Wildlife Watch: No More Road Kill

The rare colobus monkeys in Kenya's Diani Forest no longer have to worry about dodging traffic along the road that cuts through their habitat. Now they can take the high road, safely crossing on four arboreal rope bridges constructed by local conservationists.

In one two-month period, 17 of the 200 black and white colobus monkeys living in the region had been killed by motorists, according to a report in Swara magazine. The fatalities were seriously eroding the small Diani population of colubus monkeys (Colobus angolensis palliatus), a distinct subspecies of the Angolan colubus now found only in the coastal forests of East Africa.

The Diani Forest, believed to have the highest density of the subspecies, is unprotected and in danger of disappearing if current trends of overuse and destruction are not halted.