A black mamba, Amboseli National Park and Kimana Wildlife Sanctuary

Since I’ve last posted, a lot has happened. Our group went out in the field for an Environmental Policy exercise and interviewed local farmers. During the trek through muddy irrigated fields, my group came across a black mamba (which one of us almost put her foot on). It was my first live black mamba sighting, and of course it was me- the girl who’s terrified of snakes- who was one of the first to see one in the entire group.

Well hello there venomous fella

On Wednesday, we went to Amboseli National Park. We didn’t get to spend much time there, as we had a rescheduled lecture that interrupted the day, and since the rains have started, many of the animals were not inside the park. However, we did get to see some cute baby zebras and we even got to see some of the famous Amboseli elephants. We also went to lecture given by a senior Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) officer, who told us the park has no poaching inside the park boundaries despite the park not being fenced and explained many of the management challenges the park faces (i.e. population increase, increased human-wildlife conflict, land-use change, etc.). 

Cute wittle baby zebra

Just playing in the mud

Emerging from the muddiful goodness

Baby elephant and her mama

On Thursday, we went to Kimana Wildlife Sanctuary, which is located about five minutes away from our camp. It was set up for the purpose of community benefit from wildlife conservation. And although we later learned it has been a complete failure here, it served as a successful model for wildlife sanctuaries around the country that have been able to bring economic benefits from wildlife to the local community. This day was very cool though because while the wildlife sanctuary has failed to bring monetary gain to the community, it has been somewhat successful in protecting habitats and wildlife within its borders. During the trip, we saw a poached elephant that had been killed by a poisoned spear after it raided crops from a nearby field. KWS had taken the ivory from the elephant to avoid illegal harvesting of it, but the rest of the body remained and we could clearly see the spear marks on its body.

Holy Kilimanjaro (and zebra)

Poached elephant, ivory was taken by KWS to avoid illegal harvesting

 Well hello there Giraffe

Oh look, a giraffe family- how adorable.

Today, we finished classes in Kenya, and we are in the midst of beginning or directed research projects. I was assigned to the wildlife ecology water project DR, which I am very excited about because I get to play geologist. Hopefully I'll have some hilarious fieldwork stories to divulge soon.