First day at Ol Pejeta

After meeting Sarah Vigne (Richard Vigne's wife, he is the CEO of Ol Pejeta) and her children, in a very loaded car to head to Ol Pejeta, we made one pit stop at a shopping centre to pick up Rishi who manages Forsyth Lodge in the Satpura mountains in India (http://www.forsythlodge.com) and then started to four hour journey. We stopped off just by Ol Pejeta at the airstrip, as the girls wanted some milkshakes, and they were delicious!!

 We drove through the gates of Ol pejeta, and saw some warthogs and then about five minutes later drove past some lions! Three beautiful lions, young males, you know they are young because they still have some spots and only have little tufts of mane!

We carried on driving, and passed the equator sign, so stopped for a photo.

We arrived at Ol Pejeta research centre, and were shown around the lodge. I spent the evening meeting the people at the lodge.

Today (31st) I woke up early for breakfast, and just by where you eat there is a bird feeder, so got to see some beautiful birds, which I will learn the names of this week! I then went go and meet Richard Vigne, I also met John and Martin who are wildlife managers here, and was given my itinerary, as well as my project. The project, which I will start next week, involves researching all the methods used around the world to prevent rhino poaching, and collaborate them into a newsletter for Kenya wildlife services. I was given an Ol Pejeta email address, and we stopped for lunch. 

Rishi and I then joined the rhino patrollers, which meant walking around for three hours looking for rhinos, and within 15 minutes, saw Benja the black rhino (farou in Swahili), a male. It was great because as you zoomed in with the binoculars, you could see really clearly the ear notches, for identification. The idea was we were supposed to take pictures of a list of rhinos we had been given, as people sponsor them and they needed updated photos. Unfortunately, Benja wasn't but we still got some good shots! We then had to creep away quietly, as we got quite close, although they don't have a great sense of sight, they do have good hearing. 

After that lucky sighting, we carried on walking, and from afar saw a buffalo, which are actually quite dangerous, so we carried on quietly. When I looked back however, it was closer, peeking out from behind a tree. John the ranger told my jacket was slightly too light in colour, which is why it was following us! Luckily I had a green T shirt underneath, so off came the jacket!

On the way back, we also got to sight some jackals, warthogs (ngirri in Swahili), giraffe-including a calf, impala and zebra!

 During the day, we also took a walk to the Ol Pejeta house, a beautiful tourist lodge there and had some fun taking pictures.

Thats all for now, I am getting up at six to go on a rhino patrol!

Arrived in Kenya

After a send off from my mum and boyfriend at Heathrow airport, I set off on my journey to Nairobi. I got one flight to Amsterdam, waited there a few hours, then on to Nairobi with Kenya airways, which are actually really good!

I was met at the airport by Sammy, a taxi driver, who took me to the Aero club where I am staying tonight before I carry on to Ol Pejeta. Nairobi is really fascinating, a cross between modern and quite poor. Nearly everyone walks to work, and the sides of the road are just mud. In fact, Sammy took a short cut to avoid the notorious Kenyan traffic, and went off road, I'm glad he is in a four by four!! We drove past the National park on the way to the Aero club, and I was surprised to see how inefficient the fencing looked! Relatively low and barbed, not much good at keeping people out I expect!

I then spent a few hours sitting in the lounge at the aero club as my room wasn't yet ready. Joy then came to introduce me to Anthony, who would take me around to see Nairobi for the day. Joy works at the Fauna and Flora office here in Nairobi. Anthony was really friendly and we talked a lot on the way to the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage. Poaching is obviously a huge problem in Africa, but its especially dangerous for young elephants, as they suckle for two years, and if they lose their mother, as some do from poaching, they don't have much of a chance at surviving. The orphanage rescues as many as it can, and raises them for four years, and then helps them to integrate into a wild herd which can take as many as ten years! The keepers feed them every three hours, on baby milk formula-like the one we feed to babies. This is because a) you can't milk a wild elephant, and b) because cows milk is too fatty for them.

After we went to the giraffe park, and got to feed the giraffes which was amazing!

Then we stopped off for lunch, I had a pepper steak and rice, delicious!

As I arrived so early in the morning, after stopping off at the office to meet Joy's team, and Michael Gachanja, who directs the East African Wildlife Society, I went back to the hotel and crashed until about six o'clock,  waking up to meet Joy for supper. We ate at the hotel, and had a long chat, about Ol Pejeta, and living in Nairobi, she is such an interesting woman!

I am writing this Tuesday morning, before I leave to meet Sarah Vigne and we start the four hour journey to Ol Pejeta, if I can I will update my blog there!

Working with Fauna and Flora International

The week before Kenya

Today is the fourth day that I have been interning at the Cambridge offices of Fauna and Flora international (http://www.fauna-flora.org/about/). FFI is a global organisation that strives to protect and preserve wildlife around the world. I was lucky enough to get an internship, which means I will spend two weeks at their office, and then go to spend three weeks at one of their partnership programmes in Kenya (http://www.olpejetaconservancy.org).

I arrived early Monday morning and was welcomed and put straight to work by Bruce Liggit, the Africa team co-ordinator. The office blew my mind, a few minutes walk from the station, its full of pictures of wildlife, everyone’s desk is decorated with trinkets from areas that they are interested in. Huge African maps around the Africa team’s corner, trees and pictures of exotic birds by the Americas and Caribbean team. Everyone was really friendly, and I have met so many people with zoology degrees (so people that study zoology actually can get jobs-there is hope!). I was given an "itinerary" by Marianne when I arrived, which had a list of meetings scheduled.

 Monday’s highlight was my meeting with Ros Aveling, the Deputy chief executive. She is the most fascinating woman! She brought up her children in Kenya so had plenty to tell me abot the country, she is also a zoologist! 

On Tuesday I got to meet the Conservation team, run by Marianne, which was really useful as she introduced me to how FFI runs, where its teams are based and its general set up. Later that day I got to meet with Rob Brett (the director of the Africa team). We had a long conversation about rhinos-which he has done a lot of work with. 

What I have learnt about rhinos and Ol Pejeta

So there are three rhino species in Ol Pejeta. The black rhino, and the white rhino, whose genus comprises two subspecies, the Northern white rhino (N.W) and the Southern white rhino (S.W). The difference between the black rhino and the white rhino, funnily enough, is not their colour. The white rhino was actually called weit rhino, in old Afrikaans, weit for "wide" as it had a wider mouth than its cousin the black rhino (due to different diets). English colonists misunderstood, and thought they were saying white, and so the name stuck. Actually the more apt name would be the "prehensile-lipped" rhino (black) and the "square-lipped" rhino. They both prefer different habitats, the black rhino lives in forests and hilly terrain, where there pointed lips help then to snap twigs and leaves from shrubs, while the white rhino uses its square lips to eat short grass from the open grasslands it lives on.

Square-lipped rhino (white)

Prehenisle-lipped rhino (black)

So those are the differences between the black and white rhino, but what about the two types of white rhino? Well this has been the subject of much recent debate. Although the SW rhino and NW rhino are genetically distinct, they are able to interbreed. One of the criteria that animals must meet if they are to be pronounced as separate species, is that they are not able to successfully interbreed, yet these can, so they have not yet been assigned separate species status.

Ol Pejeta is home to the largest black rhino population in Eastern Africa, boasting close to 100 of the animals. It also has 11 SW rhinos, and 4 NW rhinos. Originally, NW rhinos could be found roaming Uganda, Chad, DRC and Central African Republic. The wild population was devastated by intense poaching, and by 1995 only 30 remained in the wild, they are now extinct in the wild.  In 2009, an agreement between FFI, Dvur Kralove zoo, Back to Africa and Lewa wildlife conservancy, to move the 4 rhinos from the Czech zoo to Ol Pejeta. The move was performed as no Northern white rhino had given birth in captivity in over 9 years, which is thought to be due to lack of their natural diet and unusual social conditions. It is also worth noting that animals bred in captivity for release schemes are often the ones most at ease in their unnatural surroundings, dulling many of their natural instincts and losing their sense of fear, which means that they are no longer perfectly adapted to their natural scenery, and so do not make the best option for continuing the species. It was hoped that releasing them would stimulate them to breed and maintain the species, but unfortunately once the four arrived in Ol Pejeta, two of each sex, it became obvious that Sudan, the oldest of them, was no longer able to reproduce. This brought the number of northern white rhino capable of procreating down to three, which even if the two females gave birth to young at an optimum rate for the rest of their lives,  would not be able to save the species, mainly due to the problems that interbreeding causes. The last hope is to maintain their genes, by breeding the last three with their close relatives, the Southern White Rhino, to produce hybrids. It is devastating to know that once the last of these four die, the subspecies of Northern white rhino will be extinct. Originally from very different areas in Kenya, the two subspecies were adapted to different climates, and so its hoped that by breeding them, their genes will be conserved and the new offspring better adapted to living in Ol Pejeta.

On Wednesday, I headed over to Cambridge Place, the site of the other, smaller FFI office, where I got an introduction to FFI's Marine team, and the Conservation Science team, both of which were really interesting. Recently, a huge issue that they are trying to tackle is that of microplastic pollution, plastic smaller than a couple of mm is being washed into the oceans at alarming rates. The trouble is, its used in so much; from exfoliators (yes your "natural" face scrub has plastic in it) to the process used to make large plastic, to cosmetic powders, toothpaste and shampoo! This microplastic concentrates other toxic chemicals that have also been washed into seawater. Small fish eat the microplastic, then bigger ones, then bigger ones, then we get the delicious concentration of microplastic from the fish that has been passed all the way up the food chain. The whole area of research is really interesting, I urge you to take a look at FFI's "Good scrub guide" which lists companies that don't put microplastic in their products, opting for the healthier almond, sea salt or oatmeal scrubs-  http://www.fauna-flora.org/initiatives/the-good-scrub-guide/.

Thursday I met the communications team, to discuss this week's task, which involves researching the area I am going to-laikipia district of Kenya, particularly what the reserve does for its local communities. By the end of next week I should have a draft article on Ol Pejeta's community outreach programme which will go up on their website under the “explore Kenya” heading (http://www.fauna-flora.org/explore/kenya/). The team also suggested I write a blog while I am there, the pictures and extracts could be posted on the FFI website. 

All in all a very exciting week!