Born Free

Born Free has two sanctuaries situated on Shamwari Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Both these sanctuaries have fully equipped education centres. Our education program has been running since 1999 with the opening of our first sanctuary the Julie Ward Centre. We work closely with schools from across the country and with our local communities. Our education program gives children an opportunity to learn about Born Free and its principals and to see the amazing wildlife of the Eastern Cape roaming free on Shamwari. Through the Born Free Global Friends Campaign and corporate sponsorship we are able to help five schools in close vicinity to the sanctuaries with much needed equipment and infrastructure.  With our community projects we hope to empower people by giving them necessary skills to generate income and we are currently training locals from Paterson as field guides.

Education is very important to us as it is the only way that beautiful animals like the ones we have in our sanctuaries will stop ending up in the conditions in which they are found. All the rescued lions and leopards at our sanctuaries are ambassadors for other captive wild animals living in horrific conditions. Born Free/Shamwari has a very dedicated and dynamic education team who works closely with the animal care team and often assists with the care of the animals.

Christine Le Roux, Education Manager
My name is Christine Le Roux and I truly am the luckiest person alive as everyday from 8am to 5pm I get to live out my dream. Environmental Education is my biggest passion and I am so privileged to have a job that allows me to live out this passion each day. It is great working for an organization such as Born Free which allows me to make a difference in the world.

 My duties include the running of the education program and I am responsible for ensuring that a valid conservation educational experience is offered to all students and that sustainable community projects are run. I am also in charge of the Global Friends Campaign in South Africa and I approach companies for additional sponsorship for the schools as we have to share our funds with five schools.

This year is very exciting for me as in April I will have officially been working for BFF/Shamwari for a year. I will also be starting with a project that very close to my heart known as Eco-Schools. Eco-Schools is an international program that encourages schools to live sustainably, manage resources wisely and improve environmental management. It incorporates environmental learning with the school curriculum. Each of the schools will choose one of the five themes (Healthy Living, Resource Management, Nature and Biodiversity, Heritage and Culture or Local and Global Issues). They then have to do a project and lesson plans relating to the theme. For more info on Eco-Schools visit there website at: www.wessa.org.za/eduecoschools.asp

I will be updating you all on our blog with all the fun and exciting things our education department gets up to!

Matthews Dingaan, Education Assistant Julie Ward Centre
My name is Matthews Dingaan and I am the newest addition to the Born Free Shamwari Education Team. I love being outdoors working with children, teaching them about conservation and why wild animals should be kept in the wild.  I like helping out with the animal care team as that way I get to care for the animals which is also a great passion of mine. I am happy to be part of the team and I look forward to influencing the lives children in a positive way.

Sidney Clay, Animal Care Assistant
My name is Sidney Clay and I have been working for Born Free/Shamwari for over 6 years now. Until very recently I was involved in the Education Department but felt that I needed a change in focus after such a long time. Education still remains very close to my heart and I help out with the education team where ever I can. I have been living in the Paterson community for many years and I am well known by the people. Because I am part of the community and have a great understanding of how think and work I act as the community liaison for the Born Free/Shamwari team.

For more information on the work Born Free undertakes rescuing big cats from horrific conditions in zoos and circuses, please click here

Thanks for all the comments and donations following the previous Blogs.

Apologies for the lengthy delay since the last Blog. Ethiopia may be seven years behind the rest of the world (this year it is 2001) so maybe that explains why I always seem to be catching up and need a few more hours in each day.

As usual with this project, I have both good and not-so-good news to report. The good news is after a year of negotiations and meetings, the land for the new Wildlife Centre has officially been transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Office of the President of Ethiopia and from the President’s Office to Ethiopia Wildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA). This really is quite a milestone and I am immensely grateful to His Excellency President Girma, his son, and the team at the President’s Office for all their support this past year. I am now finalising a Land Management Agreement with EWCA, but since they have already signed a Project Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding for the new Centre project, this is more of a formality.

The not-so-good news is that the Ministry of Defence have asked for a hefty compensation for the living trees on the site, so back I go to the negotiating table! It has taken more patience than I knew I possessed to get this far, I now need to find a little more!

Meanwhile, the land boundary demarcation stones have been prepared, so as soon as I can get the compensation figure reduced or waived, we can get started with the boundary demarcation and perimeter fencing. When we actually get started on the construction I think my whoop of joy and relief will be heard around the planet!

Enough of red tape. This Blog is to share the story of Menelik, the cheetah cub that I am now caring for.

The cub was found by a development worker in a dusty town on the edge of a north east desert of Ethiopia. The cub was tied by a string at the back of a shop.

The staff at the shop said it was a tiger, but most Ethiopian’s think Tiger is the English word for cheetah. The cub was very small, clearly malnourished and so covered in dust that the dust combined with the furry shoulder mantle that all cheetah cubs have made the cub look as though it did have stripes! The development worker begged the shop assistant to let her take the cub to a vet in Addis. The shop assistant refused and alternately patted and then kicked the cub. The development worker took a digital photo and tried to convince as many people as possible in the town that the animal needed medical care. A few people humoured her, but in a country where life is tough, the welfare of an animal did not have much of a priority. The development worker circulated her photos to friends and colleagues and one ended up being forwarded to me at Born Free Foundation Ethiopia.

After the Wildlife Authority had given permission for the animal to be confiscated, a veterinarian who generously donates her time to Born Free Foundation Ethiopia collected the cub and had to give it intensive care for a few days. The cub had been fed such a poor diet it could hardly use its back legs.

The couple who had so successfully cared for Sheba (Story in Blog 5) agreed to provide the cub with a home for a few weeks until I had built a temporary enclosure in the Born Free Addis office compound.

I collected the cub on 24 November and named him ‘Menelik’ after the famous Ethiopian Emperor and because I have never known a cat that licks so much. The cub seems to be particularly fond of licking my bald head. That rough tongue may be great for skin exfoliation, but is ruining my tan!

I have designed the enclosure so that it includes the back door into my office. The cub comes and goes from the garden into the office. He spends most days in the office lying on, or wrestling with, his blanket or watching birds outside the window.

Menelik has settled in well and I hope that when the cub is a bit older, we can introduce him to Sheba and the two male cheetah will share an enclosure at the new Wildlife Centre.

As I write this Blog, Menelik is purring loudly from his blanket. He’s a complete minx and has already managed to shred a rug. He seems to have a fascination with cutlery. In the morning I have my bowl of muesli sitting on the steps that lead down into the cub’s enclosure. Menelik invariably steals the spoon and rushes off to his hay-lined sleeping shed to play with the spoon; flicking it into the air and batting it like a tennis pro.

Please do help our project if you can.

The Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre will cost around UK£600,000 to build and equip, and it will cost UK£ 250,000 (US$ 500,000) per year to fund the Centre and its conservation and education programmes.

The enclosure for Menelik and Sheba, and for other animals at the Wildlife Centre will cost between £12,000 and £40,000 to build.

We must get Menelik and other wildlife in captivity in Ethiopia into spacious enclosures as soon as we can.

And if anyone wants to help pay for the care of Menelik, he costs £2 (US$4) per day to keep at the moment. However, he is growing fast and the costs to keep him will continue to grow – as an adult cheetah it will cost approximately £6 (US$12) per day, or £40 per week to provide care for him.

You can donate at Born Free’s website where the Centre is the subject of our New Year & 25th Anniversary Appeal see www.bornfree.org.uk/give/new-year-appeal/, stating that you would like the funds to go towards the Born Free Ethiopian Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre. 

For more information on Born Free, please visit www.bornfree.org.uk and should you want more information or think you may be able to help please leave a comment here on Wildlife Direct and we will come back to you as soon as possible.

More news in a few days,

James

I’ve just come back from a place called Ilmarba where we’ve been working in this great little school called Olmoti. It’s next to Amboseli National Park. I’ve told you this before, I think, but anyway, when we started work there in 2004, there were about 70 children in the school. And yet, we found many others out herding goats or fetching water.  For Born Free, this wasn’t great.  Because we’re educating the community about wildlife conservation, when children don’t go to school, it’s harder for them to get the message.
 
So we pledged to help build up the school infrastructure and lobby the government to get more teachers on condition that the community brought more children to school.  The community were delighted.
 
We started small, first renovating the existing classrooms and an old dorm that was falling down. The community said that if the school could be turned in to a boarding one, with a place for the children to sleep, then more could attend classes.  By January 2006 the number of kids in school doubled and continued to go up throughout that year.
 
We introduced a group of sponsors interested in supporting the community, through what Born Free calls the ‘Global Friends Programme’.  We raised the money we needed to put in a second dorm so that both boys and girls could sleep in school. Also because the number of kids was increasing practically everyday, we built more classrooms. At the same time, the Government, through the District Education’s Office provided more teachers to cope with the increase in enrolment. There was a lot of progress in 2007.
 
Now there are 282 children enrolled at the school – with about 180 using the boarding facilities! There are 4 new classrooms and a brand new dorm and in total, the school has 8 classrooms and 2 dorms. Which is exactly what they wanted. 
 
You should have seen the faces of the little children when we drove in there last week accompanied by the people who had sponsored all the new developments!  I hope the pics I took of my colleague Manoa and the children, show the joy we saw.

Alice

Thanks for all the comments and donations following the previous Blogs.

Apologies for the delay in updating this Blog site. I’ve been in England for a month at a series of project planning meetings with Born Free. Although the Born Free team offer support from UK and USA, I am on my own out here in Ethiopia and sometimes the difficulty of this job and physical distance from family and friends do make one feel very alone. For those aspiring wildlife conservationists out there, make sure you are incredibly self-motivated and take a break every so often to catch up with family and friends.

This week’s Blog is all about a cheetah called Sheba. The name Sheba reminds most people of the Queen of Sheba, but in fact the cub is male. Sheba being the Amharic word for lame.

Back in 2006, I had just arrived in Ethiopia to work for another wildlife organisation in Omo National Park in the southwest of the country. While at meetings in Addis I heard about a young orphaned cheetah cub that was being looked after by an American veterinarian and his wife. The cub had been confiscated from an animal trader. Cheetah have long been used for hunting in the Middle East where they are hand raised and then taken out wearing a hood similar to those used in falconry. At a given moment the hood is removed and the cheetah sprints off to catch the antelope or other ‘prey’. Even today, despite cheetah being endangered and their removal from Ethiopia against the law, cubs are taken from the wild and smuggled out of Ethiopia through Somalia and into the Gulf states to be kept for hunting.

Cheetah that are hand raised can become habituated to humans (I prefer not to use the word tame as they are wild animals). Please don’t get the idea that a cheetah would make a good pet! Firstly, they are threatened enough in the wild, and secondly, despite getting used to humans they are wild animals and should not be kept in captivity.

I have spent several years working with Dr Laurie Marker, the founder and CEO of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. I’m by no means a cheetah expert, but have helped hand raise orphan cubs and helped develop the Cheetah Conservation Fund environmental education programme and set up an innovative business as a conservation tool. (For more information Google ‘Bushblok’).

Back to the six-month old Sheba.

X rays showed that one of the cubs’ rear legs had been broken in the past and had mended badly. Not only was the cub very lame, the cub was also young and inexperienced and chances of surviving in the wild were slim. In the wild, even healthy cheetah cubs with attentive mothers are often killed by hyena, leopard or lion.

As I have mentioned in a previous Blog, the Ethiopia Wildlife Conservation Authority would like to stop the illegal trade in Ethiopian wildlife, but need the Born Free Wildlife Centre to be built so that confiscated, orphaned, or injured animals can be cared for. Wherever possible treated animals would be released back into the wild, but in the case of severely injured animals like Sheba there is no other option than lifetime care in a spacious and naturalistic enclosure. Since we had not yet built the Centre, and the cub was growing too big for the veterinarian’s garden, a temporary home needed to be found – and found fast. The Ethiopian Government forbids wildlife from being taken out of the country, so it was decided that the cub should be kept in an enclosure in Omo National Park where I could take responsibility for him.

In January 2007, I lifted the very good-natured Sheba into a large dog travel crate with his favourite blanket and set off in my 4 x 4 to start the three day journey to Omo National Park. Amazingly, Sheba did not seem to mind the car journey at all and purred noisily while watching the Ethiopian countryside go by. (Cheetah are the only big cat that purr, and boy is that purr loud!)

After a full day’s drive I decided to stay at a guest lodge in the town of Arba Minch, but they did not allow pets, let alone cheetah. Covering the dog crate with a blanket, I smuggled the cheetah into my thatched room.

It was important that the cub could stretch his legs after the day’s drive, so I had no alternative but to let him out in the room. Sheba stalked around sniffing everything inquisitively. His first hotel room! Sheba ate and drank as on a normal day, but I couldn’t bear the idea of shutting him back in the crate again for the night when he would be in the crate for the whole next day, so I put his blanket on the floor. I’m sure more from exhaustion than good behaviour, Sheba immediately walked over to the blanket, lay down and rolled onto his back. I admit to being relieved. I had wondered if Sheba might chirp all night. Young cheetah when unhappy or calling their mothers chirp like a bird. It’s an extraordinary sound, not like a cat at all.

Having descended from the hills of Addis into the Rift Valley, I was now in a malaria zone, so I covered my bed with the mosquito net provided and slipped under the top bed sheet. The temperature at 10 pm was still close to 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), so no blanket was needed!

I lay and fell asleep quickly – a combination of the soothing noise of Sheba purring from his blanket and the day’s exhausting drive. Driving on Ethiopian roads requires a healthy mixture of patience and anticipation. At any time you may need to avoid or stop for camels, people, donkey carts, cows, goats, sheep or – the most dangerous of all – kamikaze trucks or buses.

At about 1.30 am I dreamed my cheek was being rubbed by warm, wet sandpaper that smelled of raw meat while a revving lawnmower was being inserted into my ear. You guessed it. Sheba had snuck under the mosquito net and was lying alongside me on the bed sheet, licking my face and purring right into my ear.

Despite the flickering doubt that it might not be the wisest thing to let a six month cheetah I hardly knew sleep alongside me, I was so exhausted I simply stroked Sheba’s head. The purring quietened and then stopped. Sheba was asleep and taking up far too much of the bed!

I fell asleep myself and woke several hours later to find the whole sheet, the mattress and myself covered in warm cheetah urine. Disgusting! Obviously, Sheba was not house trained… I washed out the sheets and mattress the best I could and smuggled Sheba back into the 4 x 4. No one knew a cheetah had spent the night there, but I had to apologise to the hotel for the state of the bed. One of the most embarrassing moments of my life must be checking out of that hotel and apologising for ‘having an accident’ in the night.

Sheba spent a year and a half in Omo National Park. Some of the photos show how happy he was.

Sadly, the organisation I was working for decided to leave Ethiopia and I was asked to look after Sheba at the new Wildlife Centre. The only problem being that the Centre is not built yet! The Ethiopian air charter company, Abyssinia Airlines generously agreed to fly Sheba up to Addis, and now Sheba has a temporary home at the Presidential Palace. Yet another reason why it is so important to get the Centre built and construct a new spacious permanent home for this special cat.

Sheba now spends most days on top of his grassy bunker sleeping quarters watching cows and calves in a neighbouring field.

Please do help if you can.

The Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre will cost around UK£ 1 million (US$ 2 million) to build and equip, and it will cost around UK£ 250,000 (US$ 500,000) per year to fund the Centre and its conservation and education programmes.

We must get Sheba and other wildlife in captivity in Ethiopia into spacious enclosures as soon as we can.

And if anyone wants to help pay for the care of Sheba, he costs £6 (US$12) per day to keep.

Please donate here in the BF Ethiopia donation box to the right.

More news in a few days,

James

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

Thanks for all the comments and donations following the previous Blogs.

The days have zipped by since my last Blog with more torrential rain and even a massive hail storm. Very disconcerting to drive slushy, icy streets in sub Saharan Africa! The photo below shows the slush, but within minutes the ice had melted.

The last week was spent at more meetings to try and get the 80 hectare (197 ½ acre) site of land officially transferred to Born Free Foundation so we can start building the Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre.

In case any reader thinks establishing a wildlife centre in a country like Ethiopia is an easy task, I thought I’d share the background to date….

The need for a wildlife centre was brought to the attention of Born Free Foundation in December 2006 following a meeting to discuss captive wild animals in Ethiopia. At that time there were various orphaned big cats being looked after in private gardens in Addis Abeba. Two cheetah in two gardens and two lion cubs in another… I still don’t know exactly how many baboons, owls and other wild animals are being kept in captivity in Addis, but I know of animals kept in several private homes or hotels in small cages. In addition to these ‘pet’ wild animals, there is a ‘Lion Zoo’ in Addis. (I won’t go into all the details here. If you are interested to learn more about the Lion Zoo, try looking it up on the web. Below there is one of the eight main enclosures. Each has walls, ceiling and floor made of cement and the public are encouraged to pose for photos sitting against the front wire mesh.

Many people have raised concerns about the conditions - you can see below, a mother and small child posing or a photo. The President’s Palace also keeps three lions.

Ethiopia’s lions are ‘black-maned’ lions. The photo below shows just how magnificent these animals are. The late Emperor Haile Selassie was known as the ‘Lion of Judah’ and Ethiopians have taken the lion to their hearts. Addis Abeba has sculptures and paintings of lions at every turn.

The Captive Wild Animal meeting was organised by Ethiopian Wildlife Association, Wildlife Conservation Department, US Agency for International Development, African Parks Foundation, Regional Office for East Africa at US Department of State in Ethiopia and the Italian Development Cooperation. The interest of sponsors and attendees was very encouraging in a country where animal welfare standards are generally low. (It is not unusual throughout the country to see over laden and incredibly lame donkeys being beaten or dogs being stoned). Speeches were made by Ministers of Tourism and Agriculture and Development, Ambassador to the United States to Ethiopia, head of the Wildlife Department, the adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister and guest speakers Dr Laurie Marker (the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund founder and CEO) and Vanessa Bouwer (the South African-based De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust Trustee and Deputy Director). The meeting participants discussed the issues and made several recommendations including establishing a wildlife centre to care for orphaned, confiscated and injured animals that can be released back into the wild wherever possible. The centre would also provide spacious, naturalistic enclosures for animals that cannot be released back into the wild.

Apologies for rather a long-winded explanation, but it shows that in a country where wild animals are kept chained or in small cages, there is the will to change things.

Two of the animals being kept in captivity were nicknamed the ‘Italian’ lion cubs because they were being cared for by a truly dedicated Italian couple. And in case any of you think a lion cub would make a cute pet, think again. Firstly, lions belong in the wild. Secondly, they may be cute when they are small, but they very soon get big, very strong and have very sharp teeth! Below shows me watching one cub just before the second cub sneaked up at me from behind and sank its teeth into my hip!

And here they are exploring the garden.

The problem was that the Italian lion cubs were getting big and needed a home, but where could they go? The Ethiopian Government refused to allow the cats to be taken out of the country, the Lion Zoo as the photos show does not offer good conditions , and no other facility existed to care for orphaned, injured or confiscated wildlife.

Born Free Foundation was asked to help find a solution, and the President of Ethiopia, His Excellency Girma Wolde Giorgis, pledged to help wherever he could. A short term solution was needed urgently, so an enclosure was enlarged and strengthened in the grounds of the Presidential Palace, and the lion cubs moved to their new temporary home. See below which shows the two Italian lions at around two years old and as playful as ever in their temporary home.

At the same time as the temporary enclosure was built, following the recommendations of the Captive Wildlife meeting, Born Free Foundation presented the Government of Ethiopia with a proposal to establish a Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre within 25 kilometres of Addis. Along with creating a facility for orphaned, confiscated and injured animals the Centre would provide a long term home for the Italian lions and aim to give some (if not all) of the Lion Zoo cats a spacious home.

The fact that even with the President’s help I have spent the last year working on various proposals and agreements with the authorities shows just how long it can take to get such projects up and running.!

However, we have made progress. Born Free Foundation is now registered as a non-profit organisation in Ethiopia with a bank account. The land has been surveyed and promised, but I am still chasing the formal land agreement.

I am lucky enough to have a Pass to the Presidential Palace grounds so that I can check on the Italian lions. I go as often as I can and, as I’m sure you can imagine, seeing the lions in their temporary enclosure is a good motivation to keep on going until we get the land agreement and can build a spacious home for the lions with grass and trees. The proposed site for the new Centre is shown below.

I know I end every Blog with a call to action, but please do help if you can.

The Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre will cost around UK£ 1 million (US$ 2 million) to build and equip, and it will cost UK£ 250,000 (US$ 500,000) per year to fund the Centre and its conservation and education programmes.

We must get the Italian lions, Dolo and other wildlife in captivity in Ethiopia into spacious enclosures.

And if anyone wants to help pay for the care of the Italian lions, they cost £10 (US$20) each per day to keep.

More news in a few days,

James