Communities sorounding the sanctuary are mainly pastoral somali communities who are traditinally nomads and moves around with ther livestock in serach pasture and water. To facilitate this, the community have traditional houses made of grasses and other plant materials popularly known as herio. The house is normally circular in shape as you can see in the picture above. I am the guy infront of the house and this is where i slept for that night. Women are the main architechs of this houses,while the men look after the livestock. The housing materials have cooling effects and the outsides teperature are drastically reduced making life possible in the desert.

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Imagine sighting one of the most endangered animals in Kenya in this remote corner of the country. i encountered this rare animals in Ijara ( southern part of Garissa district now given district status). We took this pictures recently while we were taken round a visiting professor from Germany. Wild dogs are critically endangered in the conservation world and are hard to come by.Dear friends I must say thank you for all those who supported us towards getting the computer for the sanctuary. I would like to say thank you to Susan M, Pirjo I, Inaga G, Willam H and Antonio C for their contribution towards this special appeal.

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Dear readers
This post is just to share with you some of management issues we are currently facing in the sanctuary. Their are number of human activities which are currently exerting great pressure in the habitats of the giraffes. one such problem is charcoal burning which is the biggest threats to the Acacias in the sanctuary. Every days we loose good number of acacia trees to charcoal burners as can be seen in the pictures above. Other human activities include sand harvesting, farming and expanding settlements(notice one the villages in the middle of the sanctaury). we are currently trying to cope up with some of these managemnt issues threatening the giraffes.

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Friends, this blog post is a collection of photos to give you more insight into our lives and environment.

This dry country is our home. We are pastoralists - we depend on our goats and camels for almost everything.  We do not have piped water - it is fetched from the river in jerry cans and is carried to our houses. We are also doing some farming especially near the river.

Gerenuk are amongst the most beautiful of African antelopes - few people eat them, they are believed to cause sterility in men!

Do you know what these giraffe are doing?

I will be posting more often once I have a computer. I really appreciate all the donations that have already been received - however we are still short of a few hundred dollars.

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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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I am very delighted to announce that i have joined the universty of Nairobi to study Msc in Conservation Biology. I have just started the course which is quite demnaing. this is to add on my previous in Wildlife Conservation from the same university. I will based in Nairobi for the next seven months but with frequent visits to the Sanctuary to ensure the smooth runing of the place. I also intend to do my project in the same sanctuary which is about 370 Kilometers from Nairobi.
Thank you all for your support.
Abdullahi Hussein

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The giraffes in our sanctuary are doing extremely well and the community are increasingly positive and supportive. I wish I could keep you updated more frequently but in order to make posts on my blog I need to walk 5 km to Garissa and download photos from my camera into a computer at an internet cafe. This can be very inconvenient due to the queues, delays and cost. It means I can’t write my posts from the field which is what I really want to do …

Having a computer is more important than the blog,however, I really need to have continuous access to a computer to record the data on giraffes and community activities, to prepare documents, trainings and reports.

Today my biggest hurdle is getting a computer. It cost me USD 1000 to buy a lap top in Nairobi or Mombasa. Please help if you can by making a donation towards the first Giraffe Sanctuary computer. WildlifeDirect have promised to help me to purchase the machine once I have the donations, and to provide the necessary software.

Thank you all for hearing my plea

Abdulahi Hussein
Manager, The Giraffe Sanctuary

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Today i would like to share the pictures of some of our scouts members who generally oversee day to day activities of the giraffes. As you may notice these volunteer scouts lack uniforms which could give them an identity and could help in their recognition by government institutions. Finally I would to acknowledge the 70 USD donation that we got from Antonio.c. This will definately boost our monitoring efforts in the sanctuary.

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It is a sad moment for the giraffe sanctuary community since we lost a mature female giraffe to poachers last week. The poor animal was speared on the underbelly but did not die immediately and ran away with serious injuries.Sadly the giraffe succumbed to the injuries later and was found dead by the sanctuary’s scouts during one of their regular patrols.

Poaching has been known to be rampant along watering routes and corridors during the dry season.We have reported the matter to the District Kenya Wildlife Service Representatives who are currently following up the issue. I would like also to say thank you for our dedicated scouts for the formidable job they are doing in saving the giraffes.
Finally I would like to acknowledge the kind donation of USD 50 from Kathy.S which will assist greatly in our monitoring efforts.

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