Mkomazi National Park

Background

In 1988 the renowned conservationist, Tony Fitzjohn and the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust were given a mandate by the Tanzanian Government to rehabilitate the vast 1,300 square mile Mkomazi Reserve in northern Tanzania, on the border of Kenya's Tsavo National Park. The reserve once boasted enormous herds of elephant and other species, but in the years prior to Fitzjohn arriving, the land had become beset with the problems of over-grazing by cattle, poaching and decimation of the habitat through illegal burning for cultivation.

Fitzjohn’s aim was to re-secure the reserve as haven for wildlife. His first priority was to rebuild an entire infrastructure with 500 miles of road and an airfield. Water sources had to be sited and pumped, dams constructed and desilted. Game rangers were recruited and equipped, and an entire radio network was installed to be used by the rangers and local community.

In addition an 45km2 electrically fenced sanctuary was erected and this is now home to a successful captive-breeding programme for two of Africa's most critically endangered species - the black rhino and the African wild dog. 1997 saw the arrival of the first four black rhino and another four were transported in 2001 from South Africa. 

The real impact of Fitzjohn’s successful rehabilitation of this vast tract of Africa has been seen in the elephant numbers. Vast herds of elephant once migrated north from Mkomazi, across the border and into Tsavo National Park in Kenya. During the 1980’s these herds were decimated through poaching. Mkomazi previously home to 3,500 elephant had seen its population reduced to just 11 individuals. A combination of the ivory ban and increased security of Mkomazi now means that the dry season elephant count in Mkomazi has reached 200-300 elephant peaking at nearly 1,000 in the wet season. The recovery in Tsavo was even more remarkable although both areas are interdependent and the herds regularly migrate between the two protected areas.

Environmental Education

The Mkomazi Game Reserve Outreach Programme encompasses 41 villages in three districts and two regions that all border the Reserve, in total approximately 200,000 people. The programme was started with the aim of ensuring that the local communities would benefit from the presence of the game reserve and come to look upon wild animals as a non consumptive resource.

The programme has helped to build and equip local primary schools and clinics, facilitated the formation of women’s groups and has sponsored the Mkomazi Game Reserve soccer team. Recently, with the help of Tusk, Mkomazi launched the ‘Rafiki ya Faru’ (Friend of the Rhino) bus which travels to schools in surrounding villages acting as a mobile classroom and brings pupils to the newly constructed education centre in the middle of the rhino sanctuary. The aim is to raise awareness for conservation and to try to help change local communities attitudes towards their environment through teaching and seeing the wildlife, particularly rhino, for themselves.
 

New Rhino at Mkomazi

In June (2009) Mkomazi took delivery of three black rhino who had made an incredible journey all the way from Czechoslovakia. An iconic feat – new bloodlines for the Tanzanian rhino population and proof that it is possible to send zoo animals back to the wild. Here is the incredible story of their journey told by Lucy Fitzjohn.

'The animals were crated at Dvur Kralove Zoo and driven 1,000 km by road to Amsterdam. A team of vets and keepers including Pete Morkel, Berry White were with them. They rested for a day at Schipol Airport in a privately set-aside hangar before being loaded that night and flown through the night to Kilimanjaro.

The Martin Air agent advised us that the aircraft would arrive at 07.20 in the morning and in typical Dutch style it touched down at Kilimanjaro at 07.23. We had pre-cleared them as much as was physically possible, so from the door of the aircraft opening, off-loading them from the plane, to loading them up on the awaiting trucks and the trucks departing from Kilimanjaro Airport - the timing was 1 hour and 5 minutes!

They arrived at Mkomazi at lunch time and were met by The Director of Wildlife, the Director General of National Parks, the Chairman of National Parks, Brigadier Gen. Mbita and Rose Lugembe, our Tanzanian Trustees, and many other VIPs including the Deputy British High Commissioner and the Director of Dvur Kralove Zoo, Dr Dana Holeckova was there. 

They are now settling into their new lives. We have two keepers with them, Berry and the Dvur Kralove keeper Honza.

Pete and the team were absolutely exhausted at the end of that huge journey – but they were an incredible team. Seeing that 747 at Kilimanjaro Airport with three crates coming out of it was almost heart-stopping.'

Tusk Trust Support

Tusk Trust has been one of the main sponsors of the project for well over a decade. Support has been in the form of funding for game guard salaries, vehicles, machinery, and workshop equipment, funds to cover translocation costs for wild dog and most recently help to build an environmental education centre and the purchase of a school bus to bring local children into the reserve
 

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