FIGHTING POACHING TO PRESERVE WILDLIFE IN KENYA

finding long-term solutions that involve the Maasai communities in conservation efforts to protect their heritage & their futures.

ATCF Contribution: $20,000

Grant Awarded: 2019

Location: Maasai mara, kenya

IMPACT: Decreasing poaching activity in The Mara Triangle

Maasai Mara's charismatic wildlife populations attract more than 150,000 tourists each year, sustaining an economy that employs many thousands of Kenyans and preserves millions of wild animals. The Anne K. Taylor Fund's Anti-Poaching project is seeking funding to continue removing deadly poaching snares from critical habitat, rescuing wounded animals, and supporting local education initiatives aimed at creating an environmentally sustainable and tourism-friendly economy.

The ATCF and its members have awarded The Anne K. Taylor Fund $20,000 to provide long-term protection of an environmental resource, wildland, waterway or threatened species and fight poaching to preserve wildlife in Kenya.

THE ISSUE

To find both short and long-term solutions that involve the Maasai communities in conservation efforts to protect their heritage and their futures.

THE GOAL

This project is ongoing until bushmeat poaching and trophy poaching are as rare in Maasai Mara National Reserve as they are in Yellowstone National Park, USA. By maintaining a steady legal pressure on poachers that are caught, dismantling and removing their traps as well as their habitat-ruining charcoal production, we aim to make poaching a most un-profitable and risky venture. At the same time, by working in schools to improve health and hygiene, especially for young women, we hope to see the next generation of Maasai completing their schooling and diversifying their income streams beyond herding, poaching, and logging.

impacts

• Decreasing poaching activity in The Mara Triangle (Goal: 1000 snares removed from the Mara Triangle, and rescue 20 live animals found in them)

• Halting habitat destruction in critical forests bordering the Mara Triangle (Goal: 400 illegal charcoal kilns destroyed)

• Reframing the cultural norms around killing lions (Goal: Successfully mediate all impromptu “retaliation hunts” by herders who have lost livestock to lions, so that zero lions are killed)

• Increasing the number of students, especially women, that finish school (Goal: Disseminating eco-friendly, reusable, sanitary, menstrual hygiene management kits to 1000 young women students through health workshops at least 20 local schools)

PROJECT UPDATES

Coming soon…

MORE ABOUT the anne k. taylor fund

The Anne K. Taylor Fund (AKTF) has been fighting poaching, mitigating human-wildlife conflict, and protecting habitat since 1999. Our teams are comprised of local Maasai community members who use their naturalist skills to find and dismantle camouflaged poaching traps (snares), release trapped animals, and assist veterinarians in treating any injured ones. Since we began keeping track in 2008, our teams have removed 7,265 snares from the Mara Triangle, and, because one snare can be reused over and over again to capture dozens of animals, the snares we have removed represent many more thousands of animals rescued. Our teams also ambush and destroy poachers’ camps, which often involve illegal, habitat-ruining charcoal-making operations, and they support local law enforcement agencies in arresting any poachers we can capture. In addition to these direct conservation actions, we also help herders fortify their livestock enclosures against attacks from wild predators, thereby reducing herders’ desire to kill lions, leopards, and hyenas in retaliation for lost livestock.

“I am at a loss for words reading this amazing news! Thank you so much. I cannot tell you what a difference this will make to our work in the Mara. A million thanks to you and all who made the decision to support us so generously. WOW! DOUBLE WOW! Thank you, thank you! We guarantee to you and all who made this decision that every penny will be put in the field where it belongs….and it will go so far to achieving so much.” - Anne K Taylor, Founder