By Mary Wykstra

In early August ACK welcomed Steve Bircher from the St. Louis Zoo to our home and our camp. Steve is our link to the St. Louis Zoo where we have received grants for our Cheetah Scouts and collaring work. Steve came out to Kenya and Tanzania to get a closer look at our work and how we are doing with the St Louis Zoo support.
Steve spent a night in the Nairobi house before heading down to Salama. There we checked traps each day, visited the Cattle Dip project and met the ACK staff. We returned to Nairobi for a night then loaded onto the early morning bus to TZ… too much road construction! What a mess.

We were picked up at the bus stop by Amy Dickman. She has completed her PhD and is now full time in TZ with the carnivore – mainly cheetah – people in TANWIRI. We spent time with Sara Durant, Maurus Msuha and the other researchers. We listened to presentations about the Cheetah and Wild Dog Strategic planning, the TZ carnivore monitoring, community programmes and the cheetah work. I am very excited at making our link with TZ stronger.

Amy and her assistant Alloice arrived in Nairobi a day after Steve and I returned. After putting Steve on the flight back to the US we went down to Salama so that Amy and Aloice could spend some time with our Cheetah Scouts. Alloice will be the person running a carnivore scout programme in Ruaha with the project that Amy is heading. After leaving us, the TZ friends went to Living with Lions near Amboseli to look also at their community work.

Unfortunately I was unable to be in Nairobi when Amy and Alloice returned to TZ, so they left me with disks of information and took the information that we left for them. I look forward to more work with them soon.

Action for Cheetahs in Kenya needs your help. To make a donation, please visit Project Survival – www.cathaven.com/shop/

Visit www.stlouiszoo.org for more about the zoo and the programmes they support.