Grass, Soap And Tourism - Helping Ex-Poachers Kick The Bush Meat Trade
Category: Community Conservation, Eco-tourism, Environmental Education, Human-Wildlife Conflict | Date: May 25 2009 | By: gvikenya
Every few months our team rides the rough, red dusty road through Tsavo West National Park, to the village of Kidong, a small but significant dot on the vast landscape that stretches between Tsavo West National Park across the border to Mt Kilimanjaro. We are aiming to support this community-based organisation for former poachers convert conflict with wildlife in to conservation.
The Kidong Education and Cultural centre is already teaching local farmers to protect their crops from elephants using chili peppers but they aspire to make the centre substitute income from poaching with a livelihood from hosting… tourists! On our most recent visit we worked with members of the community to bring together two of the skills we helped teach them previously; making soap from neem trees and paper from elephant dung. With one eye on the potential tourists we have been helping them develop their new found cottage industry of soap making in to a marketable product for tourists, experimenting with moulds and packaging made from recycled paper using elephant dung. With ex-poachers turning elephants from pests in to products, we hope the story behind the packaging will be enough to spark the interest of new customers!
The other side of the equation of course is bringing tourists to the centre in the first place and having already facilitated the collation of the people’s history, culture and evolving relationship with wildlife, we spent time developing a 15 minute presentation to kick off their cultural experience for the eco-toursits we will be targetting. There is still work to be done at the centre to get it ready for eco-tourism but we are also working behind the scenes on ways to get their restaurant built by the end of August.
Our new introduction to their ever-expanding repertoire of environmental sustainability was a workshop on the wonders of vetiver grass… this humble horticultural tool is being viewed as something of a miracle plant by those in the know. Tolerant of arid conditions, but able to cope with high rainfall, it is being used worldwide to stabilise soils against erosion, slow waterflow with its deep root system to ensure rains drain downwards rather than run-off and can be used as almost anything from livestock fodder to weaving mats and baskets. Using a strain that is infertile but propogates readily ensures its use can be controlled but easily expanded. So convinced were we by the benefits of the grass, that before leaving we planted 100 of them to get the community started!
And just to remind ourselves of why tourists should choose to visit Kidong on their safari stop off, the magnificent Mt Kilimanjaro appeared from behind a curtain of clouds and we found time to cool off in its refreshing (some might read ‘freezing’!) meltwaters at the idyllic Njoro springs.
I look forward to reporting progress in a few months time,
Corti
Tags: bush meat trade, capacity building, Eco-tourism, Elephants, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Kidong, Kilimanjaro, poachers, soil erosion, sustainabe development, tsavo west national park, vetiver grass, water conservation, wildlife
Steps Forward in the Dust at Kidong
Category: Community Conservation, Environmental Education, Human-Wildlife Conflict | Date: Feb 25 2009 | By: gvikenya
“Elephants!” shouted the group of women huddled under the shade of a lone tree by the border of Tsavo West National Park. Clad in colorful kangas with babies strapped to their backs, the women are not the least bit surprised to see elephants wandering down the main road of their village of Kidong, they are simply excited to point them out to me. Although elephants are a common sight in this region of Kenya, I still get excited when I see them passing serenely by oblivious to our presence.
Elephants were in fact one of the main reasons that GVI began working with the community of Kidong in 2006, and remain one of the key focal points for GVI’s community development work in this village. So what to elephants have to do with community development you might ask? Lots!
Firstly, many of the community members in Kidong village historically relied upon poaching animals, including elephants, in Tsavo West National Park for subsistence purposes. In 2006, Kidong and two other villages in this region – Kasaani and Mahandkini – elected to give up poaching in favor of sustainable alternative livelihoods. This is where GVI in conjunction with the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) stepped in and offered to provide assistance in developing sustainable alternative means of income generation in these villages.
Secondly, the elephant population has created its own problem… human-elephant conflict! In the area surrounding Kidong agricultural pursuits are one alternative livelihood which is commonly pursued; crop raiding by elephants, however, has a significant negative impact upon the viability of this income generation option as whole shambas (farming plots) are often decimated by elephant incursions.
Constructing chili-oil fences at a local shamba
Not to be deterred from fully embracing their new found sustainable lifestyles, the community of Kidong has managed to put a positive spin on the problem of human-elephant conflict. With assistance from both GVI and WSPA the community of Kidong has constructed the Kidong Cultural and Education Centre. The Education Centre provides free educational lessons to communities about sustainable means of deterring elephants from farming land using chili-based deterrents such as chili-oil fences and chili-dung bricks. The Cultural Centre is currently being developed as a tourism centre where tourists can come and learn about Kidong’s story – ‘From Poachers to Protectors’.
GVI enjoying recent developments at the Kidong Cultural and Education Centre
On my most recent visit to Kidong, I witnessed the community continuing to take big steps forward in the construction of the tourism related elements of the Centre – in less than two months time a new kitchen, store room, toilets and defined paths around the Centre were all constructed! Moreover, reports from employees of the Education Centre point to the continued success of chili-based methods of elephant deterrence from farming plots in the Kidong area. It looks like Kidong’s main road will be marked by the footprints of eco-tourism alongside elephant tracks in the very near future!
Tags: Chili-Oil Fences, community development, Community-Based Conservation, Elephants, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Kidong, Poaching, tsavo west national park
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