Colobus Trust

Category: Education, Habitat Restoration/Conservation, Marketing | Date: Apr 16 2009 | By: colobus

Things are changing fast at the Colobus Trust. A few days ago, we (Anna and Filip – colobologists), returned from almost two months of traveling around Kenya and Tanzania. We were happy to see how many projects had been carried through and finalized since our departure, among other things the updating of the webpage. And we did not arrive alone – the next day, a new volunteer joined us for another month: Ben from the U.S, and the day after, Rachel from Scotland. So now we have a fresh, motivated team in the Colobus house planning for new projects the following weeks!

As we wrote on the blog on feb 24^th, The Colobus Trust is about to launch a new Pest Management Program, dealing with the human-monkey-conflict that occurs daily throughout the hotels of Diani. It has been a while since the program was launched and the problem of monkeys stealing food or being fed by tourists, disturbing guests or wrecking hotel property has increased into unbearable levels. Lately, hotels have even been calling on our hotline begging for help, or, even worse, killing monkeys on their property – which of course is an illegal action!

So yesterday, after having sent out invitations to all the hotel managers of Diani Beach two months ago, we held a seminar about the pest issue and briefed the hotel managements about the current situation and the solutions that can, and will be, provided by The Colobus Trust. The seminar was very successful, people were interested and the presentation was followed by an intense discussion where the audience could speak their minds and ask questions. Some cases were very acute and we were asked to assist the hotels as soon as possible. At the end of the session, documents where handed out to all the listeners, including simple guidelines and a summary on how to start out planning their own pest management policy, and a possibility to order “Do Not Feed The Monkeys”-signs produced by the Trust.

The briefing, though, was only the beginning of a much bigger project. The plan from now on is to start by visiting all the hotels in Diani doing interviews, analysis, speak with staff and tourists and discussing the problems each and every hotel is facing and at what level. Our aim is to provide suitable assistance accordingly, so that in the long run people and monkeys can co-exist.

Filip & Anna, Colobologists