Its now 2 years since I started this grass -root campaign of walking and talking; Its has not been easy talking about the values of wildlife with all this hullabaloos ! that elephants cause huge damage and no compensation secondly when local and International communities begins to see a moving bank in the elephant in the name of Ivory trade.
As I have been quoted by several media saying that I will continue walking and talking, this is the case however we have to appreciate what our Government have done so far . With the new Wildlife and Conservation Act, establishing county compensation committee and now establishing a collaboration work-force with Kenya Police, Administration Police and Kenya Forest Service these are goes in the history of this country . We are now awaiting for the Natural resource and benefit sharing bill to become a law and this will be a big plus to our communities.
There is this big question what is Human-Elephant Conflict and what cause this? My experience now reveals that community can live with elephants if they are contained or reduce and mitigate Human-elephant conflict . Human- Elephant Conflict is a cause by (1) Increased Human demand for land with a constraint of increasing human population (2) Increased development of dry land crop agriculture that is caused by high poverty level and population explosion (3) Increased road construction and adequate conflict policies , this is due to dependency in road transport supply systems. Just to mention a few concerns .
Greatly all this can me mitigated if we address the underlying concerns but very important we need to educate our local communities who host about 70% of wildlife within their private land. ENC we are committed in taking this synthesized message to our communities and doing it hard way walking the talk. We have walked now to over 4,400Km in Kenya and in the USA and I can count the greater outputs after all these walk.
We come to the end of the year with high hope, trust , commitment and dedication in continuing with this tiring activity. We are ready for 2015 and our 1st walk edition will start from Emali- Amboseli- Loitoktok - Taveta to Voi passing through the very important elephant homes Amboseli-Tsavo. This will walk will cover approximately 430km in 34 days.
Amboseli- Tsavo elephant population remain the heartland of Kenyan elephants, its the largest population and currently under threats namely, habitat loss, poaching, inadequate pasture that include water . All these give birth to negative attitude towards local communities who have at some point turned against elephant and begin killing elephants in the name of reiteration. Join us as we take lead bring all the stakeholders such as , KWS,Tsavo Pride, AWF, Big-life, IFAW, AET, Wildlife Works, Tsavo Trust among others. We anticipate to hold community meetings talk to school pupils and show conservation films
Help us to make this grass-root campaign a success . We have our dedicated Paypal account : nyamuj@yahoo.com or you can write a cheque direct to Elephant Neighbors Center.
Contact us and we will guide you. jim.nyamu@elephantneighborscenter.org or info@elephantneighborscenter.org
+254 713-353-060
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