Samburu Monkeys

Category: Endangered Wildlife | Date: Apr 18 2008 | By: admin

The ongoing study of the rare primate of Samburu recently received a major boost when Rufford Small Grants for Nature Conservation awarded the project a grant of £ 4,470 for ongoing study on; The distribution and conservation status of the endangered Mt Uarges guereza and the de Brazza’s and Sykes’ monkey in Mathews range, Leroghi and Ndoto forests of Samburu Kenya.

This project aims to protect this globally important area and its primates, not only by active field work studies and monitoring but also through introducing community based conservation initiatives, strengthening forest reserve management in the areas, and building the capacity of relevant stakeholders to manage the local ecosystems

This is the second Grant I have received from Rufford for primates’ survey in Samburu region. I am sincerely grateful to RSG for this generous support which will see the study through the most critical stage – documenting new discoveries of three different primate species in the wider Samburu region.

“Asante Sana”

Mwenja

2 responses so far

Category: Endangered Wildlife | Date: Apr 18 2008 | By: admin

Since the 2006 study of the newly discovered population de Brazza’s monkey in Mathews range, I received credible reports that de Brazza’s are are found in Ndotos. But just like with the initial reports of de Brazza’s in Mathews range, most people were skeptical and some did not hide their indignation with me for always highlighting positive news which they consider a threat to funding. Indeed, while presenting my findings on the Mathews range study at the Institute of Primate Research IPR 17th Scientific Conference, a participant asked me whether I expect to get funded if I continue telling the world that we are discovering more and more groups of de Brazza’s in Kenya. However, this seems to not to be the case with my project which has been come up with positive news at at time when the IUCN PSG released a report on 25 most endangered primates. Recently, Rufford Small Grant funded the ongoing study and I am sure many more Donors would have no problem funding a project that is run professionally and whose findings are not skewed to please the partisan interests.

Back to the good news. Despite the ongoing heavy rains in the Ndotos, our scouts managed to spot two seperate groups of de Brazza’s monkeys on very high altitude at ‘Lolionto’ and ‘Matasia’. Rains have completely disrupted our work in the steep areas of Sererit, Ngurunet and proper survey will have to wait for the dry season. Similarly, our work in Leroghi has also been affected and I hope to head there early month to assess the situation befroe deploying more scouts.

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Iregi Mwenja
Project Leader

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Category: Endangered Wildlife | Date: Apr 01 2008 | By: admin

I am currently attending a one week Social marketing workshop for conservationist at college of African Wildlife Management, Mweka in Tanzania. The theme of the workshop which is facilitated by Rare is to “Introduce participants drawn from across Africa to one approach in building constituencies for conservation – Social marketing”. This approach is the Rare’s award winning Pride program which has been proven successful in more than 100 campaigns in over 40 countries around the world.

After today’s session which we learnt about building a concept model and threats ranking, I managed to convince the President to join me for a photo session – my first photo with a President. As you can see below, he is quite charismatic, easy going and very much at home with the “masses”, the right combination for positively influencing people’s behavior and attitudes on environment.

With Rare President Mr Brett.

The Presdent with the workshop participants

Iregi Mwenja

5 responses so far