Taking a stand because it is his heritage and the right thing to do a young man is voice and action for wildlife in Kenya.
“Hello!…”
A brief friendly personal message via Facebook started my acquaintance with Noor Santosian, founder of Africa Nomads Conservation in Kenya. His response to “Why are you so passionate about saving your wildlife?” made me want to jump in our Landy and head for Kenya.
From the heart…
“I was born seeing elephant, grew up seeing them, sharing our corns on farm with them… I remember when we have 1 hectare, my grandmother used to save 1/8 for them to feed as she believed they are like her kids…with currently 500,000 elephants, approximately 35000 killed every year, that is after every 15 minutes, I can’t sit back down and watch them going extinct!”
He went on to say…
“My young brother was educated from benefits of elephants at Amboseli group ranches, Ooooh, can’t allow any of them to die while am alive… it pains me, reading or seeing any elephant or rhino lying down as a result of been poached.”
This part really shocked me…
“Moreover, when there will be no more elephant to poach, what will this poacher do? Trust me and believe it from me, Human Traffic will come out as the results and more young kids, women and Albinos.”
Noor and his associates work tirelessly to end the poaching. Like many anti-poaching rangers and others on the front lines of the war against wildlife crimes Noor cannot share details, with me, or on his organizations website.
Why the secrecy?
“The program we are undertaking most are of security issues mostly anti-poaching intelligence, collecting information, analyze, write report of the case and act before the intension of the crime is successful.”
Not money, not tourism…
Save ‘em because its right!
Noor’s thoughts are compelling…
“I have a feeling, that this should be in built at personal level, weather youre tourism, or not, our wildlife are like other animals and we should own them without looking at their economic value on them, suppose there is no tourism, should we assume they have no value to us?
In most cases, entrepreneurs or investors confuses our minds with tourism as the mechanism way to protect our wildlife, to some extend we can ignore that fact, but this is not the only reason that can lead to conservation. And I think this misunderstanding should be kept off away for us to protect our African wildlife.
I am trying to imagine, tomorrow the tourism business is collapsed, what will be the situation of our wildlife if we depend on tourism to fund our conservation efforts?”
His opinion echoes that of a recent National Geographic article by Tanya Saunders.
Hat off to Noor and his group, Africa Nomads Conservation, who are a voice and action for wildlife in Kenya.
He is an amazing person.He is precious to all people in the world.Thank you, Noor Santosian,, and all the rangers that fight for the animals’ lives.
Noor is absolutely right. Saving these majestic animals from poachers and extinction is the moral thing to do. I wish the penalty for poaching was death.
Poachers should be shot on sight. No excuses, no second chances. Wildlife lives are precious, poachers lives are NOT.
Thanks for your passion Sue. As drastic as the poaching situation has become, the threat of being shot on sight may be a deterrent. Sadly, there are many impoverished people skirting wildlife reserves who are lured into selling their souls. The most despicable villains are the crime bosses who make money illegally via commodities like the rhino, elephant and other wild animals and birds. These self same individuals are supposedly the ones who also traffick guns, drugs and humans.