Last summer, I spent two weeks working in a Kenyan conservancy encountering extraordinary wildlife and meeting amazing people. I had the wonderful opportunity of being able to volunteer with a company called Projects Abroad and I chose one of the conservation programs in the Soysambu Conservancy, a wildlife conservancy on Lake Elmenteita in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. This conservancy plays a major role in the Elmenteita-Nakuru Eco System, acting to preserve a wildlife corridor from Lake Nakuru to Lake Naivasha.
I spent two weeks living in the conservancy with 10 other volunteers my age from all around the world. Our work as volunteers was divided into wildlife audits and physical labour and we would do a combination of the two each day.
The wildlife audits were separated into wetland bird, terrestrial bird, carnivore and giraffe monitoring. We would drive for hours scouring the 48,000 acres of the conservancy on our carnivore drives, trying to spot the ever-elusive lionesses with little luck. However, this is of no surprise as there were only three in the entire conservancy. Once we had found the wildlife we were looking for; we would note down their GPS location, the sex of the animal, the type of terrain we found them in and the composition of the group- which is particularly important with the giraffes. This is because one of the main aims of the conservancy is the rehabilitation of many giraffe species, in particular, the Rothschild’s giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis ssp. Rothschildi), which is the most endangered species of giraffe and sadly, there are very few places in the world where this giraffe can be seen in the wild.
The physical labour consisted of digging watering holes in the conservancy for the buffalo, repairing the stone wall between the Maasai land and the conservancy, building more ecological stoves for the communities of mixed tribes living in the conservancy and repairing the flooring of the local school. This work highlighted the other side to conservation which is all about working with the community and fostering a shared love for wildlife. This aspect of the work is rarely talked about and before coming to volunteer here I hadn’t realised what an integral part of conservation this is.
One of the most important aspects about this work was the exposure we had to the reality of the poaching crisis in Kenya. The Soysambu Conservancy presents a stark contrast when compared with the popular tourist destination, the Maasi Mara, which is heavily guarded, and the ‘high priority’ animals (elephants, rhinos and leopards) were relatively safe inside this national park. The region around the Soysambu conservancy, however, is much poorer and more arid than the Maasai Mara and when I saw that there were no typically targeted animals in the conservancy, I assumed that poaching wouldn’t be a prevalent problem in this area. Unfortunately, this was not the case. We would do routine de-snaring walks around the conservancy, and these looped wires became a very common sight to us. The de-snaring walks were done on foot in the areas where we couldn’t get through with the cars and there would be around 10 of us with the armed rangers. The rangers had two purposes: the first was to protect us against the most dangerous animal in the conservancy- the extremely territorial buffalo- and the second was to capture the poachers. On my second de-snaring walk we heard dogs barking that appeared to be quite close to us. This is a very uncommon sound to hear as there are no wild dogs on the conservancy and the rangers immediately knew that these were domesticated dogs that were used frequently by poachers to catch their prey. We were told to sit down and not to make a sound as the rangers went to investigate. We were left sitting silently for an hour in the acacia woodland when we began to hear gunshots. At this point we didn’t know whether the shots were coming from the poacher or from the rangers or if they were just warning shots. Twenty minutes after we heard the first shots the rangers came back triumphant; they had captured the poacher and wanted to show him to us. Proud of their work, they led us to where they were holding the poacher. None of us were prepared to see what we saw, the images in our mind were of the typical greedy, despicable men that killed endangered animals for profit, and what we saw was completely the opposite. Hanging on the tree was the skinned pumba (warthog) that the man had caught, and he sat below it next to his dead dog which was shot by the rangers. The man was old and emaciated and it was then that I realised that he hadn’t killed the pumba to make money, but instead to survive, to feed his family and his village. Wildlife poaching can be punishable by a large fine and up to 2 years in prison. However, could this case really be classified as poaching?
A couple weeks after I left Kenya, I heard from my good friend Joseph who works at the conservancy that they were looking to give this man a job as a ranger. This is a remarkable effort made by the conservancy and is one of the reasons that working there was so incredible. Their care for the community of people and wildlife around them was immense and the message that really stuck with me is that conservation is about community, about fostering partnerships and working together to protect our home.
Choosing to volunteer with Projects Abroad was one of the best decisions I’ve made, and I truly cannot recommend this experience enough. I learnt so much from all the staff, made some incredible life-long friends, explored Kenya, ate kikuyu honey, played various Kenyan card games, climbed volcanic creators, and have some amazing stories.
Comments