Elephant ambassador Jim Justus Nyamu, took his campaigns to the North Rift region to sensitize the community on the importance of conserving the environment and protecting wildlife.
The campaign dubbed, ‘Ivory Belongs to the Elephants’ is a global appeal to people who care about conserving the environment and have demonstrated the potential to conserve wildlife outside protected areas in collaboration with the local communities.
The Elephant Neighbours Organisation targets to plant over 10,000 trees in 11 Counties among them Trans-Nzoia, Bomet, Nandi, Kericho within the region while creating awareness on the plight of the elephant conservation.
Nyamu who paid a courtesy call to Nandi County Commissioner Harman Shambi noted that whenever we conserve the elephant, all the other animal species would be factored in.
“I use elephant as a point for conservation. We have other species that are endemic but the moment, we conserve the elephant, we conserve other species,” he said.
According to Nyamu, Nandi is on record as a County that lost one of the four bear species in the world ‘Nandi Bears’ in the early 40s therefore, there is need to conserve the Sitatunga antelopes which are nearing extinction by conserving the King’wal Swamp.
He further said tourism of this country depends on wildlife and ‘if we want to tap the national GDP of tourism, we have to protect what we have by conserving the environment through tree planting and increasing the percentage of forest cover’.
“I am very happy that by the time I leave Nandi, I will have planted at least 1000 trees with the help of Kenya Forest Service and the Kenya Wildlife Service. Therefore, I urge every Kenyan to plant at least five trees and this will contribute to climate change, mitigation,” he added.
According to Shambi, saving the flora and fauna is our responsibility and we have been given a chance to salvage it since nature is very unforgiving.
“Nature is very unforgiving therefore as Nandi residents, we need to reciprocate through conservation, let us plant trees and we will stand to benefit from them in future,” said Shambi.
By Judith Jepleting
