Conserving Wildlife Together – With Raabia Hawa
Wildlife Conservation – Raabia Hawa
Conserving wildlife has been an uphill challenge from the very beginning. None the less, there remain committed people who would do anything to see our ecosystems thrive once again. I am so fortunate to be a part of a community of people from researchers to conservationists and activists fighting for the survival of our natural resources and heritage.
Growing up I always imagined I would be doing something related to wildlife. Little did I know after I got out of school we were losing a lot of our biodiversity to poaching and habitat loss. I decided to use my voice in the local media to raise awareness about what was happening and the people in the front lines against this terrible situation. That was when I was introduced to my first group of rangers and my first time seeing a poached elephant, wasn’t easy. This was a major turning point in my life and I decided there was no looking back.
I began working alongside rangers on my holidays, weekends and even off days, walking dozens of kilometres through the wilderness and achieving results on a daily basis. Somehow this wasn’t enough, I needed to do more. Rangers in the front lines were suffering, they weren’t properly equipped in a lot of cases nor were they properly trained in some cases. With the Kenyan community growing in heightened awareness about elephant poaching and the ivory trade, the anger and blame quickly shifted to the rangers. People began to think they were involved in the killing of the very animals they were taking bullets for. After all, they knew where all the elephants were. . .
This is when I decided to do the Walk With Ranger’s awareness trek. We began in Arusha, Tanzania and trekked over 500 km through the bush into Nairobi passing the Kilimanjaro flats and the Amboseli ecosystem. Over 70 people joined this trek and we managed to make a global statement that ranger’s lives matter and our wildlife need our help more than ever.
Fast forward 5 years, and we successfully have now launched our very own ranger anti-poaching unit in conjunction with the Kenya wildlife service operating within the Tana Delta region.
The fight continues but not without the continued support of everyone that has lent us a hand. Each person that has donated to us, in cash or kind and everyone who has supported us with skill sets, have helped us along the way. We now have a great mission to save the ecosystems that are remaining in the Tana Delta region and to keep them intact and to prevent the continued poaching of the wildlife in this critical region.
With your help we can do this please consider supporting our cause and projects, visit www.walkwithrangers.org for more.