Giraffe Sanctuary

Category: Wildlife | Date: Nov 25 2007 | By: admin

WILDLIFE LIVESTOCK IN PERFECT CO EXISTANCE IN GIRAFFE SANCTUARY

The Garissa Community Giraffe sanctuary (GCGS) falls within an immediate sub urban environment of Garissa Town. The local community consists of the Bor-Algi community of a predominately pastoral Somali clan and the Malakoti who are hunter- gatherers settled along the Tana River. The livelihood activities for these communities include hunting, charcoal burning, livestock rearing & trade, Quarrying/ Sand harvesting, fuel wood sales , building poles harvesting, Poaching among others.
With more than 3000 households surrounding the sanctuary with their traditional livestock, a perfect culture of co existance and tolerance is emerging with communities appreciating the wildlife. This is attributed to several environmental education programs that we have organized for these communities and this has really reduced the friction between communities, their livetsock and the wildlife in the area. The long term impact of this interaction is not yet visible, however, we are worried that it may in future lead to intense competition resulting to conflicts in the area. Other than giraffes we also have other wildlife species such as Gerenuk, Lesser Kudu, Cheetah, Hippopotamus, Guinea fowls & other birds, Common Zebra, Warthog, Ostrich- Somali race, Hyena, Lions among others.

We are very grateful to the county council of Garissa for setting aside this land to conserve the existing wildlife and habitat diversity in this unique area which is a potential ecotourism hotspot. However, there is no development plan in place to direct settlement and safe guard the existing ecological diversity.
Finally I would like to say thank you for the following Pirjo,Dana,pirgo and dr. antonio for their kind donation we received from them towards the purchase of the much needed computer. I once again would like to appeal for more donations of this special request. Lack of this computer is actually slowing our blogging efforts as we are still relying on distance cyber cafe to share information as we stated in our earlier post. Kindly assist us in securing this computer. I once again say thank you for all those who contributed towards this appeal.
Abdullahi Hussein.

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