For those of you who are concerned about the sate of Mara, please read the January report by Mara Conservancy.

January 2008
There was widespread unrest after the elections at the end of December, started because of allegations of vote rigging in the Presidential election. The international community was very quick to speak out and try and resolve the issue – fearing that the situation could degenerate into Rwanda style ethnic violence focused against the Kikuyu, the President’s tribe – they quickly appointed senior representatives to visit the country and finally Mr Koffi Annan, the recently retired Secretary General of the United Nations, was selected to assist in resolving the crisis. 250,000 people were displaced from the Rift Valley and several hundred people killed in the initial violence. For a few days in the middle of the month there seemed to be a glimmer of hope; things calmed down, Koffi Annan was going to mediate, and the situation started to return to normal. This was all shattered in the last week of the month, when violence returned – this time with a very strong ethnic bias that was only partly linked to the elections. This is a very dangerous situation because it breeds an increasing spiral of violence and retaliation. There is little doubt that that the initial trouble was, in part, fueled by politicians who felt that they had been cheated out of the Presidency. The problem is that they then lost control of the “genie” they had let out of the bottle. This brought to the fore long pent-up pressure on land and resources, as well as perceived injustices in the distribution of land before and after independence. Unless the security situation is very firmly dealt with, and the political impasse broken, we can expect a protracted period of civil unrest and ethnic clashes. This spells disaster for tourism, conservation, the economy – and of course for the country as a whole.

Revenue and Accounts
We have witnessed a major decline in revenue, brought about by the election fiasco and its aftermath. We had originally anticipated a 50% decline in tourist numbers but in fact the decline has been closer to 80% in January. We have had to institute major cut-backs and cost cutting measures in order to survive the next few months. Some of the measures taken to reduce expenditure include:

-Stopping all capital purchases
-Limiting all new development
-Stopping the grader
-Stopping one tractor
-Stopping compensation for cattle killed
-Reducing payments to community scouts
-Stopping two of the three anti-harassment vehicles
-Stopping all night ambushes
-Laying-off all casuals
-Severely restricting our patrol area
-Restricting all out-of-park travel and reducing staff food shopping trips to twice per month
-Limiting rations

This cannot be happening!!

The total number of bushmeat poachers Mara Conservancy rangers arrested since 2001 has now reached 1,003. Before these hard working rangers dedicated themselves in conserving the wildlife of the Mara, this area was experiencing heavy antelope poaching by bushmeat traders. The estimated number of animals killed per year ranged somewhere between 1,000-2,000. The first three months when Mara Conservancy started their work in the Mara, 8 lions were killed as direct result of livestock-wildlife conflict. I was working in a lodge in the Mara (1996) when Mara Conservancy was not established. Poaching and unrest were out of control in some part of Mara. Tanzanian border just near Serena was no go area for us, and there were many poacher huts inside the reserve, as well as several reported cases of tourists being attacked by bandits. Mara Conservancy has reduced these horrible incidents to almost zero in just seven years, so you can imagine how dedicated these people are. With the current crisis, things could possibly return to the way it was and that is a scary thought.

Please help the Mara!

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