ELEPHANT EDUCATION CAMPAIGN LEADS TO ANOTHER WALK
(Posted 05th May 2016)
ELEPHANT NEIGHBORS CENTER
Saving Elephants Our Future Our Heritage
Jim Nyamu, Director of the Elephant Neighbours Centre, will later this month once again embark on a highly publicized walk to raise attention to the plight of Africa’s largest animal and in the process also raise funds towards the objectives and goals of the NGO.
The East Africa walk is a continuation of previous walks held by Jim since 2013, to raise awareness on the elephants and rhino poaching while educating and engaging local communities to participate in wildlife conservation agendas.
As a result of limited multilateral and bilateral integration and policies frameworks against poaching acts and crimes despite the cross-border elephant conservation agreements, not any of these three broader countries is safe working independently considering naturally or exotically caused cross-border elephant migrations. The East African Walk will hopefully chart a short-term, medium-term and long-term plans to ensure the East African Community proactively engage in bilateral and multilateral collaborations identifying effective integrated anti-poaching mechanism and strategies.
The outcomes of this walk as identified and collected from opinions, perceptions, demands and solutions people in grass root will be shared with wildlife management government entities and other conservation stakeholders to streamline existing systems and frameworks in elephant conservation.
The walks objectives are
i. To engage the three countries through stakeholders in an attempt to establish an integrated wildlife anti-poaching and trafficking strategy.
ii. Raise awareness in grass root communities on importance of wildlife conservation against the rapidly growing negative attitude of these communities toward wildlife that is in turn fueling human wildlife conflict.
iii. Mobilize resource through pledges per KM covered to support audio-visual wildlife education program in primary school-Annual project– in different demographic and share these experiences i.e. Tsavo Conservation area.
iv. Collect community opinions on possible alternatives mechanism and their intended benefits to explore possible options to enhance community participation in wildlife conservation.
It is hoped that conservationists from across the region join Jim in sections of his walk, come to listen to lectures and presentations and raise local interest in the walk and its aim and objectives.
(Jim Nyamu seen here last weekend at the Nairobi Ivory Burn with Jake Grieves-Cook, former KTB and KTF Chairman and one of Kenya’s foremost tourism gurus for the past 40 years)
