(10 January 2014)
My class visited the Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute (KWSTI) in the town of Nakuru. Here we sat with green uniformed students on the lawn and spoke with the assistant director, lecturers, and other administrative officials who told us about their programs.
Since tourism is the second most important industry in Kenya (10% of GDP) after agriculture, the focus of KWSTI is to train students to work in natural resource tourism and to a lesser degree natural resource management. Graduates of KWSTI can go on well equipped for careers in any of the 23 National Parks, 28 Nature Reserves or 6 Marine Reserves in Kenya. Some might become rangers, but most of them are in preparation for jobs in the hospitality industry, since ecotourism is thriving in many of Kenya's natural areas.
My class visited the Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute (KWSTI) in the town of Nakuru. Here we sat with green uniformed students on the lawn and spoke with the assistant director, lecturers, and other administrative officials who told us about their programs.
Since tourism is the second most important industry in Kenya (10% of GDP) after agriculture, the focus of KWSTI is to train students to work in natural resource tourism and to a lesser degree natural resource management. Graduates of KWSTI can go on well equipped for careers in any of the 23 National Parks, 28 Nature Reserves or 6 Marine Reserves in Kenya. Some might become rangers, but most of them are in preparation for jobs in the hospitality industry, since ecotourism is thriving in many of Kenya's natural areas.
The day we were visiting the KWSTI facility was special for other reasons. A new national law to protect elephants and other wildlife was enacted in Kenya. It changed the punishment for poaching of any wildlife to a mandatory life sentence. Since all the wildlife in Kenya belongs to Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and hunting is illegal nationally, this new law raised the level of national commitment to protecting iconic species. We heard people talking about this law everywhere we traveled and on the radio.
Poaching of elephants for ivory has reached a global crisis level in the past few years, which is why the government of Kenya decided to enact this new life in prison sentence as anti-poaching policy. Poachers have become more aggressive and organized in recent years and sadly over 100,000 elephants were killed for ivory in 2012 alone.
One of KWS's wildlife officers at the facility told me that he hoped that with the new law people will think twice about poaching and expressed his hopes that eoctoursim development in impoverished areas will provide respectable alternatives to crime.
Poaching of elephants for ivory has reached a global crisis level in the past few years, which is why the government of Kenya decided to enact this new life in prison sentence as anti-poaching policy. Poachers have become more aggressive and organized in recent years and sadly over 100,000 elephants were killed for ivory in 2012 alone.
One of KWS's wildlife officers at the facility told me that he hoped that with the new law people will think twice about poaching and expressed his hopes that eoctoursim development in impoverished areas will provide respectable alternatives to crime.