Baraza

Category: Africa, Appeals, National Parks and protected areas, conservation | Date: Oct 09 2009 | By: paula

If you haven’t made a donation yet on WildlifeDirect, consider this

There are days when can not sleep because of fears that WildlifeDirect  cannot survive this disastrous economic crisis. Fund raising has not been easy nor fun lately - and it’s affecting or ability to do effective conservation of endangered species.

Because everyone is affected by the economic crisis, many of our donors are telling us that they can’t contribute anymore, and the average donation of those generous donors who have continued to support us have declined by about 50% from an average donation of $100 to $47.

Despite the drop in funding, our bloggers remain convinced. We now have over 80 conservation blogs from the frontlines in Africa, Asia and South America. Half of these bloggers get funds every month and every month more people inquire and ask to join our network. It is so rewarding to know that good conservationists believe in us. This is what keeps us going at WildlifeDirect.

Here are some reasons why you should support projects on WildlifeDirect

1. It’s direct - you can choose the blog, item and place you want your funds to go to
2. It’s accountable – you can see your money working by reading the blogs
3. It’s easy  - we use paypal and you will get a tax receipt
4. It’s quick – you can respond to any wildlife conservation emergency and make ….But what I like most about this is that
5. It’s cost effective – a little money goes a long way in Africa where $100 can pay for a rangers salary for a month! Our bloggers only ask for essential things –rations, petrol for patrols , critical equipment, food for animals and basic field costs. They are working on shoe string budgets – many of them volunteer.

Watch our video and Join us

WildlifeDirect has had a far greater impact on bloggers than we ever imagined. Next I will be interviewing Anthony Kasanga (lionguardians) about how his life changed after he started blogging on WildlifeDirect.

THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO HAS STAYED WITH OR RECENTLY JOINED WILDLIFEDIRECT.   YOU ARE ALL AMAZING PEOPLE:)

Tags: Africa, conservation, endangered species, Gorillas, Lions, Paula Kahumbu, richard leakey, wildlife, wildlifedirect

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 08 2009 | By: admin

Today three of the ten new white rhino’s of Nairobi National Park did a runner and escaped in to the nearby gorges.

Concerned for their safety, KWS caught them by darting from a helicopter. One of them nearly fell down a cliff but was saved at the last minute. I was able to get a few photos of the recapture and return of this particular rhino.

Drugged, Bound in ropes and with his eyes covered he probably wasn’t aware of the commotion around him.

Once inside the box it was lifted onto the vehicle and he was driven away, back to the National Park where hopefuly, he and the other two will stay this time!

Tags: endangered species, Kenya Wildlife Service, Paula Kahumbu, rhino, rhino rescue, white rhino, wildlifedirect

4 responses so far

Category: Kenya, National Parks and protected areas, Poisoning wildlife, big cats, conservation, furadan, national parks, poaching, predators, wildlifedirect | Date: Aug 29 2009 | By: paula

We are pleased to discover that we are not alone in our concern about the poisoning of lions with Furadan and it’s impact on Kenya. This is an email sent by Jake Grieves Cook to all in the tourism industry in Kenya.

There are 2 main reasons why lion numbers are declining in Kenya:

1. Human-wildlife conflict - spearing by herders and poisoning with FURADAN:

Lions are usually not very welcome in areas used for grazing livestock by pastoralists such as Maasai cattle herders. As a result lions are often speared when they go into these grazing areas and especially after they have killed livestock. The pesticide FURADAN is banned in many countries but is widely available in Kenya and is used by pastoralists to poison carcasses of livestock killed by predators. The predators return to the carcass and are killed by the poison. This can get into the food chain as any animal consuming the dead predators are also killed, from jackals to vultures.It is also poisoning people, see link below:

http://stopwildlifepoisoning.wildlifedirect.org/2009/03/06/detoxication-of-furadan

For more on Furadan click on the link below:

www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=furadan+lions&aq=3&oq=furadan+&aqi=g10

As well as deliberate poisoning, some lions have been lost through accidental poisoning. One of the leading lodges in the Mara was using Furadan as a pesticide on its vegetable garden. Last year a hippo died after eating the vegetables sprayed with Furadan. Then a pride of lions died after eating the hippo. Then hyenas and vultures died after eating the lions. And so it went on…

2. Loss of habitat

Many wilderness areas which were formerly inhabited by herbivores and predators such as lions have been turned into farmland and are no longer available as wildlife habitat. In the outer Mara area there has been fragmentation of land with sub-division into small individually owned parcels.

See the map below of the Koiyaki and Ol Kinyei areas of the outer Mara divided into hundreds of 150 acre parcels:

The loss of habitat means that lions are no longer able to move freely around these areas as they did before and there is no longer availability of large numbers of wild herbivores which form their normal prey. So lion numbers decline.

SOLUTIONS

However there is a way that tourism can combat the decline of lions. This is by establishing wildlife conservancies on land owned by the local communities adjacent to parks. If the local landowners can earn a better economic return from their land from wildlife conservation than they can from cultivation or from keeping livestock then they will be ready to set up wildlife conservancies. They do not need to turn all their land into wildlife preserves but a community with over 150,000 acres, such as the former Maasai group ranches, could set aside 20% as wildlife conservancy and keep 80% for livestock grazing. I have been involved with the setting up of 3 community-owned wildlife conservancies over the last 12 years: Selenkay Conservancy in the Amboseli eco-system and Olare Orok and Ol Kinyei conservancies in the Mara. See maps below:

SELENKAY CONSERVANCY OL KINYEI & OLARE OROK

We have had great success with our 3 conservancies and have been given very enthusiastic support by the local communities who own the land on which we have established the conservancies. Since the conservancies were set up, wildlife has increased substantially, in sharp contrast to the surrounding areas. We have 2 American researchers based at Selenkay who have collared a female lion and have been tracking her pride. Two lionesses there have both had cubs. In our 2 conservancies in the Mara we have several resident prides of lions and estimates are that over 30% of all the adult lions in the Mara eco-system are now resident in Olare Orok and Ol Kinyei. Our lion numbers are increasing…

You might be interested in watching 2 short TV clips of a couple ofminutes eachon the links below:

The first is a BBC clip about a recent report by researchers on declines in wildlife numbers in the Mara eco-system but which also highlighted the success of the community wildlife conservancies with which we are involved at Ol Kinyei and Olare Orok within the same Mara eco-system. All the wildlife footage was shot in our two conservancies.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8129816.stm

The second is a clip from local KTN TV which highlights the two conservancies:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PT7c8LPxHM

Below are a couple of pics, taken on a night game drive recently by wildlife photographer Paolo Torchio, of our resident lions in Ol Kinyei.

There is no doubt that total lion numbers are declining in Kenya. The answer is to ban the use of FURADAN and also to encourage the establishment of more conservancies. Now the government tax authority says it wants to charge VAT on the conservancy fees! Not exactly encouraging…

Kind regards

Jake

**********************
Jake Grieves-Cook
Managing Director
Gamewatchers Safaris
P O Box 388
00621-Village Market, Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: +254-(0)20-7123129, 7122504, 7121851
Fax: +254-(0)20-7120864
Website: www.porini.com
Email: jake@gamewatchers.co.ke

Tags: conservaiton, endangered species, furadan, Kenya, Lion, Lions, Maasai, Masai Mara, wildlife, wildlifedirect

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 14 2009 | By: paula

As we gear up our campaign to save our lions, I’ve found some wonderful and some sad videos that I’d like to share.

This slide show about Joy and George Adamson reveal their true spirits - lion lovers to the extreme. I recall my first ambition in life was to be George’s field assistant! I’m sure I was not alone in believing that working for him would satisfy my wildest dreams. Both Joy and George died tragic deaths. Having sacrificed their lives for lions, we owe it to them to continue the work.

Lions need help now more than ever, please help us to save Africa’s lions. Send us your ideas,  tell your friends, volunteer for us, or send us a donation. We really look forward to your help. Our target is to raise $22,000 in the next three months.

Help us with your ideas on how we can do this together.

Tags: Africa, Born Free, endangered species, George Adamson, Joy Adamson, Kenya, wildlife, wildlifedirect

No responses yet

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 12 2009 | By: paula

Ni Hau everyone, that’s hello from Beijing

I’m at the
Society for Conservation Biology’s annual meeting which is being held in a conference center just north of Beijing, China. I have been in China for over 3 weeks now and still feel ‘lost’. Communication across the language barrier is really tough, though sometimes funny.

But the good news is that China did not meet my worst expectations, Beijing is not crowded,  but twitter and facebook are both blocked from here, and the air pollution makes the sun look like an orangy blob in the sky. The willdife sold as street food is material for an entire blog post! On the whole, the people here have been absolutely lovely.

I been attending business and scientific meetings since yesterday and I get the feeling that scientists are either 1. Oblivious to the fact that we are losing so much wildlife, or 2. Don’t care anymore, but will keep gathering data anyway.

It’s frightening how serious the conservation situation is world wide. I’ll be bringing you reports from the various prestenations. We desperately need a global groundwell, a movement of ordinary individuals to turn the situation around. It’s going to take a new kind of leadership. I wish I had a crystal ball.

Tags: China, endangered species, SCB, Society for Conservation Biology, wildlife

2 responses so far

Category: Volunteering, wildlifedirect | Date: May 11 2009 | By: admin

On my way to work this morning I passed through  Nairobi National Park where I met a pride of 5 lions lazing peacefully quite close to the road. As I sat there watching them with my son, I regretted that they were not there two days earlier when I’d taken my brother and his family out to the park.

His children have never seen lions before. There is a real risk that they may never see wild lions in their life time, after all, there are only 2,100 of these amazing animals remaining in Kenya. The park boundary was just a few hundred meters away, it is simply a muddy stream across which thousands of cattle come every night in search of grazing. I know this because I live right on the edge of the park and so have a first hand view of the challenges facing wildlife here. Last week a cow was killed on a neighboring sanctuary by lions, we spent an entire day removing the carcass for fear that the owner would retaliate against the lions by putting poison on it to kill off the predators.

As I watched this lazy family of lions, I felt the pressure mounting - we don’t have time to waste, we must help wildlife conservation efforts now if our children and grand children are to enjoy them. WildlifeDirect is dedicated to over 100 different conservation efforts across Africa, Asia and South America. Never before has the need been so urgent, we receive several new applications for important new projects every day. To be able to help all these projects, WildlifeDirect must survive this painful economic down turn. I personally believe that any person who visits WildlifeDirect online can help us enormously without necessary leaving a donation, by just taking a little time to use the powers of social media.

I have listed 7 simple things that you can do to help us

1. Vote for what you care about The opportunity to share and spread important wildlife information and expose an enormous number of people interested in helping wildlife. We would like you to share what you learn about us through social media websites that focus on news like some groups on facebook, Digg, Stumble, Reddit, and twitter. The more eyeballs we get on WildlifeDirect, the more funds we can raise.  Our target is an online audience of 2 million people.

2. Take action – it’s so easy.
Wildlife conservation depends greatly on policy changes which are often driven by public demand. You can communicate with your political representative or express yourself to any government by writing a letter or an email, and use the internet to spread the word about all kinds of wildlife issues raised on WildlifeDirect.

3. Help us get into the News You can alert your own local media houses to issues you are particularly concerned about. We have done radio and TV interviews all over the world inspired by readers who have helped us make connections with their local media houses. Getting into the  news, especially online news is hugely valuable to us and costs you nothing but a little time - write to your local radio station or newspaper today.

4. Motivate your favourite bloggers Just leave a comment on your favourite blog posts to tell people that you care and to share your thoughts with the authors. This alone is hugely motivating to those conservationists at the frontlines who are often risking their lives every day to save wildlife. This endorsement keeps the bloggers reporting and the more news we get from the field, the greater the global awareness of what is happening to wildlife in remote and dangerous places.

5. Tell all your friends Use your own social networks to share information about what you care about on WildlifeDirect. Let your friends know by joining our facebook causes, linking to us on your own blog, facebook, myspace, twitter or other networks.
6. Campaign for us Hold your own fund raising campaign to help us – just get creative. Sheryl raised over 300$ on her birthday, we’ve had cake sales, sponsored marathon runners, sponsored events, dinner events, yard sales. Use facebook or any other social website linked to our cause or just make donations on the website.

7. Volunteer online – Select a blog you’d like to help and volunteer a few hours a day towards that blog. Some of our bloggers have very poor internet access and it can take hours to upload one post. Volunteering mostly involves helping with uploading posts and photographs  onto the blogs which frees up valuable field time for the bloggers.

8. Send us your own suggestions – we love hearing from you. Please don’t be shy, send us your ideas, views and suggestions. Email us on info@wildlifedirect.org

Tags: conservation, endangered species, fund raising, Lions, nairobi national Park, wildlifedirect

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Mar 17 2009 | By: baraza

Dear readers,

Many of you may not know know much about WildlifeDirect and what we are trying to achieve through this website.

WildlifeDirect, initially known as the African Conservation Fund (ACF), was created in 2004 to help support the significant unmet needs in wildlife conservation, particularly in Africa, but also across the globe. Dr. Richard Leakey, a respected and well-known conservationist, and others interested in conservation conceived of a new way to approach the difficult task of raising funds for on-the-ground conservation efforts, particularly in times of crisis.

Our mission is two-fold: first, we intend to create a means by which on-the-ground conservationists could reach out to the global community for support of their ongoing work, and second, to create a “virtual endowment”, a vast online community of individual donors worldwide who are interested in supporting wildlife conservation and who could be mobilized, in a time of crisis, to offer support and resources.

Unlike actual endowments where funds are collected and deposited into a bank, a “virtual endowment” is money that remains in the hands of their donors until it is needed, and, at that point in time, those individuals who have been educated through interaction with the blogger conservationists would be mobilized to address the crisis.

We believe that creating and empowering a community of a million people who would give five to ten dollars a person, we can create a deep, bottom-up and sustainable ability to respond to an emergency. This will uniquely position us to create an African-based solution to a global problem.

WildlifeDirect’s commitment has been to bring the authentic, uncensored and compelling voices of working field conservationists to individuals anywhere in the world and to promise that 100% of the contributions to the bloggers (less bank fees) go to the intended recipient. Through its powerful Internet platform, WildlifeDirect can communicate, educate, network, and organize conservation stakeholders and ultimately act as a force for change in the conservation world.

To ensure 100% of the donations go to the conservationist of the ground, Wildlifedirect tries to maintain a low cost operation made of only the basic staff and low capital based operation. However, the organization needs to support core costs in order to continue supporting these very worthwhile community based conservation efforts. 

We currently have 84 conservation blogs and these attract over 70,000 unique visitors each month. The global economic crisis is hitting us all hard. We have already heard that some of our partners are unable to pay salaries this month. At Wildilfedirect we are making cutbacks in an effort to survive these tough economic times.  We hope you will consider supporting us through this global crisis.

We thank you for your support to date and invite you to make a further commitment to WildlifeDirect.

With Warm regards

Paula Kahumbu

Executive Director

Tags: conservation, endangered species, fund raising, richard leakey, widlife, wildlife direct, wildlifedirect

3 responses so far

Category: conservation | Date: Mar 04 2009 | By: baraza

While we are still doing basic habitat and species protection in Africa today, extreme measures are being taken elseewhere to save species on the brink of extinction. Two stories captured my attention today

Frog hotels

“SCOTLAND’S first hotel for frogs has been built, to help stop the amphibians croaking as predators strike”. A special shelter has been built at Redhall Walled Gardein in Edinburgh to protect them from predators at a time when frogs are particularly vulnerable, when they gather at ponds to mate

“As well as frog hotels, it is expected groups will come up with ideas for “bat boudoirs” using bat boxes, plus bee havens, butterfly gardens and other imaginative ways to help wildlife in their local area”.

Sperm banks

Meanwhile two scientists in Australia, John Fitzpatrick and Jonathan Evans of the Centre for Evolutionary Biology at the University of Western Australia in Perth have shown that endangered species face a triple whammy, not only are there fewer mates around to have sex with, but, inbreeding impairs sperm quality; their sperm are more likely to carry genetic abnormalities and less likely to be good swimmers. How inbreeding causes a decrease in sperm quality is unclear. To address this several conservation groups are advocating for the creation of sperm banks for rapidly declining species. It is hoped that these stores of frozen genetic diversity could increase the fertility of endangered animals, and help conservation biologists boost populations before they become critically endangered

Tags: conservation, endangered species, frog hotels, Frogs, inbreeding, sperm, sperm bank

No responses yet

Category: WildlifeDirect news, enforcement, wildlife trade | Date: Feb 25 2009 | By: baraza

Hello everyone, its Paula here. I read with shock a report in the East African  that the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife has published a new Bill that allows culling of wildlife which is described as “the killing of “excess” wildlife”

Whatever that means - how will it be defined?

If this bill is passed in parliament, which is supposed to happen soon, the law will allow individuals to sell animals on their ranches.

There is an excess of white rhino on some private ranches… should they be culled or will the new law allow ranchers to own these animals and sell them (currently all wild animals are property of the state).

The new law will also split the role of wildlife management between the Kenya Wildlife Service, a Wildlife Department and the Kenya Wildlife Authority.

The Kenya Wildlife Service is a monolithic bureaucracy as it is and overlaps with Forestry and Fisheries permits makes corruption permits a daily issue. I suspect that with three wildlife authorities in place, things will quickly turn into a nightmare when one has three authorities.

Any Kenyan who has tried to get an environmental audit done here will agree that

1. We don’t have the technical capacity to manage all these authorities

2. More authorities leads to more corruption

3. The government  does not have the funds to create and staff two new authorities - and besides, KWS is over staffed as it is.

Having worked at KWS early on (it was set up by Richard Leakey and it worked quit well under his leadership) before I feel strongly about the issues that this bill is trying to address …wildlife on private land is disappearing fast because it is a liability, eating crops, threatening people and property, while generating nothing (the election crisis did that to us).  Meanwhile the bushmeat trade is escalating, and since one can’t raise game meat, cattle and goat rearing is increasing and devastating the landscapes leading to famines and frequent conflict with wildlife at grazing sites and watering holes.

The East African article states :

“The Bill proposes that the Wildlife Authority be similar to the Wildlife Division of Tanzania, which is said to subsist on revenues earned from issuing permits for different forms of wildlife use.

To raise its own income, the Wildlife Division of Tanzania has been increasing hunting quotas arbitrarily and sometimes in disregard of the state of wildlife population in the country”.

How do you deal with migratory wildlife on private land?

That’s what we all fear will happen here.

I don’t know what the answer is  for wildlife in Kenya but I am have a strong gut response as I suspect that this bill will benefit the Elite and some politicians. What do you think? Am I being too harsh? Please take the poll on the right

Tags: endangered species, KWS, richard leakey, wildlife, wildlifedirect

3 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 24 2009 | By: baraza

Dear Friends,

Wildlife Direct is doing a great and fantastic job as  people like us, who
are living in remote areas and struggling with wildlife issues, are given
the opportunity to share our good and bad experience. Our NGO wasn’t very
known before and has progressed a lot thanks to the opportunity Wildlife
Direct offered us.

So, if Wildlife Direct is in trouble it means that our blog is in trouble
too and that the chimps of the JACK Refuge will no longer have the
possibility to ask for help nor tell the world about the horrible things
their species are going through in the DRC. We must help Wildlife Direct to
continue what it has started. Please, help them continue the good job!

Thank you for the help you can provide

Kind regards,

Roxane

JACK 

Tags: appeal, chimpanzee, endangered species, JACK, WidlifeDirect

No responses yet