We are all still reeling at OAT at the tragic news over the weekend of the senseless murder of British helicopter pilot and conservationist Roger Gower – shot out of the sky by elephant poachers in Tanzania.

According to the BBC “The Friedkin Conservation Fund said Roger Gower, from Birmingham, was tracking poachers on Friday in the Maswa Game Reserve.”

He was over the Maswa Game Reserve – apparently he was flying close to one of 3 dead elephants… also killed by the poachers. He had a passenger on board. The poachers shot at them from the ground with machine guns. He did manage to land, which gave his passenger a chance to escape, running and hiding from the poachers; but he died of his injuries before help could reach him. He was 37.

Of course tributes have been paid to Roger – “a great guy, a great friend, a great pilot”. He loved working with Tanzania’s wildlife. He loved flying.

We are all shocked by this murder. So brazen. Such a waste of life. OAT supports projects that work to protect elephants in Africa from these threats. We have funded the use of helicopters just like this. It brings home like a punch in the guts the appalling risk and cost of protecting Africa’s wildlife. There are no words to describe the sadness we all feel about this latest horror, or the anger.

Dan Friedkin, founder of The Friedkin Conservation Fund has said …

“We believe that Roger can best be honoured by redoubling our commitment to protect elephants and our priceless wildlife heritage.

Too right.

I heard from Anna and Steve at Chipembele-Zambia a few days ago. Chipembele is one of the projects we support in The Luangwa Valley in Zambia.

http://www.chipembele.org

They had sundowners on the water in the company of an armful of primates and Douglas the Hippo.

Douglas did his best to knock the drinks from their hands and knock them into the water, but all was okay in the end.

Hi Dave

The Luangwa rose about 6 foot yesterday, making it the deepest it’s been
all year…there must have been a lot of rain somewhere upstream,
judging by the foam as well! In the morning, I was walking along the
beaches with the dogs. Within 2 hours, the beaches had gone.

Doug went mad yesterday when Anna and I sat in the boat for sundowners.
He pushes the boat from all angles, then tries to bite it! If the boat
was any smaller, he would overturn it! He’s just playing really.

You can begin to understand why I was a bit shaken by my last canoe
trip, 600km, with several hundred incidents of annoyed hippos that
chased the canoe and tried to overturn me…plus the giant croc trying
to eat me!

Doug was staying in the Chowo confluence a lot recently, but now the
water is high, a small pod of hippos have taken it over today!

All the best, Steve

More Chipembele rescue updates:

Little Mykey has made lots of friends. Everyone loves him. He loves being mothered and there are plenty of willing volunteers.

Here are some pictures of him playing with his mates and loving a cuddle.

Rescued Scrub Hare released back into the wild

A slightly belated Happy New year to everyone! I have recently returned from a fabulous family holiday which included an amazing week in the Serengeti. We were lucky enough to see over a million animals in the migration herds – so beautiful, I am at a loss for words, for once!  Anyway back in the UK now and back to OAT business…

Successful Baby Elephant Rescue

Some great news from Game Rangers International, one of OAT’s sponsored projects in Zambia.

Last week their Elephant Orphan Project (EOP) started an orphaned elephant awareness campaign in the Lower Zambezi. This involved Senior Keepers, talking to communities along the river about the importance of rapid response when young elephants are seen alone.

On day 4 of the campaign EOP was made aware of a young elephant alone on an island. It was monitored for a few days to see if it’s Heard returned. Sadly this didn’t happen, so yesterday, with full support from the Zambian Wildlife Authority and local operators, EOP rescued the young male (1.5 years old) and transported him to EOP’s elephant nursery.

He has been named Muchichili, after an indigenous tree found on the island where he was found.  He is currently dehydrated and malnourished but overall in good condition. He will join other orphaned elephants here at the nursery and eventually through EOP’s release programme in The Kafue National Park, he will be released back into the wild as part of a newly formed orphaned heard.

We are so proud to support the work of Game Rangers International, they are nothing short of amazing!

This is my Christmas caption competition…

The prize for the best captions for these photos is a box of out of date Smarties for each winner.

Place your entries in the comments section please!

All of us at OAT wish you a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

I have been keeping up to date with the projects I visited and thought I would share a few stories with you. Chipembele, Zambian Primate Project, Lilongewe Wildlife Centrte and Game Rangers International are all projects we at OAT are supporting.

ZAMBIA

ZPP & Chipembele working together:

The wonderful Cosmas of ZPP has been in action again:

Myk is another vervet monkey rescued by Cosmas and then handed over to Anna of Chipembele.  Myk will stay with Anna 24/7 for the next 3 months or so and slowly released back into the wild.

Here’s Pebbles, an existing resident rescue at Chipembele, smothering Myk with love. What a welcome, animals are so nice to each other!

and…

Here’s Nicola the scrub hare!  She is very cute and sharing a cage with Maluwa the baby bushbuck. Named after my niece Nicola.

Douglas:

Couldn’t  resist including a few pictures of Douglas the Hippo taken a few years ago when he was first rescued by Chipembele. Some of you may remember Douglas from some of my previous blogs when I had the privilege of spending a week with Steve and Anna Tolan, founders of Chipembele Wildlife Trust.

Game Rangers International

Pangolins are the most hunted animal on the planet 🌍.  It is estimated 100,000 pangolins are captured every year from across Africa and Asia.  They are poached to feed the traditional medicinal demand in Asia, predominantly Vietnam & China.  The meat is sold as bush meat, in Africa, and then the scales then are exported.   They are sold for an estimated Kwacha 50.000 or £2800. The scales are made from keratin, the same protein that Rhino Horn is made of.

GRI (Game Rangers International) together with ZAWA’s (Zambian Wildlife Authority) are constantly working together to combat this horrid trade. In one week alone recently, 8 pangolins were confiscated and the illegal traffickers were arrested and sentenced to 4 years in prison.

Below is a picture of Sylvain, GRI vet, releasing one of the rescued Pangolins into the Kafue National Park.  

GRI are involved in many aspect of wildlife conservation including elephant rescue and rehab, anti poaching and illegal wildlife trade as well as community outreach. They have recently launched a Christmas appeal and if you would like to make a small donation, I know they would be hugely grateful. UK Pounds go a long way in Africa! Drop me a quick comment or email if you do donate so we can thank you personally…

GRI Christmas Appeal

MALAWI

Rescue news from Kate of Lilongwe Wildlife Centre:

Lilongwe Wildlife Centre (LWC)

Serval Cat rescue

A local man confiscated this little Serval Cat from kids in a village who had been taunting it!  It is thought they had taken the cat from the wild and potentially killed it’s mother and possibly sold any siblings.

The Serval Cat arrived, at the centre, in a very weakened state and was severely malnourished. He took to solid food immediately and so far is doing well. He is a very feisty little fella and we hope he’ll stay that way!

Vervet Monkey

Two Vervet monkeys were confiscated from a seller in Lilongwe.

This little one is around 3 months old, he is malnourished and dehydrated so is small for his age.  But is he is bright and lively and the aim now will be to get him on a balanced diet.

Blue Vervet Monkey

This Baby Blue monkey was found near the Vervet Monkey. He is about 3 months old but due to extreme malnutrition he is much smaller than he should be and very fragile.  He was barely moving when he first arrived at Lilongwe and if he hadn’t been picked up he most likely wouldn’t have survived another day.

He is now being given plenty of nutrients and milk to keep his strength up but considering his condition it’s a case of day by day, or even hour by hour…

That’s all for now! will post more updates as they come in…

Back Home

I am now back in the UK, having been away in Africa for almost 5 months. It was amazing seeing my family again especially Jeff & Nicola my nephew and niece. Nothing like a Big Hug 😍 from them to Warm the Heart and Wet the eyes!

It’s bloomin’ Freezing ❄️ but a nice change from the intense heat of Africa, good to have the cool air on my burnt skin.

My Friend Cosmas! 

Luckily my return coincided with the TUSK Award ceremony.  You may remember from my September Blog that Sue (my sister) nominated Cosmas Mumba for the 2015 Tusk Conservation Award in recognition of his extraordinary work in remote parts of the Zambian bush.  Cosmas has devoted the past 13 years to ZPP (Zambian Primate Project) and under his leadership over 500 yellow baboons and vervet monkeys, have been rescued from the most harrowing conditions and then given a second chance at life back in the wild.

It’s an extremely prestigious award and he was one of only 3 finalists in his category being Conservation in Africa!!  I was privileged enough to spend 3 months with Cosmas, shadowing the work he does and we became really good mates.

Sue hosted a surprise party for Cosmas at OAT HQ last Friday night and were so lucky to have many friends, supporters and prominent people in the conservation world. Guests included, Virginia McKenna founder of The Born Free Foundation, Cheryl & Manny Mvula founders of ZPP, Sport Beattie (CEO) and founder of Game Rangers International in Zambia and Melanie Shepherd of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation.

The morning after the party!

 Then…off to the Football!

The Big Night!

Last night was the TUSK Awards ceremony, a black tie event at the Claridges Hotel in London. It was an amazing evening. Cosmas didn’t win the award in his category, but honestly, it felt almost irrelevant.  They are all winners and we are all so proud of Cosmas. He is a very special man indeed!

Below is a picture of Cosmas meeting Prince William at Kensington Palace,  in the afternoon before the big event.

Event pictures!

WHAT A WEEK!!!

Big Life – Chyulu:

Still in Kenya and moving on from Amboseli, we met the legendary Richard Bonham. Last year, at the TUSK awards, Richard received the prestigious Prince William award for conservation in recognition of his life time contribution to wildlife and the Massai Mara community in Kenya. He is the co founder of the Big Life Foundation. Check it out, probably the most impressive and diverse organisation I have come across so far.

http://www.biglife.org

Will Travers and I spent a day being shown the fantastic work of Big Life including Elephant, Rhino and Lion protection and human/wildlife conflict & community education.

Ngulia Rhino Sanctuary:

The next and final project we were planning to visit was Ngulia, a well established Rhino Sanctuary partly sponsored by Born Free,  located in the Tsavo West national Park.

Sadly… we didn’t make it!  The rains came, which is great news for Wildlife, but not for us!

Swamp:

Shortly after leaving camp at 8am, we got stuck in the mud and spent the next 10 hours in a swap digging and winching the BFF Land Rover from tree to tree in the rain, heat and sunshine. I ended up with cuts and bruises all over and thorns in both feet.

Check out the video…

Richard Bonham of Big Life flew over at 11am, circled us and dipped his wing on a really low fly by to suggest he had seen us and possibly to suggest a direction we needed to go in to get out of the swamp. All guesswork at this point.  What we didn’t know at the time was that he had called for a rescue vehicle for us and we found out later that they also got stuck!!

Anyway at 3pm we eventually gave up as the vehicle just wouldn’t budge any more. We abandon the Land Rover and began our walk to dry land, knee deep in mud with our bags…At 4pm Richard flew over us and dipped his wing again.  Which meant, I don’t know what……..?😜

To add to the drama we spotted three large Bull elephants en route. The biggest I’ve seen so far.

Dry Land: 

We eventually found Massai Mara villagers who walked us to a hill to find mobile phone signal. We called KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) who eventually rescued us at 7pm.

Finally we began a 3.5 hour, very bumpy journey, back to camp on the back of a truck with a Massai Mara warrior.  The Born Free vehicle was left in the swamp overnight and pulled out the following day by a tractor from a KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) base 50km away.

Although it was an exhausting experience and pretty scary at times we still managed to have a good laugh 😀😀👍👍

Currently in southern Kenya visiting more Born Free projects in and around the the Amboseli National Park. The park is located in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro and is home to 1,400 wild elephants!

First stop was to visit the legendary Cynthia Moss. Cynthia is an American conservationist, wildlife researcher and writer, who specializes in African elephant family structure, life cycle, and behaviour. She is director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya, where she has studied the same population of elephants for over 40 years. Cynthia is Program Director and Trustee for the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE).

This amazing project has been supported by Born Free from inception.

elephanttrust.org cynthia moss

Boma Village

Our next visit was to see one of the 215 lion proof bomas that Born Free have constructed. This is yet another initiative that addresses human wildlife conflict. The construction of these Boma “fences” enable Masai communities to protect themselves and their livestock from lions and other predators.  Many predators are hunted by avenging villagers when their livestock are killed. So, Bomas are mutually beneficial to both lion conservation and human preservation. Each Boma costs £1,400 and they have proved to be incredibly effective. So much so, that they are now in great demand and the Masai people themselves are becoming ambassadors and promoters of the project. Born Free also ensure buy in and ownership and communities now contribute financially and physically towards the build and maintenance of the Boma’s.   

bornfree -lion-proof-bomas

Unexpected Findings…

At one of the Masai villages we visited, the men had all left the village with their cattle to find food and water for them.  Whilst there we discovered 3 young cows that had been left behind by the men as they are too thin & too weak to make the journey. A fourth cow had already died and was being eaten by village dogs. 😱😰

Its so dry here, there is simply no food or water left for the young cows. Everyone very very desperate for the rains to start.  Two of the baby cows were lying flat on the ground completely ‘finished’ they didn’t even have the energy to open their eyes.

Will Travers and I were holding their heads in our laps trying to comfort them as we both agreed they were about to die any minute.

It’s at this moment the ‘Suzie Ma Twe Twe’ (my sister)  comes out in me and the ‘Virginia McKenna’ comes out in Will. We round up all the kids in the village and send them out looking for any green grass they can find… the kids all scatter on a grass finding mission and believe me there isn’t a lot of green stuff anywhere. We then get the village to load all there water bottles (20 litre) containers into the Born Free Land Rover and Martin from Born Free goes with some of the woman to find water whilst we comfort the cows.  😥😰😒😔😰😔😰.

The kids return with bits of grass and we start hand feeding the cows in our laps as they are so weak, we also had to break up the grass into small chunks as they had very little energy to chew.

The water then arrives so we are pouring water into their mouths. They both start to respond by eating and drinking but very slowly. We then round up everyone and carry one of the cows into the shade to get it out of the hot sun. After much love and attention and stroking their heads and faces, with the help of everyone get them to stand up.

They continue to eat and drink a little at a time. Then we start thinking ahead and ask someone where we can buy some quality hay so they can eat properly until the rains come. We are told the nearest hay is 100kms away but they have no money to buy it or means to transport it. After a few calls we manage to get a guy on a motorbike to agree to go ride 100kms each way and buy and collect 2 bales of hay. We left the 3 cows in the village now standing and looking a little better but they are by no means out of the dark. We followed up later to see how they were doing… two of them made it but sadly the little back one died.
So so Sad 😰😥😰😰😰😰😰😰

Animal Compassion 🐂🐐🐘🐕🐂🐐🐘

In my travels I have come across many wildlife issues but also issues relating to general animal welfare. This is something we, OAT, would like to address in the future, particularly on the education front. This wasn’t the original plan, but we feel if we can get people to be compassionate with their domestic animals then we may have a better chance of gaining their sympathy for wildlife. Also, happy healthy cows, goats, donkeys etc will mean better productivity for the owners.

Dogs 🐕🐕

Welfare of working dogs in conservation is something else we have stumbled on….watch this space on this subject! Sue is already planning to upgrade the facility of two working dogs we have come across within a Rhino Sanctuary!

The list in Africa is endless!!!!!!

I am now in Kenya and have spent the last week with my sister Sue  (Founder of OAT), her husband Jonathan and Will Travers, President of The Born Free Foundation.

We spent a day at Born Free’s Kenyan office in Nairobi and then 5 days out in the Meru National Park with the Born Free Team on the ground and various members of KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service).

Needless to say Born Free are doing some amazing conservation work here, both in wildlife protection and other vital components of conservation such as community outreach and education. The following photos will give you an idea of the projects we visited and some of the “hands on” conservation work we were involved in. 

Born Free’s historical sights in Meru

The grave of Elsa, the Lioness from the Born Free Movie, featuring Virginia McKenna and her late husband Bill Travers who played the part of Joy & George Adamson (wildlife conservationists) in the 1960’s film.

http://www.fatheroflions.org/GeorgeAdamson_Information.html

George Adamson’s pool where George is said to have swam with the lions in the evenings… 

Field Activities in Meru National Park-

De-Snaring:

We found 5 snares within the Meru National Park during our 90 minutes of de-snaring activity!  These snares are set to trap animals for the illegal trade in bush meat. The snares are simple in design, metal wire usually taken from fencing, but unfortunately they are very effective.  Trust me de-snaring is very hard work.  Dense bush, very hot and somewhat dangerous considering there are elephants and predators around, not to mention the snakes…. We did however have an armed KWS guard with us.

Born Free carry out de-snaring patrols regularly each week.

bornfree.org.uk de-snaring project

Lion Census:

This is very scientific, but basically, in order to protect lions you need to know how many you have in a given area and what their movements are. Together with a KWS lion specialist and the Born Free team we spent a few hours in the early morning looking for predator spoor (foot prints) and recording the findings. We didn’t find lion spoor that day but we did find leopard and other small predator spoor.

Another method to count lions is the Lion Call Back which we did one night.   We stopped at a given point and played a recording of a buffalo being killed by lions, from speakers placed on top of the Land Rover. We repeated this 3 times at 5 minute intervals and waited for lions to respond which they can do from a 3km radius. That night three lions responded and came to where we were. We then recorded details of the sighting.

Both census methods are repeated regularly in definitive blocks within the park.

Rhino Sanctuary:

We visited the Rhino Sanctuary within Meru National Park and KWS updated us on the ongoing challenges they face. These Rhino are very well protected by a large team of rangers who “live” on site with the Rhino’s within their designated 2km square block.

Community Outreach: