Ewaso Lions

Category: Other news | Date: Jan 14 2009 | By: ewasolions

I want to take this opportunity to write about a recent trip I made to the US and the wildlife programme I was involved in.

I traveled to Washington DC in early December 2008 to graduate from the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders (EWCL) programme.  The EWCL process is guided by a Board of Directors comprised of established wildlife professionals who offer training, lectures, career advice, and guidance on the group projects.

EWCL is jointly funded by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Defenders of Wildlife, White Oak Conservation Center/Howard Gilman Foundation, the Wildlife Conservation Network and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

This was a 2- year programme  which included 1 week in the US in April 2007 (click here for a summary of the first training session) and 1 week in April 2008 (click here for a report from this session) at the White Oak Conservation Centre near Jacksonville, Florida, and then a few days in Washington DC to wrap up and graduate from the programme.

The training during the 2 sessions at White Oak included formal lectures, discussions, and exercises taught by seasoned wildlife conservation professionals as well as trainers in the field of leadership development and personal growth. Session topics included leadership skills, monitoring and evaluation, fundraising, team building, international campaigning, marketing, integrating media, building collaborations, public speaking, negotiation, networking and more. We also had the opportunity to gain advice on career goals and next steps during one-on-one mentor sessions with EWCL Board Members and EWCL Alumni from the previous class.

The 2007/2008 EWCL class

Our class of 21 conservationists selected four conservation topics that were addressed in strategic projects over the two years using skills acquired through EWCL training.  I was part of the Okapi Conservation Education Project.  We worked on this project for 2 years, in collaboration with Gilman International Conservation and their team in Epulu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (see their blog with WildlifeDirect  -click here).

With an okapi at the White Oak Centre

The EWCL Okapi project group assisted  in the creation of a conservation education video focusing on the importance of invaluable, and increasingly exploited, wildlife and natural resources in the DRC’s Okapi Wildlife Reserve (OWR) - using the Okapi as a flagship species.  To date, our project group raised over $7,000.00 to assist in training Gilman International Conservation’s (GIC) Education Director based in the OWR to compile and edit video footage gathered in the field.

EWCL okapi project group members from left to right: Kate Eschelbach (US Fish & Wildlife), me,  Nilanga Jayasinghe (Defenders of Wildlife) and Coffy Bennis (Busch Gardens)

The last training session in Washington DC included presentations on communications, foreign assistance reform and climate change.  We were also given the opportunity to present our respective projects to EWCL friends, board members and invited VIP guests.  The training ended with a graduation ceremony.

Receiving the graduation certificate (Photo credit: Melissa Normann)

It was a fantastic and rewarding 2-year experience and I was very honoured to be one of the first international participants.  For me personally, it was great to get a different perspective of conservation and experiences that all the US participants had to offer and I hope that I was able to offer a small insight into conservation issues faced in Kenya.  The training received has been so useful and the timing perfect as I set up the Ewaso Lion Project.