Young Heroes in Kenya - Snatching Snares to Save Wildlife
In the past 20 years, Africa has lost half of its wildlife. One of the major threats comes from snares placed to capture wildlife for the bushmeat trade. Youth for Conservation (YfC) is a grassroots charitable organisation of high school graduates who have committed themselves to the protection of Kenya's threatened wildlife.
YfC's Josphat Ngonyo explains how his group works with Kenya's understaffed nature park and wildlife reserve workers "to find and remove snares meant to catch and kill wildlife in a terrible and cruel death.
On a single day, 3 to 5 percent of the snares trap and kill a passing animal. In one 24-square-kilometre area that YfC surveyed, that translates into the deaths of 168 animals a week or 8,640 a year. In that single 24-square kilometre section, YfC volunteers managed to find and remove 770 wire snares in three weeks.
As of last August, YfC has carried out 14 snare sweeps and removed 2,682 wire snares and six bird traps. Last August, a team in Masai Mare, assisted by a vet flown in from Nairobi, was able to remove a snare that had wrapped around the neck of a lion, saving the animal from strangulation. The team also treated another lion with a serious leg wound inflicted by a snare . In Masai Mara, Ngonyo reports, the team removed "nearly a 100 snares in 12 days."
YfC also carries out community education programs to promote the intrinsic value of wildlife and to encourage "harmonious coexistence with wildlife and habitat," Ngonyo explains. " We also promote income-generating sustaninable aloternatives to snaring such as bee-keeping and tree farming.
What You Can Do. Support the work of the Youth for Conservation. (P.O..Box 27689, Nairobi, KENYA, y4c@alphanet.co.ke). Books and magazines can also be donated to YfC's environmental library. IMMF and Earth Island Journal's Green Pages Fund recently sent a $400 gift to YfC to fund a de-snaring project.
Source: Earth Island Journal Spring 2002 Issue
Kenyan’s Concern for Conservation
Josphat Ngonyo, director of the Kenya-based ‘Youth for Conservation’ that works for solutions to preserve the species and their habitats, comes from a family of poachers. “We got converted: My uncle’s combat with poachers and the stories I grew up with really moved me,” says the Kenyan, who was recently in Beijing to attend the 19th international zoological conference.
On a two-week tour of the country, Josphat visited the Mudumali and Bandipur sanctuaries. “I met Pradeep Nath founder of VSPCA and we came together to India. I am visiting his center now. I don’t believe in breeding animals in captivity. The elephant in the zoo here, tied to a chain, has tears in its eyes. A video film can capture the habitat of any animal and what’s more the film can come into classrooms and homes too, say the man who has been working on this mission for the past 20 years.
But it isn’t the same as seeing an animal in flesh and blood. “An animal seen in captivity does not convey the least idea of its life in the wild, which is its natural state, so why the torture?” There is a slight hesitation while he works out an appropriate reaction.
His organization, which survives on funds and donations from philanthropists, is opposed to trophy hunting, pet industry, game capture, trafficking of animals and snaring for bush meat trade.
Josphat believes in vegetarianism though he has not yet converted to it.” “We want to involve the impressionable young. If they strongly believe in it and their hearts are touched then there will be no impediment int the sustenance of wildlife heritage,” are his wise words.
During his brief stay in the city he visited the Burra caves and Araku valley. “Vizag reminds me of Kenya. The beautiful beaches must be conserved for our children,” he says.
