Born Free

Category: Born Free, Born Free Ethiopia | Date: Jul 13 2009 | By: bornfree

Good news and bad.

I have had several meetings with the local community (one with the Mayor of Holeta in attendance) to explain the Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre project and how local communities will benefit from labour contracts, business and job opportunities. The local farmers, despite initially being wary of the project, are now very supportive, so I hope over the coming months we can build a strong working neighbourly relationship with our neighbours.

However, news spreads fast. As I had feared, the minute the story got out that the Ministry of National Defence (MOND) had given up the site, a number of AK47-weilding wood cutters and looters have been ‘entrepreneurial’ with our site. Steel reinforcing bars have been chiselled out of some of the ruined buildings and spirited away by moonlight. Far worse, over 100 trees have been felled and branches lopped off some of the old acacia. Although we had been told that the MOND guards would continue to guard the site until we had recruited our own security team, if any MOND guards were still employed, they must have been elsewhere.

The last two weeks have been exhausting with a desperate drive to recruit a security team while every night more trees vanished. To see a new stump where once stood a beautiful old tree has to be one of the most disheartening sights, especially as I have battled for two years to get the land and one of the main reasons for selecting the site was the wonderful mature trees providing natural shade for the future enclosures.

The Holeta administration have been fantastic in recommending suitable applicants for the security team and we now have an enthusiastic and able security team under the management of the charming and efficient ex-army Major Feyisa. The Major is trying to find out who felled the trees as it was obviously a commercial initiative with the timber taken for sale in Addis Ababa. The thieves took quite a risk since Ethiopian law is very strict in order to protect the last areas of woodland and forest in the country. If caught stealing timber thieves can expect a 15 year prison sentence. I was pleased to hear that the local community are not responsible.

Major Feyisa will manage a team of 15 that will split into shifts to patrol the site 24 hours, every day of the week. We have drafted the byelaws for the site and already the security team have successfully prevented some timber thieves.

Bereket (on the left of picture) discussing draft site bye-laws with the Major (pictured holding the blue folder) and the first security team recruits © BFF /JY

The job requires firm, but diplomatic negotiating skills since our security team carry sticks and the timber thieves have AK-47 semi-automatic rifles, chain saws and axes. (One of the major threats to wildlife in Ethiopia is the profusion of firearms acquired during past times of civil strife. Many pastoralists and farmers carry AK-47 rifles and the ease of killing wildlife for meat or for sport has decimated wildlife populations in almost all of the protected areas of land in Ethiopia.) Born Free Foundation Ethiopia will try to secure the land without the use of guns, but we may have to arm the guards who work the night shift.

It is very hard to guard the site when there is no perimeter fence, and in a truly Catch-22 situation, I have been unable to deliver the poles and wire to build the perimeter fence until we had security in place. As soon as we have a full security team and shifts covering all 24 hours a day, we can start the construction of the perimeter fence.

The photo shows some of the security team at an early briefing meeting. I am now equipping everyone with uniforms, and the Major will be training the team, so I hope you will notice a big change when I photograph the team in a week or so!

Although, support for the animals in our care is vital and popular, do please consider supporting operational items such as our Security team. Sponsoring a Major and his security team may not be as heart-warming as sponsoring a cheetah cub, but without security we will have no trees on our site.

The annual budget for our Security Team is UK£ 15,000. Please help if you can.