COLOBUS CONSERVATION’S FUNDRAISERS – ALWAYS A MAJOR DIANI EVENT
(Posted 30th June 2015)
South Coast residents have been invited for a conservation fundraiser on the 28th of July, when a bit of potluck and a sense of navigation are ingredient for participants. Those willing to host either a starter, a main course or a dessert will pay half price while others who, perhaps for not being ready to be called a chef yet, the evening will set them back 5.000 Kenya Shillings, equivalent to approximately 50 US Dollars at current rates.
All those signed up will meet at a central meeting point in Diani and are then told where they need to go to find their supper.
The Colobus Conservation is one of the south coast’s leading conservation NGO’s and, supported by Safarilink among many other corporate sponsors, seen as largely responsible for the survival of the black and white colobus species. Few of what once upon a time were dozens of groups and numbering in their hundreds if not more, do now remain in this part of the Kenya coast due to the past encroachment on their main habitat. Those were the extensive tropical forests which lined the coastlines of Eastern Africa but were cut for timber, make space for farms, houses and resorts other human activities.
Colobus conservation, in addition to having put up rope ladders across the busy Diani beach road to allow the primates safe crossings, are also involved in taking in injured and even orphaned Colobus, to nurse them back to health and then release them back to their groups or have them join another if it cannot be found out with certainty where they came from. Several hotels today pride themselves to have Colobus groups on their properties and guests are suitably briefed not to feed them and not to tease them so as to give the Colobus a safe and disturbance free environment in which they can thrive.
Local residents and businesses asked about their level of support for the Colobus Conservation were quick to profess their regular contributions, aware that the black and white primates form a major attractions for tourists when they come to this part of the Kenya coast and that the work of the trust has for many years been entirely transparent and results published on a regular basis.
