Kenya and Tanzanian wildlife authorities are due to conduct a cross-border aerial count of elephants and other large mammals in the shared ecosystem of the Amboseli-West Kilimanjaro and Natron-Magadi.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said Thursday the week-long exercise seeks to establish the status of wildlife within the cross-border landscape which includes the elephant, wildebeest, zebra and other large mammal populations following the last total aerial count conducted in 2012 by the same team.

"It will enhance knowledge on the relationship between wildlife, habitat and human impacts while at the same fostering cross-border collaboration on wildlife monitoring and management between the two East African countries," KWS said in a statement.

The aerial exercise is a collaboration between the two countries and their wildlife agencies; the KWS, Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), Wildlife Division of Tanzania (WD) and Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) together with affiliated NGOs like the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE), private sponsors and members of the local community.

The exercise, which has been funded by both governments including conservation agencies to the tune of 140,000 U.S. dollars, seeks to safeguard the vast ecosystem that is threatened by human influence that includes pastoral activities, crop farming and proliferation of charcoal burning.

This, the KWS said is in a huge way affect wildlife dispersal and a huge concern to the future of the area for wildlife conservation.

"The information gathered from the census will be also used for planning and preparing park managements for possible wildlife security and human-wildlife conflict eventualities in any ecosystem," KWS said.

The wildlife agency has been carrying out regular aerial census every three years in the Amboseli Ecosystem, the last being carried out in 2011.

This year's census is particularly crucial given that the park' s ecosystem was hard hit by the climate change as well as poaching which led to massive deaths of zebra, elephants, and buffaloes and wildebeest.

The census will also include observations on habitat degradation, water distribution, livestock numbers, human settlement patterns and illegal activities, including logging.

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