Baraza

Category: Albertine Rift Project, Bwindi, Uganda, conservation, wildlifedirect | Date: Jun 16 2009 | By: admin

January this year on one of our visits to Uganda we had the privilege of meeting one of Africa’s leading conservationists. Gladys Kalema Zikusoka, recently the winner of the prestigious Whitley Fund for Nature awards. Her organisation Conservation Through Public Health is one of WildlifeDirects new Albertine Rift Project blogs.

The team and I were immediately captivated by CTPH and decided they would make a phenomenol blog advocating gorilla conservation. On our return to Nairobi we started making preparations for the followup visit conducting a blogging training workshop in Uganda and Rwanda.

Organised with the help of CTPH a 10 hour journey from Kampala, we held a workshop in Buhoma for the benefit of the community members adjacent to the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. An IT centre had already been established by CTPH, run on the ground by David Matsiko. The centre has trained over 150 community members to use computers and navigate their way around the Internet.  This provided an excellent opportunity to train members in the art of blogging and share their experiences and thoughts through a twin blog to the CTPH one Gladys updates. A blog that would be all about the community and the role in gorilla conservation through CTPH.

Our workshop and lodgings were at the CTPH campsite close to the national park.

Alex Ngabirano gave us a tour of the lab where all the samples collected from the field  gorilla fecal samples) by Uganda Wildlife Authority rangers were stored and analysed. After traveling to Uganda and Rwanda Twice now working with organisations doing gorilla conservation and still not having seen one myself I was just as happy to be staring into one of the specimens containing a gorillas lunch from a week ago.

Alex explained how CTPH began it’s work looking into the incidences of disease outbreak in gorillas and comparing it to that of the human population in communities nearby.  It is described in more detail in the introductary post on the CTPH blog.

For more on CTPH keep your eyes on their blog.

Published by Masumi.

Tags: Albertine Rift, Bwindi, CTPH, Gladys Kalema Zikusoka, Whitley Awards, wildlifedirect

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Category: Albertine Rift Project, Bujumbura, Burundi, Lake Tanganyika, National Parks and protected areas, conservation | Date: Mar 19 2009 | By: baraza

Part of our MacArthur project mission is reach out to countries that fall within the Albertine Rift region. Our next destination was Burundi. Enoch and myself (Masumi), set out for Bujumbura, the capital city.

My first impression of Burundi was defined by the neglected rust covered Air Burundi passenger plane sandwiched amidst UN choppers. Typical Central African scenario right there, I thought to myself. All the websites and news related to Burundi we had were of travel advisory warnings and security issues within the country. We were taking a risk by traveling here. Despite the little knowledge I have about the country it was summed up by the image the plane portrayed. Destroyed, neglected and left to the elements to consume whatever was left.

I feel very differently about it now.

Overall, Burundi is in it’s infancy as far as conservation work is concerned and most of the organisations around are working to alleviate poverty and as a strategy have incorporated some wildlife and environmental protection activities. There has hardly been any previous work carried out on biodiversity surveys or general ecosystem monitoring and thus most environmental organisations are carrying out this baselines research for initiation of conservation projects and activities.

Perhaps in the near future with adequate funding these organisations and others will increase in numbers and implement conservation activities on a wider scale to protect the national parks and reserves in the country. There are a few organisations we did meet that conduct direct conservation but also have a strong social sector involved. Without addressing the poverty of the regions, especially around the 15 protected areas. conservation initiatives would not work and the people are very aware of this.
We had the pleasure of meeting a number of representatives from various Conservation Organisations here in Bujumbura. In general there are groups of concerned individuals who have formed organisations to conserve the remaining natural resources and wildlife this beautiful country has to offer. A major conflict area is deforestation. The population is high, putting immense pressures on the forests for timber for fuel. Many projects have put in place re-afforestation schemes as well as starting tree nurseries to reduce some of the pressure on indigenous forest. Burundi is home to an endemic palm species, I cannot recall the name right now but will make sure I write it in the next post. The most touching part of the conservation work going on here is that all the organisations work together, share information and ideas. This is something I feel most places have lost and it’s what WildlifeDirect aims to promote.

I am very encouraged by the motivation and enthusiasm from everyone we met here. The people of Burundi want change and an opportunity to rebuild their country and protect their wildlife and environment. The media has shed a very harsh and negative light in this region of the world and muffled the peoples voices. I hope that through WildlifeDirect blogs we will be able to help give them a voice and give the rest of the world a platform to support this noble cause.

I promise to post photos as soon as I locate the right USB cable, if not now then in Uganda when Maina and Victor meet me.

Tags: Albertine Rift, Burundi, conservation, Lake Tanganyika, MacArthur Foundation

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Category: Uncategorized, WildlifeDirect news | Date: Mar 03 2009 | By: baraza

A recent visit of the WildlifeDirect team to Rwanda (Thanks to the MacArthur Foundation),  gave the team and bloggers (and potential bloggers) an opportunity to put faces to the names they have been seeing appended to the mails. Having been a blogger for a few months (Albertine rift birds), I was recruited to support the WildlifeDirect project that is working in the Albertine Rift. On this occasion, I was among the team mainly as a “field guide” in the country of a thousand hills, Rwanda.

               “country of a thousand hills over the horizon”

Having had an enjoyable time at Bwindi, we were escorted by our cab driver, Habib to the border of Uganda and Rwanda. From here we took a kigali bound bus. Here things changed from left to right and the driver driving at a maximum speed of 40 km/h (it would be twice as fast in Kenya). Yes, it would be probably be a trip around more than a thousand hills.

Kigali City

After enjoying an evening and a night at the clean, safe Kigali city, we embarked on the main activity of visiting and sharing our mission with conservationists in the country. This took us from Kigali to Ruhengeri and further to Gisenyi (Goma). We realized how interesting biodiversity conservation work in the country is. One easily concludes that this country has very interesting biodiversity but the threats are huge too.The team was well received and all organizations promised to use the Wildlifedirect platform to enhance and improve their conservation work.

 Gift from Paula to Julie (Art for Conservation)

Vincent(AoC Volunteer) with Enoch, Victor and Masumi at AoC tree Nursery.

Tags: Albertine Rift, Biodiversity conservation, MacArthur Foundation, Rwanda

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Category: WildlifeDirect news | Date: Sep 30 2008 | By: baraza

The biodiversity in the Albertine Rift is under greater threat now than ever before due to global economic trends, conflicts and other political and social situations. Over the last ten years we witnessed recognition of this important biodiversity in this region and at the same time, trends across Africa include increasing pressure to justify the existence of protected areas financially, mainly through eco-tourism, thus making financial sustainability key to long term ecological sustainability. Given the inevitable variations in cash flow due to the economic and political environment, alternative sources of funds to tourism must be found to enable parks to survive periods of shortfalls and emergencies.

It has been really tough for WildlifeDirect to cope with the needs and expand and support conservation bloggers due to the inevitable financial crunch. However, During our board meeting yesterday I had the pleasure of announcing that WildlifeDirect has just won a two year grant from the MacArthur Foundation to help us to expand and better support bloggers in a very special part of Africa.
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The Albertine Rift is the western arm of the Great Rift Valley and it passes through eight countries, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. This is an area of Africa is one of the most important areas biologically due to the species richness, indeed many new species have been discovered in recent years, and it is also home to many endemic species like the mountain gorillas - speices that occur nowhere else on earth.

Through this grant we will be able to expand our blog network into new countries and help African conservationists who are working hard with virtually no funding or recognition. This funding should help to raise awareness and funding  to secure the spectacular heritage of this region.

This exciting project will involve identifying new projects and training new field based bloggers working in various types of projects that secure biodviersity in this ecologically unique region.

Tags: Albertine Rift, MacArthur Grant

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