Blogging for community and conservation

The number of wildlife conservationist blogs across the continent are steadily growing. Many of them are part of the Wildlife Direct project which was started 4 years ago to bring African conservationists and supporters together by providing a portal for publishing blogs. The site is also seen as a way for funders to keep in touch and follow the work of their supported projects and those that work in the field. Other conservationist blogs are based on a particular wildlife park such as Gorilla.cd the blog of the Virunga National Park in the Congo and Mara Triangle which covers the north-west area of the Massai Mara game reserve in Kenya.

Zebra in the Massai Mara - “He survived the crocs but was eaten by lions”

The blogs not only focus on work with wildlife but take a much more holistic ecological approach by including the reports on environmental issues, communities and in the case of the DRC how the conflict in Kivu provinces is impacting on local people lives.
Some like Mara Triangle also use Web 2.0 technologies such as You Tube and Twitter to supplement their blog posts. Recently Mara Triangle had an online fund raising campaign to raise $200 to provide sanitation for a whole village. The appeal was placed on their blog and then Twitter “live blogging” was used to update as donations came in. This was such a great idea to get people to donate as followers could see straight away what a difference their money was making.
“Just $200 needed to dig toilets and improve sanitation for a whole village.
There's been a recent update to the site - Kisaru Maasai Community Projects - it's a completely brilliant organisation founded by Ben Longisa and is from where we have seen projects grow like the bio-gas at Enkereri Village. Another one of Ben's projects is to improve sanitation levels by constructing long-drop toilets at each Maasai boma in the area (about 40 in total).

Gorilla.cd “Protecting the mountain gorillas of Virunga” covers the whole of the Virunga National Parkland in the DRC which falls with the Kivu region. Conservationists have been drawn into the conflict as local communities have been subjected to displacement and violence by rebel and Congolese forces. The post Ranger witnesses the murder of his father shows how park rangers are caught up in the violence.

“Benjamin Mujinya is a Ranger from the Kalengera Patrol Post, which is on the road between Rumangabo and Rutshuru. He arrived at the refugee camp in Goma this morning with a horrific story to tell.
Last Tuesday his village was taken over by rebels. He witnessed his father Etienne Mujinya being shot dead along with 20 other neighbours. Here is a video filmed at the camp this morning in which Benjamin tells Eddy his tragic story.

The tensions for land between wildlife and farm animals is highlighted in this story from Lions Guardians. The good thing in this story is that the guilty lions were collared so tracking them was easy.
“We showed the owner of the injured cow how we track collared lions, and with him we found out which lions were responsible. He was very interested, and said that he would not kill the lions if they came back, but would just chase them away. Here he is using the telemetry equipment to see which lion attacked his cow, and where they have gone now.”

For those interested in bugs in the wild Dudu Diaries is the place to meet scorpions, ants, moths, beetles and spiders to name a few. In this post we learn about Hawkmoths and moths tongues!
In response to the question about the moth’s tongues - they can be very long up to 12″ or even more! There are mainly two groups of hawkmoths - those with medium-length tongues and those with super-long tongues… Here you can see examples of both a short-tongued and long-tongued moth.

The Lamu Marine Conservation project based in Kenya, brings together a local community and protecting the local turtle and bee population. In their monthly newsletter, project coordinator, Atwaa Salim shows how the three come together. The turtles are monitored from hatching by tagging them. Elders from the community are involved with turtle conservation and run awareness raising in sustainability of their ecology system. Children are also involved through the mobile education programme with 4 schools in the area.

Next roundup – some community projects in Botswana, Kenya and Uganda.

* Sokari Ekine blogs at www.blacklooks.org/

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