This post was written by Jeneria, who recently visited the Painted Dog Conservation (PDC) project in Zimbabwe. PDC is a fellow Partner project within the Wildlife Conservation Network. WCN sponsored this trip so that Ewaso Lions could learn from the experience of PDC, especially about their Children’s Bush Camp, which will help us as we shape and grow our new Lion Kids Camp.
I was very excited when I learned that I was going to visit a conservation project in Zimbabwe, called the Painted Dog Conservation (PDC) project. I found out that the project I was going to visit did a lot of community work including the Bush Camp, which brings children from local schools and educates them on wildlife conservation.
Jeneria flew from Kenya to Zimbabwe to visit the Painted Dog Conservation project and see how they run their successful Children’s Bush Camp.
When I flew from Nairobi to Livingstone in Zambia I was a little nervous – it was only my second time to fly in a plane alone. When I arrived, I met Wilton, who is the manager of the Bush Camp, and went across the border to Zimbabwe and drove from to the camp. Wilton introduced me to the rest of his team and welcomed me to the “Iganyana” Bush Camp. It was a great way to start the sharing of knowledge.
During the Bush Camp, the children learned a lot of things. They were also really excited to learn about the history of the painted dogs and sad to know they are disappearing from our planet. We were all very curious to known the major problems the dogs are facing and we learned that it is habitat loss and also snaring.
Local children attend the Camp to learn about African wild dogs (aka painted dogs) and the importance of conservation.
The kids were taught how to use computers in their impressive computer lab. The children were shown how to collar and track dogs and also practiced drawing them. We visited the rehabilitation centre where they keep orphan dogs and we met two people who work in the centre. We were explained how rehabilitation works and were shown a dog that had been caught by a snare and brought to recover. We also visited Hwange National Park – I was lucky to go twice to see the dogs – once with the kids and also with MK on another day. MK is the best tracker for dogs and showed me how to identify individual dogs. He told me his own story of how he started with the project and was very passionate.
I really like the book that PDC have done for the children – it is a logbook of their time during the Bush Camp. I hope we can do something similar for our own Lion Kids Camp as I think what PDC has done is fantastic.
With my group in Hwange National Park looking for dogs and other wildlife – with Douglas and Peri.
I really found this visit to another wildlife conservation project a huge success and learned a lot about painted dogs. I also saw how quickly the kids learned about dogs and how they saw themselves as future conservationists and environmental leaders. It was great that I was able to share knowledge with my fellow partners. Being with PDC has given me many ideas about our Lion Kids Camp as we educate the Samburu children on conservation issues. One challenge I feel is that we would find it hard to follow-up with the children when they go in to secondary school, like the way PDC follows up with each child. But I am ready for the challenge.
MK took us to track the wild dogs.
With my “Pride” group drawing wild dogs.