Tag: conservation

Exploring the Mountain from Naro Moru

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Above: Art in nature …on the nature trail at Mount Kenya Eco-Resource Centre – copyright Rupi Mangat

Published Saturday Magazine, Nationewspaper 25 November 2017

Naro Moru with Mount Kenya completely invisible - copyright Rupi Mangat
Naro Moru with Mount Kenya completely invisible – copyright Rupi Mangat

An impenetrable white mist blankets everything outside my window at day break and clears slowly to reveal the own street tiny town of Naro Moru that’s epically famous as the base for scaling the massif hidden in the clouds – Mount Kenya. For the entire three days of hanging around God’s mountain as the Kikuyu call, the country’s tallest mountain stays hidden in the clouds.

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Brackenhurst Conference Centre and Botanic Gardens in Tigoni, 25-km northwest of Nairobi Copyright Rupi Mangat

Brackenhurst Botanic Garden

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Above: Brackenhurst Conference Centre and Botanic Gardens in Tigoni, 25-km northwest of Nairobi Copyright Rupi Mangat

Published: Saturday magazine, Nation media 28 October 2017

Lilac burst of an Acanth (400 species in Kenya). This is a South African Hypoestes, Copyright Rupi Mangat
Lilac burst of an Acanth (400 species in Kenya). This is a South African Hypoestes, Copyright Rupi Mangat

It’s popping with colour under the canvas of a gorgeous blue sky. Orange aloes in bloom attract an array of colourful sunbirds – Variable, Tacazze, Golden-winged and more. An African goshawk vanishes into the canopy of a tree and many more keep the birders glued skyward.

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Elephant dwarfed by centuries-old baobab tree near Randilen Wildlife Mangement Area by Tarangire National Park, Tanzania Picture Galib Mangat

Tarangire Treetops

Published on by Rupi Mangat2 Comments

Amidst the baobabs

Published Saturday magazine, Nation newspaper 7 October 2017

Above: Elephant dwarfed by centuries-old baobab tree near Randilen Wildlife Management Area by Tarangire National Park, Tanzania
Picture Galib Mangat

There are few grand arrivals as memorable as this.

Stopping at the gate of Randilen Wildlife Management Area that hosts the stunning Tarangire Treetops eco-lodge, the rangers excitedly run down the rock kopje hearing our Mama Safari – the Toyota Royal Crown Saloon 1985 model.

Chatu the python in Randilen Wildlife Management Area by Tarangire National Park, Tanzania Picture Galib Mangat
Chatu the python in Randilen Wildlife Management Area by Tarangire National Park, Tanzania Picture Galib Mangat

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United Against Wildlife Poisoning

Published on by Rupi Mangat1 Comment

The dire need for government to recognize the problem of poison

Published in The East African-Nation Media 16-22 September 2017

It was in 2005 while researching for her doctorate on Mackinder’s Eagle Owls around Nyeri in Kenya’s central highlands that Darcy Ogada realized there was a problem at hand – that of poisoning.

“I was watching as owls were being poisoned,” she recalls. Farmers were painting sliced-open tomatoes, with carbofuran to kill mice and mousebirds. But they were also killing the Mackinder’s Eagle Owls because the owls were eating the poisoned mousebirds. Found mostly in the highlands, the owls do not have a wide distribution.

United Against Wildlife Poisoning Campaign

Vultures poisoned near the Masai Mara 7 July 2014. Photo E. Ole Reson
Vultures poisoned near the Masai Mara 7 July 2014. Photo E. Ole Reson

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Playful young chimpanzee in Gombe National Park on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Copyright Rupi Mangat

To Tanganyika

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For the chimpanzees (sokwe mtu in Kiswahili)

Published The East African Nation media 16-22 September 2017

Above: Playful young chimpanzee in Gombe National Park on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.  Copyright Rupi Mangat

When l heard Dr Jane Goodall talk in Nairobi about her ground-breaking pioneering chimpanzee research in Gombe it became my mission to get there in search of our closest relative whose DNA is 98 per cent like ours. It was Goodall who first documented chimpanzees using tools for a purpose – inserting sticks in a termite mound to fish out the insects for a snack – that made Louis Leakey the Kenyan paleoanthropologist quote famously, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans” Continue reading “To Tanganyika” →