed that you will see them when looking for them in Arabuko-Sokoke.
Futhermore, the necessary habitat for Clarke’s Weavers (primarily Brachystegia since while they have been seen in Julbernadia forest, this is normally mixed in / adjacent to Brachystegia), is definitely on the decline in Dakatcha. Areas where we surveyed for the weaver breeding 15 years ago which were Brachystegia Woodland in quite good condition, are now open farmland or very thin woodland (the area around Majengo west of Marafa).
I would consider it very risky to downlist this species on the grounds that we simply don’t have data to show that there actually is a decline in population. While the actual numbers are missing, the Kenya Bird Map data (https://kenya.birdmap.africa/species/3912) suggest that the species is not very frequently encountered across Dakatcha. These data would need to be properly analysed against effort in order to get as accurate picture as possible of their status, but initial views suggest the bird is not common nor that widespread.
All in all, I would strongly opposed down-listing the species and rather retain it as Endangered and put greater effort into more thorough and frequent atlassing which can produce dependable results on trends of reporting rates for difficult-to-survey species such as Clarke’s Weaver.
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested by so many people in commenting. The window for consultation is now closed and we are unable to accept any more comments until 21 February 2022. We will now analyse and interpret the new information, and we will post a preliminary decision on this species’s Red List status on this page on 21 February 2022, when discussions will re-open.
It is now recognised that drought is the most severe threat to the species and the entire population can be affected simultaneously. The species is assessed as occurring within a single location*. Separately there is an ongoing decline in habitat quality due to degradation within its restricted range. Therefore, our preliminary proposal for the 2022.1 Red List would be to list Clarke’s Weaver as Endangered under Criterion B1ab(ii,iii).
There is now a period for further comments until the final deadline on 27 February 2022, after which the recommended categorisations will be put forward to IUCN.
The final 2022.1 Red List categories will be published on the BirdLife and IUCN websites in July 2022, following further checking of information relevant to the assessments by both BirdLife and IUCN.
Thank you for the well-considered decision to list Clarke’s Weaver as Endangered.
Kindly allow me to re-iterate that contrary to the preliminary assessment given in the “rationale for proposed change”, Clarke’s Weaver is dependent on Brachystegia spiciformis forest for foraging and seasonal wetlands for nesting. Although it does feed on small fruits in mixed woodland and edge habitat, these alone are not sufficient to support the bird’s population.
Nature Kenya, A Rocha and Dakatcha Woodland Conservation Group will continue their efforts to save Clarke’s Weaver from extinction.
Thank you for the decision to list Clarke’s Weaver as Endangered. Nature Kenya and our partners will continue to do all within our capability to give this species some hope to live into the future.
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested by so many people in commenting. The window for consultation is now closed and we are unable to accept any more comments. We will analyse and interpret the new information, and we will post a final decision on this species’ Red List status on this page on 7 March 2022.
Recommended categorisation to be put forward to IUCN
The final categorisation for this species has not changed, but the account for this species has been updated to incorporate additional information from this discussion. Clarke’s Weaver is recommended to be listed as Endangered under Criterion B1ab(ii,iii).
Many thanks for everyone who contributed to the 2022.1 GTB Forum process. The final 2022.1 Red List categories will be published on the BirdLife and IUCN websites in July 2022, following further checking of information relevant to the assessments by both BirdLife and IUCN.
This assessment is completely wrong. The population of Clarke’s Weaver has not been assessed since the 1980s. We know that 400-500 pairs of Clarke’s Weavers nested in Dakatcha Woodland in 2013. Since then only much smaller flocks or nesting colonies have been recorded.
There has been no recorded breeding events in the past two years, because of persistent drought. Most sightings of Clarke’s Weavers have been in Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, whereas the only nesting records are from Dakatcha Woodland.
There have been no recorded breeding events in the past two years, because of persistent drought. Clarke’s Weavers nest in sedges in standing water in seasonal wetlands. Most sightings of Clarke’s Weavers have been in Arabuko-Sokoke Forest, whereas the only nesting records are from Dakatcha Woodland.
Clarke’s Weavers forage mainly in Brachystegia spiciformis forest, and only nest in small seasonal wetlands. Both Brachystegia spiciformis forest and small seasonal wetlands are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate in Dakatcha Woodland.
Most of the Brachystegia spiciformis forest land is being allocated as private land, and even before allocation, has been sold to investors from outside Kilifi County. Some investors have already turned their land into fields of chilli peppers or pineapples. Others have just cleared roads and built walls or fences. Land allocation is done in faraway offices and wetlands have not been set aside for community use, they are simply divided among the allocated plots.
I am the person who, together with Dakatcha Woodland Conservation Group, found the first Clarke’s Weaver breeding site known to science in Dakatcha Woodland in 2013. Since then I have frequently visited Dakatcha Woodland, observed several much smaller breeding events in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019, and seen occasional flocks of about 50 birds. On this basis I cannot estimate the size of the population. Because of persistent drought in coastal Kenya, we have no records of breeding in the past two years; we only hope that the birds live long enough to survive such droughts. However, I can inform you that in Dakatcha Woodland, the Brachystegia forest and seasonal wetlands sites, critical to the Clarke’s Weaver survival, are being rapidly decimated. Clarke’s Weavers are still observed in Arabuko-Sokoke forest, but are certainly still endangered, perhaps critically.
See
First Clarke’s weaver breeding record Jackson et al. Scopus July 2015
PS
Arabuko-Sokoke National Park consists of a few acres outside the large Arabuko-Sokoke National Forest where Clarke’s Weavers are observed.
Down listing the Clarkes Weaver (Kilifi weaver) is the worst decision that can happen in the year 2022. Nature Kenya is working to safeguard this species and possibly have it removed from the IUCN redlist. However, this decision is for the future not now. The Clarkes weaver is obviously more threatened today than any other time in the past. The bird only breeds in Dakatcha woodland. It requires special very small rare wetlands that must have papyrus/reads after rains. These provide the nesting material and ambience to breed. In the last two years in 2020 and 2021 the bird has not bred due to drought. Also, the woodland is totally unprotected. The survival is literally in the hands of local land owners. The land owners are selling land everyday. The land is converted into crop land. Commercial charcoal is a huge threat and the land is undergoing rapid transformation. This has reduced the suitable habitats to scattered fragments. The wetlands are not set a side for the public. They will disappear. The Clarkes weaver population is likely to crush in the near future. To help the situation, Nature Kenya is buying land. Nature Kenya is working to enthuse communities to set up conservancies. If this action is to be successfully done, the Clarkes weaver down-listing does not help its plight. Estimating the population needs a good study in both the Arabuko Sokoke and Dakatcha as the species is found in either one of these two nearly contiguous places. Suitable habitat in Arabuko is mainly limited to small section covered by brachystegia but they do not breed there. Monitoring has been undertaken but actual estimation of the population has not been done due to challenges related to the unreliability of the data collected from year to year. More of often than not, observers see nothing along the monitoring transects. Sometimes for a long time, searches of the bird do not yield any data. When flocks appear, they are very few and far apart and monitoring transects fail to capture these flocks making scientific population estimation not easy. However, based on my many years observing this species and its habitat I would estimate that the Clarkes weaver would be possibly reduced by over 60% and the decline is continuing. The total population is likely less than 1500 breeding pairs. A decision to down-list from endangered to any other is ill advised, untimely and dangerous. An immediate impact of this misinformed decision would be reduced funding on land purchase or set up of community conservancies or introduction of sustainable land use practices. This will be at a time when land buyers are buying any land they can find and turning their land into charcoal and crops.
The decision the assessors are taking to down-list will push the Clarkes weaver closer to extinction. You may not listen or say there is no data but then, you MUST take the precautionary approach–if population data is missing, but every threat has increased, the current status needs to be maintained.
Couldn’t agree more with the above. This is a species that needs the highest level of conservation concern. Despite some of the successes of Nature Kenya field workers in recent years, this species is far from being out of danger, and I am surprised to see a suggested downlisting.
1) there is no evidence the species breeds in Sokoke (only in Dakatcha Woodlands), with birds at Sokoke moving to Dakatcha to breed. Birds in both of these areas are therefore all part of the same single population.
2) the breeding wetlands at Dakatcha are few and far between, breeding is intermittent and does not always take place when it rains as might be assumed. There has been active monitoring of these wetlands for several years now and breeding is now unreported for some time.
3) the land pressure on the woodlands north of the Galana where this species breeds is increasing steadily. Most land has now been subdivided and speculators are buying at a frenzied pace. As more people settle in this area, the level of habitat degradation and disturbance at breeding wetlands is certain to increase.
4) the species is not forest dependent when breeding but outside of that season I would argue that it is. And further, that the preferred Brachystegia forest habitat is very limited in extent both in Dakatcha and Sokoke
5) eBird data are not useful here in the manner they have been applied. Observation effort is extraordinarily skewed south vs north of the Galana, and observers at Sokoke specifically target this species so it is present on many many lists at the right time of year. However, these observations are invariably of small numbers and they are restricted to small areas of suitable habitat within the wider forest. Records from Sokoke may consistently involve counting of the same individual birds from the same mixed feeding parties at the same “guaranteed” locations.
In my opinion, 4000 is large overestimate for the population size of this species. Perhaps four times too much. It is also a species with a distinctly different breeding and non-breeding ecology and it is still being squeezed at both ends.
If Birdlife is looking to downgrade something in Kenya, Hinde’s Babbler should be set at Least Concern. It is a dirt bird across a large swath of central east Kenya, present in numbers in all historic locations, with small range extensions being found periodically as well.
While yes, there are no real data to base any serious discussion on in terms of actual numbers and estimates (surveying the species for population estimates is extremely difficult given the nature of its movements and habitat), there is sufficient evidence, I would say, to strongly oppose the suggestion of down-listing Clarke’s Weaver to anything other than Endangered. The figures we do have available to work on are the size of flocks being encountered, the frequency of encounter and also the few recorded breeding events. Of the latter, the first was far and away the largest event with an estimated over 500 nests in the colony. Subsequent observed breeding events have been much smaller and while it is not possible to say the weavers did not breed at all the past two years under drought conditions as the colony may have been overlooked, it is likely that there were fewer breeding due to the conditions and therefore were not encountered. This, in itself would imply that numbers are down, however, not up.
Numbers of birds encountered are rarely in large flocks – speaking with the guides who see them most often, it is normally relatively small flocks. This again would suggest a relatively small population particularly as it is not guaranteed that you will see them when looking for them in Arabuko-Sokoke.
Futhermore, the necessary habitat for Clarke’s Weavers (primarily Brachystegia since while they have been seen in Julbernadia forest, this is normally mixed in / adjacent to Brachystegia), is definitely on the decline in Dakatcha. Areas where we surveyed for the weaver breeding 15 years ago which were Brachystegia Woodland in quite good condition, are now open farmland or very thin woodland (the area around Majengo west of Marafa).
I would consider it very risky to downlist this species on the grounds that we simply don’t have data to show that there actually is a decline in population. While the actual numbers are missing, the Kenya Bird Map data (https://kenya.birdmap.africa/species/3912) suggest that the species is not very frequently encountered across Dakatcha. These data would need to be properly analysed against effort in order to get as accurate picture as possible of their status, but initial views suggest the bird is not common nor that widespread.
All in all, I would strongly opposed down-listing the species and rather retain it as Endangered and put greater effort into more thorough and frequent atlassing which can produce dependable results on trends of reporting rates for difficult-to-survey species such as Clarke’s Weaver.
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested by so many people in commenting. The window for consultation is now closed and we are unable to accept any more comments until 21 February 2022. We will now analyse and interpret the new information, and we will post a preliminary decision on this species’s Red List status on this page on 21 February 2022, when discussions will re-open.
Preliminary proposal
It is now recognised that drought is the most severe threat to the species and the entire population can be affected simultaneously. The species is assessed as occurring within a single location*. Separately there is an ongoing decline in habitat quality due to degradation within its restricted range. Therefore, our preliminary proposal for the 2022.1 Red List would be to list Clarke’s Weaver as Endangered under Criterion B1ab(ii,iii).
There is now a period for further comments until the final deadline on 27 February 2022, after which the recommended categorisations will be put forward to IUCN.
The final 2022.1 Red List categories will be published on the BirdLife and IUCN websites in July 2022, following further checking of information relevant to the assessments by both BirdLife and IUCN.
Thank you for the well-considered decision to list Clarke’s Weaver as Endangered.
Kindly allow me to re-iterate that contrary to the preliminary assessment given in the “rationale for proposed change”, Clarke’s Weaver is dependent on Brachystegia spiciformis forest for foraging and seasonal wetlands for nesting. Although it does feed on small fruits in mixed woodland and edge habitat, these alone are not sufficient to support the bird’s population.
Nature Kenya, A Rocha and Dakatcha Woodland Conservation Group will continue their efforts to save Clarke’s Weaver from extinction.
Thank you for the decision to list Clarke’s Weaver as Endangered. Nature Kenya and our partners will continue to do all within our capability to give this species some hope to live into the future.
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested by so many people in commenting. The window for consultation is now closed and we are unable to accept any more comments. We will analyse and interpret the new information, and we will post a final decision on this species’ Red List status on this page on 7 March 2022.
Recommended categorisation to be put forward to IUCN
The final categorisation for this species has not changed, but the account for this species has been updated to incorporate additional information from this discussion. Clarke’s Weaver is recommended to be listed as Endangered under Criterion B1ab(ii,iii).
Many thanks for everyone who contributed to the 2022.1 GTB Forum process. The final 2022.1 Red List categories will be published on the BirdLife and IUCN websites in July 2022, following further checking of information relevant to the assessments by both BirdLife and IUCN.