Category: Tourists | Date: Jun 12 2008 | By: Kimojino

Ledama Sogirian and Nashon Lekumok in Tango one.

Many people who come here do not understand the gravity of the situation that we are facing, and often make complaints about the state of the roads. We are trying our best. We have pushed contractors to complete the grading of a government funded road right across the park, from Mara Bridge to Oloololo Gate, and we also have opened up a new road from near Serena Hotel to the Mara River, where the zebras are currently crossing.

In conjunction with the main roads, we also have up to 500km of grass tracks to maintain so that visitors are able to tour the park extensively with the minimum of damage to the ecosystem. Each year we sometimes close the less popular of these tracks and open up new ones, often suggested by resident drivers here in the Mara. The Mara Triangle may be empty right now, but when the tourists do come in a few weeks time we have to make sure that the Triangle is ready to receive their numbers.

Lekumok inspecting the route ahead of Tango One 

We are designing these tracks to take people to where they can view animals easily and also trying to take away pressure from other highly visited areas of the Triangle. For example we are trying to take away the pressure from the river zone to other areas which are not so fragile.

Tango One mowing the grass. 

In the past, we have said that we do allow off-road driving for visitors who want to leave the tracks to see the predators, but we have found that many people take advantage of this and off-road for many many kilometres. So now we have had to change the wording of our rules, and say that all off-road driving is banned, and you are only able to leave the tracks if you want to see animals of interest, like lions, cheetahs, leopards or rhinos. After which you must return to the track immediately.

It is difficult because we want people to have the best experience when they come here, but not at the cost of damaging the environment. We hope that this change in wording will influence tourists behaviour, and ensure responsible game driving.

Newly Opened Game Viewing Track. 

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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.

If you have a moment, please fill in a survey for WildlifeDirect so that they can improve their services. It’ll only take a minute - click here.

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Category: In the News | Date: Jun 10 2008 | By: William

Many thanks to Emily Meehan for her piece on Wired.com; Life, Death and Twitter on the African Savannah. It was great fun having Emily here at the beginning of last month, and the article is also a very enjoyable read.

After the article appeared online the number of people following Kimojino on Twitter rocketed, and then again some when Twitter featured Kimojino on their blog.

Thank you to all of the team at Twitter for your kind words, and also for your support - you helped save us a lot of time.

Last month we also enjoyed the company of Richard Lough who did a couple of radio pieces for Deutsch Welles. Thank you Richard for coming out to see us, it was great to have you here.

You can listen to Richard’s piece by clicking below, and also make sure you check out Richard’s Blog.

dw_kenya_mara_crisis.MP3

Also, before I forget, you can click below to listen to Richard Leakey’s interview about the Mara Triangle on National Geographic:

Leakey discusses Mara on Nat Geo.

Thank you also to BBC Online for covering our story, and also to BBC World, Radio BBC Glasgow and BBC Radio 5 who were all kind enough to do interviews when I was in the UK. Also thank you to the BBC team in Nairobi, Nawaz Shah & Adam Mynott, who came here twice to cover two stories -the collapse in tourism and the poisoning of the lions. The poisoning of the lions will come out in the UK on the 17th June, on BBC News at 6.

Also a great big thank you to the team from the German Channel ZDF, who also covered the story.

We would also like to thank all of the bloggers who have recently written about the Mara Triangle, your support is greatly appreciated. Thanks to Search Marketing Guru, Wandering the World, 120% New, The Charity Place, Problem Girl, A Californian Living Down South, Knowledge Cafe, Beyond 90 Seconds, Random, Nekonekoyashiki, Eye Dull Musings, Hans Watson, Esmon Net, Waving or Drowning, Itshee, Tuphat and losing it, jcsb, Lasagne and Chips, MGH Word of Mouth, Arikfr, Something Simple, Faster Future, Terrible Swift Word, GiroPais, Kenya Pundit, La maquina del tiempo, Sciblog, Much Todo About Nothing, Ethics and Animals, Cybersoc, Podnosh and Nothoney.

You’re all doing a great job in getting the story out to as many people as possible. Thanks again to each and every one of you.

Kimojino is still posting excellent photos over on Flickr. Click here.

Thank you everyone for all the great coverage, despite these efforts donations dropped last month to half what they normally are and to be honest, I can’t for the life of me work out why. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

And if anyone has a dollar spare that they want to put towards the rangers’ work in the Mara, please do! Thank you.

Interesting Links:

Emily’s Blog: African Heroes: stories of brave badasses

Richard’s Blog: Nairobi Notebook

Kimojino on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maratriangle You will also notice that these updates now appear in the sidebar, just under all the banners of Friends of the Mara.

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Category: Cattle Rustlers, Sponsor a Ranger | Date: Jun 09 2008 | By: Kimojino

Leyian and his wife, Naponari

Yesterday morning, I went with a group of rangers from Serena, Oloololo and Mara Bridge to visit Ranger Johnson Leyian at his home.

Ranger Leyian was shot twice at the end of April when chasing cattle rustlers who had stolen cattle from the local communities up on the escarpment. His injuries were very serious with Doctors saying that he arrived at Aga Khan hospital, Nairobi, just in time.

He is very well and is able to walk, but there is a small limp that is a recent development over the last three days, and he has had some pain appearing in his lower abdomen. We know that he will consult with the Doctor again today.

Leyian and fellow rangers and workers from the Conservancy.

Leyian’s family were so happy to see us, despite already the many visitors that were there. Members of the local church were there to pray for Leyian as well as the people from many of the surrounding villages.

We all pray that Leyian will make a full recovery.

Please help if you can with some of our outstanding bills & Air Ambulance charges, or consider if you can, sponsoring one of our rangers.

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Category: Lodges & Camps, Tourists | Date: Jun 07 2008 | By: Kimojino

Hallo everyone.

Sorry for the silence these last couple of days, but I am pleased to say that we have been doing a two day workshop with the resident tour drivers in and around the Mara Triangle. The workshop was organised by the UK Travel Foundation and was chaired by Dr Cheryl Mvula (read more about her excellent work here) and Manny Mvula.

We would also like to thank Olonana Camp for hosting the event on Friday, and thank you to Kichwa Tembo Camp for hosting the event today.

Responsible Guiding Workshop at Olonana

We would also like to thank the following camps for sending their drivers to the workshop: Mara Balloon Safaris, Little Governors Camp, Main Governors Camp, Mpata Safari Camp, Transworld Balloons, Mara Siria and Kichwa Tembo (CCAfrica).

One of the main points to come out of the workshop was that guides should learn more about the wildlife inside the Mara, and not just focus on showing visitors the ‘Big Five’. This way their guests can have an interesting and entertaining game drive no matter what animals they see, which will also relieve some of the pressure from the main predators and stop tour drivers from crowding them.

Another main point that everyone agreed on was that drivers needed to be more confident when dealing with difficult guests, who try to insist that drivers break park rules by going too close to the animals.

Responsible Guiding Workshop at Kichwa Tembo

We also collectively agreed that stricter rules needed to be applied to the river crossings during the great migration. Both the Mara Conservancy and resident tour drivers agreed that there needed to be a limited length of time that drivers are allowed to stay at the crossing (only for one crossing), and that the number of vehicles needed to be limited further (depending on the crossing site).

Resident drivers also asked the Mara Conservancy to be stricter with the park rules and to punish drivers who broke them. They said that if we were too lenient then drivers would only keep on breaking the rules.

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