Category: An Urgent Appeal | Date: Jun 11 2008 | By: William

I made a comment in yesterday’s blog post that despite all the media attention last month, the amount we have been receiving in donations has actually gone down. In May we received 50% less than we did in March and April, which is worrying as the tourists haven’t yet returned to the Mara and basic park operations such as anti-poaching and de-snaring patrols still need to be funded.

I received an email from a friend which explained “you’ve all been quite upbeat and the tone is pretty much that the crisis is almost over.. tourists are about to come back so you don’t need us type thing.”

I don’t find it easy to ask for money, but I guess we need to face facts as we still need your donations.

The Start of the Migration - Zebras return to the Mara

We do hope that the crisis is almost over, however at this time we are more broke than we have ever been. We are pretty much out of diesel to go out on patrol, and there is not a penny to pay for salaries in three weeks time.

In short, we still really do need your support. Rangers from Ngiro-are managed to arrest 3 poachers last week and are reporting an increase of snares in their area as the migration is expected to happen within the next few weeks.

Poacher with bush meat and snares.

Please, donate what you can to help protect this beautiful place. If you are new to the site, the donation box is in the right hand side column, next to this post, and all payments are done securely through Paypal. 100% of your donation, minus only a small bank fee, will go directly to supporting our work.

A great big thank you to Craig who today sponsored ranger Joshua Lempere. We now have 18 rangers sponsored in total - thank you!

Lion Cub Stretching

Other news:

Today, many of the rangers have gone to their home villages and towns to vote in the Kilgoris parliamentary by-election, as has Kimojino, and which means we are working with skeleton staff. With limited resources we were on high alert that tribes from neighbouring Tanzania may take advantage of the situation and steal cattle.

And so it was this morning at around 9am we received a message from the local community that cattle had been stolen. Immediately we deployed what rangers we had left to chase the rustlers, for the rangers only to discover when they arrived that it was a false alarm. Not only is this frustrating but also very costly, especially at this time when we have very limited resources. The plus side is that none of the community have lost any cattle.

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