De – Snaring Report for June 09

Participants:

Alex Macharia- Team Leader Francis chege Nterito Kapina Semeli lolchuraki Bramwel ireri-- - - peregrine team Peter mwangi---- - peregrine team

Area of operation:

During the month of June the Mtito team patrolled the following areas: Kilalinda, Marcus Dans land, Tsavo farm, Trust land, and nearby community land.

153 SNARES

INTRODUCTION.

It is of high importance for all the wildlife conservation stakeholders to take their position in conservation to avert the oncoming danger of loss of biodiversity and human-wildlife conflict. There is a high level of poaching taking place known and the ongoing drought is only making matters worse. Most of the animals moving out of the Nationla Park and over to the community side and other un-manned areas in this dry season are being targeted by poachers. This therefore means that we as the concerned stake holder should involve all the communities bordering the park and other protected areas in conservation and make them understand the concept of Wildlife & Resource Management as this is of vital importance to Kenya’s future.

FINDINGS

Our operations were still limited within the confinements of the community and private lands. All the findings therefore recorded were taken from the community side in Yumbuni, Mangerete, Kilalinda, Kalawa an area bordering Kambu along river Athi and the community lands that sometimes acts as spill overs for wildlife from the National Park. These are also the areas that are experiencing the highest level of human wildlife conflict especially when elephants and buffaloes disperse into these areas. The dry spell is still persisting and hippos are therefore being fed using the hay that has been provided by the Trust. Every morning we supplied some to the starving hippos along Athi River near the Trust house.

Snaring still continues especially within the private lands like Kilalinda which is vast. We also got intelligence information from reliable sources that poachers have already gotten the information of our absence in patrols and therefore night poaching has increased in Kilalinda. We find that numbers of skins from dikdiks poached at night has increases dramatically. We managed to retrieve a total of 153 snares from the areas surrounding the National Park. In individual community lands, there were few poaching incidences probably due to the fact that the owners would not risk strangling their livestock with snares and therefore preferred putting snares in the vast private lands like Tsavo farm, Trust land, Kilalinda, Marcus Dans land etc 4 carcasses were sighted; 1 buffaloe and 3 dikdiks.

COMMUNITY AWARENESS.

We channeled our efforts to community work especially at this time when elephants have increased in the community areas in search of water and grazing. This has lead to a lot of discomfort from the community members. We screened 4 wildlife films using hired equipment as our equipment was not working. Movies were shown to the following schools: Iani secondary Kyusiani primary school Maia Atatu primary school Mtito Primary School.

School trips were also offered to two schools, namely Iani secondary and Kyusiani primary schools. The two schools visited Tsavo west national park. The following areas were visited; Mzima springs, shetani lava, chaimu hills, rhino valley.

Animals sighted include zebras, elephants, buffaloes, giraffes, hippos, baboons etc.

Donation of desks took place with the two schools receiving 30 desks each. The Schools were Ngiluni primary and Nzayo primary schools.

Report By

Alex Macharia