DSWT Community Outreach Report November 2016

COMMUNITY OUTREACH MONTHLY REPORT

November 2016 SUMMARY: In November, the DSWT Community Outreach Team worked with communities in planting 2700 seedlings both in the community and inside Tsavo East National Park. The month also saw the maintenance of the beehive fences.

After a long drought, in November Tsavo finally received an average of 20 inches of rainfall.

The rains brought back life to Tsavo with many plant species starting to flower and dormant seeds germinating. This new life gave a lot of activity for Tsavo’s bee populations and the Trust’s Beehive fence recorded the occupation of eleven new bee hives.

The British Airways Foundation, which kindly sponsors these bee-hive fences, visited the fence project to document the project’s progress, interview the farm owners, whilst gaining insight on how the fence works.

Picture below with British Airways Foundation representative, farm owners and a DSWT representative

REPLANTING DAMAGED SITES INSIDE THE PARK: Kenya is undergoing a massive infrastructural development. The negative environmental implications of such projects have been huge, and the country’s national parks have not been spared. A case in point is the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway line through Tsavo National Park. The SGR has not only placed a permanent barrier between Tsavo East and West cutting off the migration of wildlife between the two parks, but has also seen the excavation/quarrying of construction materials destroying large areas of vegetation inside the parks. The DSWT is bringing together all conservation stakeholders (Kenya Wildlife Service included) to plant indigenous seedlings in these areas to ensure quick regeneration.

In November, using indigenous seedling from the Kaluku Tree Nursery, the DSWT planted 700 seedlings at the first site in the North-Western tip of the Tsavo Triangle. The site is approximately 20 acres, which was planted with mixed species of acacia, commiphora, baobab, and newtonia. This assisted regeneration will also help stop invasive plant species such as the Apple of Sodom (Calotropis procera) which is evidently taking over the site.

Additionally, the teams planted seven bags of 50kgs of mixed indigenous seedballs (seeds enclosed in charcoal with the necessary nutrients to provide a conducive environment for germination and growth) in the same area.

Community members were employed by the DSWT to help take part in this forest regeneration project, giving much needed employment whilst reinforcing the importance of protecting wild habitats.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is reliant on your kind support in order to keep our community outreach projects running.

For more information about these projects please visit www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.com/community or email info@dswt.org