Greetings from a (finally!) sunny Maasai Mara,

Anyone who has visited the site lately will have noticed a distinct lack of updates and photos – my apologies, but working on my thesis has taken up most of my time. I have done plenty of photography, but it might be a couple of months until most of it makes it to the website. The last few days have been a bit different, however, so I thought I would make my reappearance here at the site by sharing some of my recent experiences with the local anti-poaching team (financed and run by the Mara Conservancy, Anne Kent Taylor Fund and Care for the Wild).

Poaching – or the illicit harvesting of wildlife as those of us in academia like to call it – is an issue that has a way of touching most of us, and some of the comments found on various online forums are fairly emotional to say the least. Despite our strong feelings about the killing of wildlife, very few people truly understand the industry. Our focus is very often – and understandably so – on certain key species, killed for the commercial value of various body parts. In Kenya, this is primarily ivory and rhinoceros horn, and our anger tends to be directed at the Middle and Far East, as this is where the largest demand for these products exists. And make no mistake – the illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn is definitely something that we must put an end to!

However, the majority of wildlife killed in Africa – and certainly here in the Mara Triangle – is killed for its meat. This has a way of softening our judgement – hunting for food is, after all, different from hunting for profit. And this is certainly an angle often opted for by arrested bushmeat poachers in order to reduce the severity of their sentences. I suppose this would be valid at some level if poachers really did kill wildebeest, buffalo and other ungulates to supplement their diets, but the truth is that most bushmeat poachers are businessmen – the meat is sold, not eaten by the poachers. In the Mara Triangle, most poachers arrive from across the Tanzanian border, according to the anti-poaching team; sometimes to hunt, sometimes to steal livestock. The Maasai themselves very rarely eat the meat of wild animals, so their involvement (often as guides) tends to be for money as well.

So far I have spent a couple of mornings and a couple of afternoons with the anti-poaching team. Although much of what they do involves patrolling, collecting snares and giving chase to poachers, there is another side to their jobs as well: strengthening the ties to local communities. This is partly in order to make poaching less acceptable, and partly to reduce conflicts between people and wildlife. The Maasai are primarily pastoralists, although many now cultivate land as well. Antagonism between wildlife and people can be quite substantial; crops and fences are destroyed by elephants and lions, leopards and hyenas kill cattle, sheep and goats, and people trying to protect their property can easily be injured or killed. Wildlife is often killed in revenge, or to prevent future damage.

One of the biggest and most important projects in the area is run by the AKTF and involves fortifying wooden bomas – livestock enclosures – with wire. A wooden boma is not impenetrable; lions can push their way through, hyenas are efficient diggers and leopards can easily climb, using the wooden pillars for support. Wire, however, can prevent all three from entering. If buried into the ground, hyenas cannot get underneath, and wire – particularly if left loose at the top – makes climbing very difficult (as the possums in our Tasmanian garden finally learned). The AKTF also funds other projects on the Siria escarpment (which borders the MT on one side; the Mara River and Serengeti NP form the other two boundaries), including biogas, water tanks and educational programmes, but the boma fortifications were where we spent most of our time. It is a very efficient way of keeping livestock safe and, consequently, reducing conflict between people and wildlife.

The rain has been horrific, washing out roads and flooding bridges, so it has taken quite a few very early mornings to get to the shots we needed - many of these have been taken at the request of National Geographic, I'm excited to say. I’ll post links when I know more. The photos below are of the team on patrol, some of the bomas and a leopard recently killed inside a livestock boma in the Mara North Conservancy.

• Sunrise Pose Sunrise Pose
• Sunrise Patrol Sunrise Patrol
• Snares Snares
• Poachers' Camp Poachers' Camp
• Boma 1 Boma 1
• Boma 2 Boma 2
• Boma 3 Boma 3
• Boma 4 Boma 4
• Boma 5 Boma 5
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• Leopard Leopard
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