GIS training in Samburu
Category: FoASF staff, General | Date: Jan 30 2009 | By: davidngala
GIS Training in Samburu.
Geographical Information System (GIS) is a conservation tool that is slowly gaining momentum in today’s conservation world. Recently the Ecological Society of Eastern Africa also know as ESEA organized for a GIS training that was held at the Earth Watch Institute in Samburu - Kenya.
Participants at the GIS training.
The training targeted users of GIS in the field in conservation work, its aim was to help users become familiar with the use of GIS as a conservation tool and how to use it in mapping issues of importance in conservation.
Participants are shown how to use a GPS.
Elepehants at Sambur Nature Reserve, where we carried out our field work.
The training drew participants from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. This training gave the participants insight on the of GIS and the use of a GPS as a data entry tool. The FoASF manager, Caroline Lumosi was among the participants who benefited from the training. The new skill gained will be of a valuable resource for FoASF in mapping the illegal activities in the forest.
GIS training participants.
For more information concerning training opportunities with ESEA kindly visit www.ecsea.org
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Finland Geography students visit Arabuko-Sokoke and its environs.
Category: General | Date: Jan 28 2009 | By: davidngala
Finland Geography students visit Arabuko-Sokoke and its environs.
Arabuko-Sokoke recently received students from the University of Helsinki in Finland who were on a tour to learn on the conservation efforts in Arabuko-Sokoke and what can be replicated in Dakacha woodland.
The students in the Forest.
The students are carrying out a study in Taita on impact of community participation on natural resource management. Arabuko-Sokoke area has been taken as a baseline study to evaluate the impacts and outcome of community participation.
Illegal charcoal burning in Dakacha woodlands.
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Final day of Darwin Film editing course
Category: FoASF staff, General | Date: Nov 25 2008 | By: davidngala
Final day of Darwin film editing course.
What has a beginning has an end, the final day of the five day editing course finally came. It was hard to believe that within a short time we were able to edit 9 different film all targeted to various audience. The beginning looked almost impossible, however the impossible became possible. We produced 4 - 5minute films and 5 - 9 minute films all on various aspects of the environment, wetlands, waste, forests, rivers and fish.
We will be soon uploading the videos.
The whole editing crew.
Caroline Lumosi.
Day two of Film training
Category: FoASF staff, General | Date: Nov 19 2008 | By: davidngala
Day two of film training
Day two of film training started rather on a frustrating note, we were to edit our previous films geared towards a different audience, the trick was locating our capture scratch, the raw material, most of the files were offline and we could not locate the source of the disk to reconnect them on line. It was a bit frustrating as we did not have enough time to work on our films yet we were taken quite a back, by the time we located our files we had almost lost a half day and we had to burn the midnight light to keep on track.
during the training
Busy at work
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FoASF benefits from Darwin Community Based Conservation Film Training
Category: FoASF staff, General | Date: Nov 18 2008 | By: davidngala
This week I will be in Naivasha for a one week training on making community based conservation films with support from Dr. david Harper of the University of Leicester in the UK and the Darwin Intiative.
The course is am enhancement of a pervious course we did in July, I was among a group of trainees from Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia who participated in the first training where we made community films on various components of the environment, basically this week will be a further editing course to use the same material to make a different film targeting different audiences. at the end of the day these films will be used as an educative tool to community members, policy markers, school children… name it, they will be distrubuted to various organizations and institutions to achieve this purpose.
I left Gede on Friday evening for Naivasha, I had a quick stop over in Nairobi then proceeded to Naivasha together with the Darwin - Leicester team. We arrived at our rendezvous at United Kenya club and left from Naivasha just after 3 pm. The trip to Naivasha was great although I have been to Naivasha many times, I never stop loving it, and its scenery, the great rift valley being one of them, it stretches all the way from Ethiopia all the way down to Tanzania, it is said to be an aftermath of the great tectonic movement when the earth was being formed and what was left was a huge trench that has become a great valley with undulating hills and very beautiful scenery, the look out point stood at about 800ft above sea level, overlooking this great cliff was this massive deep trench with beauty scenery no words can explain this.
The hills at the escarpments.
The weather here was cool and then slightly moved to cold, the sun was quickly disappearing beyond the clouds and as we continued on at the rift valley the surrounding vegetation was a vast of green carpet, all around was green, green and more green, wow, now I may sound like a tourist yet am not but at this point am proud to be living in such a beauty country like Kenya. The roads were great, smooth and I left like we should just continue driving forever, the traffic was not as bad although Naivasha highway is well know to be a transit point to western part of Kenya hence huge truck filled the road, from oil transporters to flowers exporters name it all sorts of truck could be seen on the highway.
One of the vehicle we used passing the rift valley.
As we proceeds on among the vast greenness I saw dots of white, at first I did not know what they represented but as we drove close by I actually identified that those dots of white were actually IDP camps (internal displaced people), one of the outcome of the post election violence, it was not a pretty sight as I somehow felt sad that in the midst of all this beauty was these people who have no home and no where to go, that was really sad.
view from the rift valley.
I slowly drifted away reading the newspaper as the rest of the team was first asleep I guess from the exhaustion of traveling from far one of them was from Tanzania and the other from Ethiopia and our trainer is from UK, the newspaper somehow seemed interesting , well that is you are crazy about Obama as I am or do I say all Kenyans are or is it all Africans, the world.. whatever call it what you may but am sure glad Obama won, for me it represents a beacon of hope that I can make it in life if am determined to and focus on it, it was great reading about him and I guess for the next few months the pare will be just Obama this and Obama that and Michelle this and first family and first dog… ok sometimes it gets crazy so drifting from the Obama maniac from the papers my eyes focus on yet something interesting to me just as we were approaching Naivasha, mount Longonot which is one of Kenya crater mountain could be seen from a distance, again the view was great, as the sun set in the horizon the beautiful shadow it cast made the mountain look more beautiful than I have even seen it. A few meters from that was this small wood lot of eucalyptus trees that ere farmed form timber, I think this is a great idea and reduces pressure on indigenous trees for timber, just farther on the magnificent view of the lake could be seen, Lake Naivasha a fresh water lake in Kenya is well know for its biodiversity from the fish eagle, the hippos and others found in the lake, and before long as I was enjoying the view of the lake, we had arrived to the flower town, Naivasha can be referred to as the flower farm of Kenya as it has the highest number of flower farms, we headed down at south lake where we were to set camp at Kijabe farm in tented camps. We will be here for the next one week and already am liking it, it’s a good feeling begin away from the ocean and forest and enjoying the different weather, as I got to bed I cover myself with two blankest and have two jumpers a very contrast of what I have in the coast, we star the training tomorrow as I decide to hit the sack early to be fresh tomorrow morning.
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Nature trail clearing at Arabuko-Sokoke forest
Category: Forest surveys, Forest wildlife, General | Date: Nov 11 2008 | By: davidngala
Nature trail clearing at Arabuko-Sokoke Forest.
This past week has been a hectic and busy week for us here at FoASF. The nature trails in Arabuko-Sokoke forest have been overgrown with trees. Elephants have not made it easy either, by trampling on trees and blocking the roads. The trails have hence not been used for a while especially the elephant track which has long needed some work to be done on it.
one of the overgrown trails at the forest.
From 6th November 2008 to 10th November we had a visit from the Nature Kenya Youth committee from Nairobi, who came with an aim to help out clear the nature trails and create awareness on the importance of the forest.
Arrival day - all clean and smart!
This group was a fun some group which energized youth ready to help out in the forest. So could these urbanists (most of them were from the big city- Nairobi) really slash and cut trees, considering they are not used to this, how were they to cope with high temperatures of 30˚C and above at the coast, would they really make it? The next four days were days well spend in the forest and can only be described visually.
We are here to work - (part of the team)
To be continued……
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Environmental awareness at Ganda
Category: General | Date: Oct 27 2008 | By: davidngala
I travelled north of Arabuko-Sokoke forest to a place called Ganda at the chief’s office to meet with the chief to discuss how we can educate the community on environmental issues. The chief was to arrange a chiefs baraza to gather more community members to educate them on environmental issues.
Tree nursery
David Ngala
Friends of Arabuko-Sokoke Forest
Conservation Officer
E-mail:friendsofasf@gmail.com
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Moving to Arabuko
Category: General | Date: Sep 01 2008 | By: davidngala
Hi sorry we have not been online for a while, we were having network issues, kindly bear with us.
Hi this is Carol,
The long awaited journey has finally come, I will be moving to Arabuko this coming weekend and I hope to be meeting up with the rest of our team that is David and Mary. I have been in Nairobi following up on a few details for FoASF - Friends of Arabuko Sokoke and I got the chance to meet up with part of the team at Wildlife direct who have been a big help in helping us restructure our blog.
A path in Arabuko Sokoke Forest.
As I take up this position at Arabuko, am anxious to meet David Ngala and it will be an honour to work with him after having heard so much about him. FoASF needs some revamping in its activities and this will be one of my duties, to reactivate the activities at FoASF and to guide and help David in his field research work.
A tree platform at Arabuko Sokoke Forest
While in Nairobi I also got a chance to speak to Friends of Nairobi Arboretum (FONA) and Friends of City Park (FoCP) who were quite encouraging and gave us tips of how to turn around FoASF into an active organization.
I also got chance to meet with Colin Jackson a while back and he was able to brief me on FoASF and what FoASF has done so far, in as much as I will be technically running the show on my own with the help of my team and the A Rocha team at Mwamba.
I hope the net at Watamu or rather Gede will be fairly ok, so that I may be updating you how far we have come in our efforts as FoASF.
Thanks for all your support and I look forward to hearing from you guys as well,
Laterz
Carol
FoASF upgrading its Blog - and tips on shopping smart!.
Category: General | Date: Aug 19 2008 | By: davidngala
Hey guys, this is Carol,
With the excitement on blogging catching on with me, we at FoASF have decideded to restructure and reorganize our blog to be more reader-friendly, this has been a long journey as we have not been having constant internet connection down at Watamu. I am currently in Nairobi and am taking this opportunity to get as much internet connection as possible. I thought it wise to visit Wildlifedirect offices while in Nairobi and to speak to the experts on how to blog and upgrade our blog.
Yesterday I was trained by Samuel of Wildlifedirect on the 101 of blogging , uploading photos , working with different themes, applications some of which i had no idea about. I also got to experiment with a new programme that helps you to reduce the size and pixel of photos and upload them easily into your text. I also got a programme that can help me work on our blog while offline and then connect to the net when i need to publish the blog, this is really cool as it will save us a lot of cash on internet connection. Kindly bear with us we upgrade our blog.
On shopping smart!!
I was excited to learn all this new stuff. As I left Wildlifedirect offices and headed to town, I met a friend who wanted some help in choosing African antiques to decorate her new home, it was a delight for me to take her round shopping as i also have an eye for African antiques. The feel of the different designs, the texture, the history, the culture all so rich and untapped. it just gives me an inspiration and makes me feel proud to be African and for that matter Kenyan.
As we were shopping we came across some really cool stuff, batik designs, wood carvings of different animal species, small carvings of wildlife, antiques made from recycled materials such as plastic, wire (got from desnaring activities) banana fibres among others cool materials. i felt like buying everything in the shop (if i could, that is). one thing that crossed my mind was the wood used for caving, some animal wood cavings were very expensive while others were relatively affordable, as I enquired why I was told its because of the type of wood that is used. Some wood is really expensive as its hardwood and its indigenous and only found in specific areas in Kenya, while other types of wood can easily be found so its not as expensive. This was really intersting to me, as i walked home i thought of all the trees that had to face the saw because of wood craving, to me its really sad, i think people should still make antiques but should be carefuuly on which wood they used and for those of us who buy them we should enquire about the products the materials etc…….. before we buy.
Photos of cut trees.
At Arabuko Sokoke Forest a lot of trees are illegally being cut down to meet the needs of the community members. At FoASF these are some of the activities we do, like reporting on these illegal activities, producing GIS maps that show the paths taken by the locals as some cut the trees.
Unedited waypoints from a GPS - David has been tracking some of these illegal paths at Arabuko Sokoke Forest.
The bottom line is lets shop smart and be carefuly on the products we buy, not only forest products but also wildlife products, as we continue to buy such products we indirectly encouarge deforestation and destruction of the ecosytem in the name of having beautiful antiques. As lovers of nature we should ensure we practice what we preach. Some really cool materials that can be options of wood are plasta of paris, receyled wire, deadwood not fresh woood among others.
I have come to realize these illegal activities will only seize if the people see the value of the forest in other terms - hence our work on conservation and awareness goes on…….. support us as we carry on our work …. add your voice.
A camera at LAST!!
Category: General | Date: May 01 2008 | By: admin
A wee while back we received a wonderfully generous donation pretty much out of the blue to buy a digital camera for David so he can really document the activities he’s seeing in the forest. Well… I managed to get a very neat Canon at Duty Free that is just the job for him. The picture below was David seeing the camera for the first time and VERY happy at the thought of FINALLY having one - he’s been asking for one for about three years!! I’ve actually had to travel so haven’t been able to hold of the photos he’s been taking but will try and have them sent so we can post them for all to see what David (”Professor Notorious” he’s known as by the other bird guides at the forest!! - he’s so notorious for his proactive conservation work and his birding skills…!!).
Once again a big THANK YOU to Theresa for the generous gift to get the camera…
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