Born Free

Category: Lilongwe Wildlife Centre | Date: Aug 25 2008 | By: bornfree

There is a leopard basking in the early morning Malawian Sun just fifty metres away, its camouflage is fantastic with only its tail giving its position away. At night, laughing hyenas can be heard, their tracks from the previous night criss-cross the path in front of me. A troop of yellow baboons stretches its legs nearby. The remarkable thing is that I am not in a national park; I am in the capital city of Malawi, at the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre and I’m enjoying every minute of it.

The Lilongwe wildlife centre is a wildlife rehabilitation and rescue centre, combined with a large wilderness zone, providing an oasis right in the centre of the city for wildlife that has been rescued, confiscated or relocated from poachers, the illegal pet trade, zoos and other organisations. The centre provides several functions from rehabilitation to release combined with education programmes, for all levels and ages, about how people and wildlife are undeniably linked. For this reason the centre is being developed as a “People and Wildlife” centre, where key messages aim to reduce poaching and trading while raising an appreciation, and ultimately an understanding, of the natural world through community support, co-operation and education.

 Malawi is a beautiful country with exceptionally friendly people and although I have only been here for a few weeks, it already feels like home. As the new Education Manager, it is my role to expand on the fantastic work of the small but dedicated education team, in making sure that the Malawian public and tourists alike have the opportunity to find out how wildlife and sustainability can benefit the future development of Malawi. 

For the last few days I have been familiarising myself with the huge scale of the centre, the existing education and community outreach programmes and the whole team, the majority of which are Malawian. Employment, and more importantly support, of local community staff is essential in any People and Wildlife initiative so it is fantastic to see this in practice and working so well. It is now a case of adding to the existing educational programmes and facilities in order to make sure that the educational activities generate enough income to ideally make a profit which can be put straight back into the vital work of the centre.

That’s all for now, as I’m off to radio track one of our newly released animals, a genet by the name of J.D. (it looks like a cross between a ferret, a cat and a raccoon!) which has been released into the large protected wilderness zone around the centre. It’s one of many success stories to come thanks to the support of the Born Free Foundation and our other supporters.

Cheerio
Bruce – Education Manager at the LLWC

Tags: education, Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, Malawi