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Alison M. Jones: Conservation NGOs
(Non Governmental Organizations)
Images and website content © Alison M. Jones. All rights reserved.
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Conservation NGOs
Mara Conservancy (Kenya): Since its inception in 2001, Alison has supported and documented community-based conservancy. In March 2006 the board’s insistence on accountability and transparency despite a myriad of pressures and and the chief executive’s anti-poaching successes was rewarded by a new 10-year contract. Between the Mara River and the Isuria Escarpment, the Mara Triangle annually attracts thousands of tourists and two million wildebeest and zebra seeking its green grasses and river. This link expands on the history and issues surrounding instituting a new approach based on the highest international standards. (Web site: The Mara Conservancy).
Nech Sar N.P. (Ethiopia), currently managed by African Parks Foundation: Alison visited this park Sept. 2005 and was stunned by the beauty and diversity of this threatened area that straddles Lakes Chamo and Abaya and stretches up to the Guge Mountains. She investigated its management problems of displaced settlers, invasive flora and lack of species inventories in a Forest Ecology course at Columbia University. Here is a summary of her report (PDF, 208 KB): “A Proposed Management Plan for Ethiopia’s Nech Sar National Park, based on lessons learned from Kenya’s Mara Conservancy.” The complete report is available for download as a PDF, 16 MB, or low-res PDF, 4 MB.
David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (Kenya): This Trust, set up by Dame Daphne Sheldrick, is named for her husband who was warden of Tsavo National Park for 30 years. In 1991 Alison first met Daphne, spending a week in Tsavo with her as she told of being a warden’s wife trying to raise orphaned baby elephants David would bring home. Through trial and error Daphne discovered the right formula to feed them and substituted trained human keepers for their natural mothers, which usually had been shot by poachers. Daphne has raised and reintroduced to the bush an entire herd of elephants one by one, and keeps working at home and in international forums such as CITES to save these endangered infants flown to her from all over Kenya. (Web site: David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust).
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