Tumaren

Category: Issues | Date: May 29 2009 | By: tumaren

When I first heard suggestions that Chinese Road and infrastructure workers were behind a great deal of the recent wave of ivory and bush meat poaching in the country i was skeptical.  It sounded like a simple racist jab at some hard working people.  And yet the story is everywhere. I even heard a story about KWS officers who found a whole crocodile in a Chinese Road worker freezer last week.  This story like many could not be verified but what can verified is beginning to leak slowly to the press.  Here is a short list of stories i picked up from a simple google search:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/kenya/090326/elephant-poaching-problem-kenya?page=0,0

http://www.africanconservation.org/content/view/1502/406/

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/530146/-/item/1/-/1moinv/-/index.html

http://www.bushdrums.com/news/index.php?shownews=2129%20-%2031k

http://www.elephanttrust.org/node/541

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2009-02/2009-02-27-voa30.cfm?CFID=212460694&CFTOKEN=86145237&jsessionid=8830bb86c5ff2a67b7154242786e02728400

Tags: Chinese Poaching in Kenya, poaching, Poaching Kenya

8 responses so far

Category: Issues, Mammals | Date: May 29 2009 | By: tumaren

Here is the sad story of another poached Rhino.  This pressure will never ease until more effort is spent addressing the underlining cause, the unbelievable market value for the horn.  We in Kenyan conservation spend so much money breeding Rhinos but i question whether it would be money better spent instituting stiffer sentences, laws and education in those places where Rhino horn is being purchased by the end user.

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/regional/-/1070/603874/-/7j85h8/-/

Tags: kenya conservation, laikipia, Laikipia Rhinos, Rhino Conservation

No responses yet

Category: Mammals | Date: May 19 2009 | By: tumaren

I was having a look at some of our past cameratrap pictures and looking closer at the Leopard images in order to see if i could identify the individuals.  I reckoned at first that the first two cats were the same and the third was a second cat.  The size of the first two males looks about the same and i suppose that is why i assumed they were the same. The third looked more juvenile, not yet with all the fat around his upper body, neck and head.  Anyway, have a look at these three cats and tell me your opinion:

Here is the first one. notice the sort of spiral around one central rousette three quarters down his left back end.

Now compare that same area to this cat caughtabout 2kms away. he is about the same size but that funny rousette does not appear on this animals rear end.

Now, here is the third animals left rear.  he appeared significantly smaller than the previsous two cats in the other images we got of him.

5 responses so far

Category: Issues | Date: May 06 2009 | By: tumaren

Tumaren’s Rangers have caught 2 more Poachers hunting Impalas with snares on our property.  These particular men have been selling us honey for many years.  Because the honey gathering was helping the local community there presence on Tumaren was tolerated and the honey collected was purchased by Kerry.  Kerry then would filter and sell the honey in Nairobi allowing the local community to sell to a much larger market.  Not only have we paid these men many hundreds of dollars for their honey but we have also spoken to them about other employment as their brother is the new Councilor for the Ol Motiok community to our north.  We were told that these men had to pay 10,000 shillings about the equivalent of 130 US dollars.  This kind of punishment is sadly pathetic but it will hopefully scare them back off our conservation area.  Should they try snaring again on Tumaren they will supposedly (hopefully) face a much steeper charge.

Tags: game meat, gamemeat, poaching, snares, snaring

One response so far