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The show must go on: Environmental film festival educates community about conservation
Wildlife Works in collaboration with Amara Conservation, an NGO promoting sustainable livelihoods through education, organized an environmental film festival for the communities surrounding our project area in Rukinga. WW Community Relation Officer Joseph Mwakima organized the program along with local teachers, the chairman of Location Carbon Committee (LCC) and the leaders of 5 villages in Kenya (Marungu, Mwatate, Mwachabo, Mwatate and Sagalla). The three-week-long program visited 13 different primary and secondary schools and traveled to 9 different communities. Using the Amara Mobile Film Unit, the team was able to show three different conservation films from the African Environmental Film Foundation (AEFF). The first film, “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” showcases 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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A Journey into REDD+: Wildlife Works Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project, Kenya
By Rachel O’Reilly, part of the Wildlife Works Carbon Business Development team This October, I was assigned to visit our REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) project in Kenya to document the essence of the project through imagery with world-renowned “cause-related” photographer, Lisa Kristine. Lisa’s work is focused on the vast diversity and hardships of humanity, resulting in photos that connect audiences to the dignity that exists in us all, regardless of the conditions. The Wildlife Works Kasigau Corridor REDD+ project is located between Tsavo East and Tsavo West National Parks in Kenya. It acts as a vital wildlife corridor for a fantastic diversity of over 50 species of large mammals,…
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Students from Marungu Secondary School take a walk on the wildlife side
Part of Wildlife Works’ community enrichment strategy includes ensuring that underprivileged students get a chance to view their beautiful ecosystems and see wildlife in their natural habitat. Students in rural areas do not enjoy the comforts and opportunities that the more privileged students in urban areas regularly experience. The schools surrounding Rukinga, including the Marungu Secondary School, are located almost two hours inland from Mombasa, deep in the Kenyan bush. Students at Marungu are boarded for four years, and many of them never get the opportunity to travel or visit the most picturesque parts of Kenya. Last month, the Wildlife Works’ Human Resources Department organized a group of 30 Form…
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Save the kale: How one leafy green is changing lives
For some of us, eating vegetables is a chore. For others, it is a means of survival. In Kenya, kale is referred to as “Sukuma wiki” which means “to stretch the week” in Swahili. The green leafy plant serves as a staple of the average person’s diet, especially for those living on less than a dollar per day. During periods of drought, the demand for water becomes crucial for plant, animal and human use. Water shortages can cause food to become scarce, and what does reach the markets is priced exorbitantly high. The inflated prices leave families without enough food to feed everyone. In these desperate times, the youngest children…
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Beehive Fences Help Protect Farmers’ Crops
As human development continues to expand and encroach on wildlife, there has been an increase in human-wildlife interaction and conflict over the years, particularly in areas within Kenya where humans and animals directly share the local land and resources. This phenomenon is further magnified by climate change, which causes the wildlife to change their migratory patterns in search of food. One such area is Kileva, a small sub-area within the Taita-Taveta County, situated a few kilometers from Rukinga. Here, the dwellers are prone to conflicts with elephants, which frequently destroy farmers’ crops during the dry seasons. As many of these farmers rely on their crop yield to survive, this has…
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Occupational First Aid Training Program at Wildlife Works
With the increasing number of employees at Wildlife Works’ Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project, we decided to host a first aid training program for employees from various departments, with the help of The Kenya Red Cross. At Wildlife Works, one of our main goals is to protect wild animals and conserve the environment, and during this process, the safety of our employees is a top priority. While patrolling the protected area for poachers, our rangers are faced with various dangers; for instance, poachers who are armed either with guns or bow-and-arrows frequently threaten to attack our rangers, who are usually unarmed. In addition, the wildlife itself poses certain risks, including snakebites. Given…
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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…
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Karibu
Karibu means Welcome in Swahili. This is the pre pre relaunch blog of Wildlife Works, which was started in 1997 by the visionary Mike Korchinsky. Mike’s first trip to Africa for vacation 14 years ago launched him into a lifetime’s work to save Africa’s wildlife. He saw a cycle of violence between the rangers, poachers and wildlife that prevented any chance for long-term, sustainable solutions for the community. He quit the consulting company he started and sold, purchased 80,000 acres of land in East Kenya to build his vision for Wildlife Works, an apparel production company advancing economic and social solutions for communities where wildlife survival is threatened. Currently, over…