It is known that in December a spike in poaching occurs , this is generally because of the holiday season brings on a demand for bush meat and ivory poachers hoping to take advantage of the anti-poaching units going on holiday.
With BIG LIFE support, Honeyguide Foundation has just purchased and sent into the field 2 vehicles to support the 38 Village Game Scouts (VGS) of Enduiment WMA and provided an experienced platoon leader John Magembe to help coordinate all the anti-poaching operations. The team were in position for December.
John Magembe with his team of Village Game Scouts (VGS) collaborated with other organizations in the area, these included Friedkin Conservation Fund, Kilimanjro Anti-poaching Unit, Kilimanjaro National Parks, Ndarakwai Ranch and out partners BIG LIFE in Kenya to boost the anti-poaching presence in the area to deter poachers. All the teams planned their anti-poaching patrols and activities to complement one another and it worked, a significant drop in poaching occurred in December.
The operations were so intense during the day that the poachers mainly relied on the night, on 1st December in the night the VGS observed 7 torches of the people wandering in the bush around Embolei hill but the VGS could not manage to catch them due to impassability of the bush around there. In the next morning they found the carcasses of 1 Grant and 1 Giraffe killed by the poachers.
The anti-poaching activities increase at night, with small patrols using the light of the moon to be able to move about and on the 27th December at 2am the VGS based at Sinya ambushed a group of poachers who killed 1Grant and 1 Kudu at Olmolog and managed to catch one poacher (Pascal Michael Macairo armed with Bush Knife, Knife and a torch) who was taken to Arusha for legal actions.
In the daylight the patrols continued to move about and search for any activity, one group of VGS discovered 10 poachers’ hides, these they destroyed. Two poachers with machetes and torches were arrested in relation to poaching and were taken to the Village office for further actions. On the 30th December the Kitenden camp found a skull of a killed lion, the Lion seems to have been killed more than a month ago.
