Power of blogging helping Masai Mara wildlife

Mike Pflanz in the Masai Mara, The Telegraph 3 Mar 08;

Less than five minutes after the poacher was arrested in a remote corner of a Kenyan game park, hundreds of animal-lovers across the world heard the urgent beep of a new text message on their mobiles.

Rangers had radioed the news from the poacher's hideout in a thicket of wild olive trees in the Masai Mara to the conservancy headquarters 15 miles away.
There, Joseph Kimojino, who had never used a computer before November, fired up his laptop and sent out a bulletin via Twitter, a social networking website which sends updates to subscribers by text message.

Within an hour, the Masai ranger updated his blog and uploaded photos of the poacher and his illegal haul of zebra and waterbuck meat to Flickr, an image-sharing website.

Mr Kimojino, 44, is at the forefront of a technological revolution using satellite internet connections set up deep in the bush to link armchair conservationists in the West with field workers on the frontline of wildlife protection. Mr Kimojino will be writing a blog, starting this week on Telegraph Earth, from the Masai Mara.

There is Felix Lankester's from a chimpanzee orphanage in Cameroon, Didi and Innocent's about gorilla protection in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There are blogs on orangutans in Indonesia, snub-nosed monkeys in Vietnam, wild dogs in Zimbabwe and blue-fronted Amazon parrots in Brazil.

All are hosted by Wildlife Direct, a British-registered charity set up by Richard Leakey, Kenya's leading paleontologist and the former head of the Kenya Wildlife Service.

The idea is simple. Harness the soaring popularity of blogging and social networking sites to boost the profile of smaller conservation groups and raise much-needed money in the process.

Surfers who log on to Mr Kimojino's blog (http://maratriangle.wildlifedirect.org) see his urgent appeal - tourists have stopped coming to the Masai Mara because of Kenya's post election violence.

Without the money they pay in gate fees for Mara Conservancy, the group managing the west of the reserve, Mr Kimojino and his 39 fellow rangers must stop anti-poaching patrols.

Until the tourists return, they need £25,000 a month for salaries, fuel, food and bonuses for catching the poachers.

To Mara Conservancy, it is a huge sum. But it is achievable if enough people (625, to be precise) hit the 'donate now' button on the website and each pledge the average £40 which Wildlife Direct receives from supporters.

That money is then funnelled straight to the conservationists on the ground, less only bank fees.

Wildlife Direct does not take a percentage. Donors including the European Union fund its administration costs, its staff salaries, the computers and the satellite connections.

"This is a completely new thing to me after 20 years as a ranger, and I have been so surprised," said Mr Kimojino, using a single index finger to slowly tap a response to a comment on his blog.

Before he began training late in November, he had never turned on a computer and said he found learning to control the mouse the 'hardest part'.

Now, he says, "Blogging is one of the best things about my job.

"It makes me realise that there are many people in the world who want to know about what we are doing for Kenya's animals, who want to help us."

He is already receiving up to 100 hits a day, having launched the blog in January.

"It is a totally new idea for conservation in terms of a method of raising funds and raising awareness of our work," said Brian Heath, chief executive officer of Mara Conservancy.

"It's been pretty amazing how quickly Joseph has become comfortable with the blogging, and it we hope he can serve as a model here in Kenya of getting out information, and raising money."