Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2009
Between 1970 and 1972 the East African Wildlife Society removed 38 roan antelope to the Shimba Hills National Reserve, near Mombasa, because their habitat in central Kenya was about to be destroyed. Since then the author has visited the reserve several times to study the roan. In 1973 she could find only eight; in 1976 there were 13, but by 1978 numbers had risen to 22. She suggests that, while most of the practical problems of translocating wild animals have been solved, there are many species about whose social organisation very little is known, and this may have been the main reason for the initial lack of success with the roan. But now they are threatened by the Forest Department's policy of planting the grasslands with pines.