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Feb 2014 back issue
by Ami Vitale
Much needed attention has been focused on the plight of wildlife and the conflict between heavily armed poachers
and increasingly militarized wildlife rangers.
However, the compelling story of indigenous communities caught in the cross-hairs of the poaching wars, and who
may hold the key to saving Africa’s great animals, is largely untold.
Communities Combat Poaching in Kenya
Ami’s project will focus on the indigenous people of Northern Kenya and their efforts to end poaching on ancestral
lands by preserving their traditional way of life and strengthening their communities.
The vast arid landscape of savannah, thorn-scrub and forested sky islands is populated by 14 indigenous semi-
nomadic ethnicities-- Bajun, Boni, Borana, Giriama, Maasai, Ntorobo, Njemps, Ormoa, Pokomo, Pokot, Rendillie,
Samburu, Somali, and Turkana. Healthy populations of elephants including some massive tuskers roam this region
while endangered black rhino, Grevy’s zebra and Hirola antelope hold on in globally significant numbers. But armed
poachers taking advantage of the porous borders of Somalia, and South Sudan put wildlife and people at grave risk,
increasing instability, inter-clan conflict, and lawlessness. While government and private conservation organizations
fight to strengthen anti-poaching efforts, communal cohesion with and between communities is the fabric upon which
conservation depend.
The Northern Rangelands Trust is a collective of twenty-six indigenous groups covering 2.5 million hectares of
Northern Kenya. Through their efforts communities have begun to lay down their guns, relying on dialogue rather than
warfare to settle inter-tribal conflict and collectively manage wildlife within their lands. They are beginning to reap the
benefits of their efforts as both conservation and tourism dollars flows into this extremely poor region. By managing
grazing jointly they can better safeguard against the unpredictability of drought and climate change. Poaching now
threatens their recent successes and may rip apart fragile communities and permanently end a nomadic way of life.
My stories will focus on the indigenous nomadic communities of Northern Kenya on the frontlines of the poaching
wars and their efforts to preserve community cohesion, ultimately the best immunization against forces that threaten
their wildlife and their way of life
The Northern Rangelands Trust
Ami Vitale's work, “Communities Combat Poaching in Kenya,” that began through the support of the Nature
Conservancy has been selected as one of the inaugural projects featured on the new IndieVoices fundraising
platform. The documentary will examine how the indigenous nomadic communities of the Northern Rangelands Trust
in Northern Kenya confront the poaching wars. Vitale will show how these people are ultimately the best immunization
against the forces that threaten their wildlife and their way of life.
Please share and support this important project! There is still time to make a difference and help protect these
vulnerable species. Go here: www.indievoic.es/projects/project_home/36/D Commercial poaching organized by
sophisticated heavily armed criminal networks and fueled by demand from emerging Asian markets is devastating the
amazing mega-fauna of the African plains. It is entirely possible, even likely, that if the current trajectory of death
continues, rhinos, elephants and a host of lesser know plains animals will be functionally extinct in our lifetimes.
Go here: www.indievoic.es/projects/project_home/36/D
Commercial poaching organized by sophisticated heavily armed criminal networks and fueled by demand from
emerging Asian markets is devastating the amazing mega-fauna of the African plains. It is entirely possible, even
likely, that if the current trajectory of death continues, rhinos, elephants and a host of lesser know plains animals will
be functionally extinct in our lifetimes.
