Westgate community offices

Honeyguide’s Director, Damian Bell, has arrived back in Arusha from his Kenyan trip where he visited Northern Rangelands Trust.  The purpose of the trip was to learn about NRT practices and to see how these practices may be applied in Tanzania’s own rangelands.  NRT has an expanding membership of Community Conservancies that encompass 1.5 million acres in Northern Kenya. Damian says that “the main aim was to see what can be learnt within the model of conservancies in Northern Kenya, NRT has a comprehensive and practical program in community conservation supported by a solid institutional structure.”

We were invited by Ian Craig, CEO of NRT, to check out NRT conservancies after Honeyguide together with Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF) and The Nature Conservancy organized a group of Maasai leaders from Piyaya, Arash, Engaresero and Pinyinyi to visit conservancies in northern Kenya in April 2010.  The visit by the Maasai leaders was successful; they found many of the conservancies within NRT to have similar challenges as their own in Tanzania.  On this trip Damian was also able to meet with Tom Lalampaa, the  Community Development Assistant at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and tour the Westgate Conservancy.