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A Letter from Founder & President Mike Korchinsky on Our No-Gun Policy
We’d like to extend a huge thank you to our supporters and the viewers of ‘Ivory Wars’ for their outpouring of support and encouragement following the initial airings of the series set at our Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project in Kenya. Elephant poaching remains a serious issue, and we’re glad this opportunity has allowed us to more broadly bring to light its devastating affects. Since the initial airing, we’ve received some questions about the no-gun policy for our rangers. In an effort to ensure transparency and clear communication about our diligent efforts to keep our rangers safe, we’d like to share some detail about this policy, which has developed as a…
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African Wild Dogs in Rukinga
To effectively protect the wildlife in our project area, the Wildlife Works biodiversity monitoring team and rangers employ several strategies to ensure all species present are safely maintained and to record data for referencing purposes. Some ways used to monitor the wildlife include ranger patrols, road transects and camera traps, which are set by the biodiversity team. Wildlife Works rangers, on the other hand, document data of the wildlife they encounter on the ranches whilst on security patrols. Combined, these methods of supervising the wellbeing of our wildlife, has proven effective at uncovering important information on some of the most rare wildlife in the world. Recently, one of the cameras…
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Kenyans tell poachers to keep their “Hands off Our Elephants”
On the 24th of August, after enjoying a period of relative peace, armed poachers struck Rukinga Ranch part of our Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project, slaying a male elephant for its valuable tusks. Within days, our rangers made another gruesome discovery at Amaka Ranch: two more elephants amid rifle cartridges. A short time later, when two additional elephants were killed for their tusks at Washumbu Ranch, the entire camp was left shaken. Conservationists and Kenyans alike are infuriated by the ruthless massacre of endangered wildlife, such as the estimated 2,500 elephants that call the Kasigau corridor home. Recently, Kenyans participated in a sensitization campaign on twitter and other media outlets urging poachers…
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Ijema Returns to Work after an Incredible Recovery
On July 10th, Ijema was welcomed back into the Wildlife Works ranks after a nearly 18-month recovery following a gruesome poaching-related incident in which he received a bullet wound to his shoulder. The catastrophe, which was the first time in Wildlife Works’ 15 years of operation that an employee was lost to a poaching-related incident, also lead to the death of ranger, Abdullahi Mohammed. Ijema and his family are happy to report tremendous improvements to his health after undergoing an operation to have a replacement titanium plate fitted to increase the mobility in his shoulder. Those working close with him report a jubilant Ijema who has come back with renewed vigor. “Ijema is…
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Poachers Threaten More Than Just Our Wildlife
Not only are wildlife criminals heavily armed and extremely dangerous, the threat of violence from poachers is not limited to the slaughter of animals. Recently, the gruesome murder of a young man in Maungu Ranch has put an entire community on edge. The body of motorcycle operator William Kiroka Mambo was discovered near the Maungu Ranch in June, 2013. According to one of the other boda boda (motorcycle) operators, “At around eleven o’clock on Thursday night, two people of Somali origin made a stop at the motorcycle stage where they requested a ride to their destination.” Reportedly, many of the boda boda operators were not eager to take up the…
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Tragedy strikes Rukinga Sanctuary
WARNING: The following blog post contains graphic photos of elephants killed by ivory poachers. View at your own discretion. As the new year kicks off, we take a look back at the challenges and accomplishments of 2012. We were proud to start the year by building a nursery for Wildlife Works’ employees’ families, and thrilled to be partners with PUMA for their Creative Factory project. We welcomed our first female Wildlife rangers and happily received validation and verification for the first REDD+ project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The greatest challenge we face going into 2013 is the growing threat to wildlife from the increasingly violent ivory trade, and we…
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Rescued Lesser Kudu
The lesser kudu is an ancient species of forest antelope found in East Africa, the most primitive of all spiral-horned antelope. They live in dry thorn bush and forest, and are one of the many protected inhabitants of our Rukinga Sanctuary, Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project. Kudus, which range between 90 to 110 kg, are quite nimble; they can jump distances of more than 30 feet! Despite their agile nature, these beautiful creatures are on the decline due to illegal poaching, and have been marked as Near Threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). While patrolling the sanctuary on Sept 24th, a team of Wildlife…
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Getting to Know our Female Rangers: Constance
Last week, we introduced a series on getting to know our four female conservation rangers currently working in the Kasigau corridor, in celebration of Wildlife Works’ first-ever hiring of female rangers in the spring of 2011. We sat down and talked to each woman about her experience working in the project area over the past year, and gained some pretty interesting insight into daily life on the job, which we’d like to share with you. Constance Mwandaa, a 22 year-old native of Sagalla, begins her day at 5:30 am with a shower and some breakfast, and then heads out into the bush to begin her duties patrolling the protected area…
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Elephant Poachers Kill Wildlife Works Conservation Ranger and Critically Injure Another
As vigilant as we are when it comes to protecting our community and the wildlife surrounding us, tragedy still finds us at times. On Friday, January 13th, elephant poachers opened fired on our unarmed conservation rangers who were patrolling the Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project area in Kenya. One of our rangers, Abdullahi Mohammed, was fatally shot and another ranger, Ijema Funan, was injured by the gunfire. At the time, our rangers, along with members of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), were tracking the poachers after discovering a wounded elephant in the protected project area. “This is the first time in 15 years that any of our rangers have been killed…
