More about Lewa

Here are some some highlights from the Lewa website (some of this is copied...):

The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy is about 4 hours drive north of Nairobi

Lewa was started as a sanctuary for the black rhino. The species were becoming endangered and in the 1970s, populations fell from 20,000 to an estimated 300.

David Craig set aside 5000 acres of his family's ranch as the Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary, and they recruited game trackers, bush pilots, veterinarians and others to protect Kenya's rhinos. For the next few years they captured and relocated every remaining wild rhino in northern Kenya to the refuge. This program was so successful that more land was needed and the Craigs subsequently dedicated their entire ranch to conservation, forming the Lewa Wildlife conservancy in 1995.

Every year Lewa hosts the Safaricom Marathon, http://www.marathontours.com/index.cfm?pid=10226. The run is across the plains among wild animals, looks really cool, I will be there when this event is going on, I'm not sure I will run it though!

Lewa has 7 rural communities on the borders of the conservancy and it helps them out with health care, education, water management, and other social support programs.

Lewa Wildlife conservancy is known worldwide for its standards of wildlife conservation. Today, Lewa employs more than 300 people and encompasses the 40,000 acres owned by the Craig’s, an additional 8,000 acres owned by others and 14,000 acres of national forest.

Its rhino population has grown steadily, not only restoring local numbers but enabling black rhino reintroduction in regions where they long had been absent. Lewa is also a founding member of and manages black rhino conservation and security in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a 90,000-acre reserve near Lewa that protects the largest single population of black rhinos in Kenya.

‘Working as a catalyst for the conservation of species and its habitat via the protection and management of species, the initiation and support of community conservation and development program and the education of neighbouring areas in the value of wildlife’. - The Lewa mission statement

Welcome

This summer I will be traveling to Kenya and this blog is for me to keep in touch with everybody while I am away. I will update as much as possible, I am hoping I will have access to internet often.

I will be leaving from the Vancouver airport on May 6th and I will be returning on August 3rd.

For the first 9 weeks I will be volunteering at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy - http://www.lewa.org/

Lewa is the home of the Black Rhino, Grevy's Zebra, Lions, Elephants and lots of other cool wildlife. I look forward to meeting some of them.

I will be working with "Logistical Support" and hopefully I can put some of my engineering education to good use. I am not entirely sure what I will be doing day to day but I am very flexible and I feel that I have a lot to offer.

After Lewa I will have 3 weeks free so I have a few plans so far - One is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, then either going to Mombasa (Kenya coast) or Lake Victoria. I am very excited and I have lots to plan.

Anyways keep posted for more to come!