Sended on: 07/21/2009

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Dear friends,

Here is our quarterly newsletter: should you like to not receive it again, please reply with "remove" in the subject.

Wow, so much has happened in the last three months we do not know where to start&
It will be a challenge this time to keep the newsletter brief.

About the small family (getting bigger&)
On May 12th Lorenzo was born in Nairobi, natural delivery, a little bit harder than the previous two.
Antonella thinks she needs to conceive a child with another man if she wants to have any chance of resemblance&
Here is a photo of the little clone and one of the growing family.

Lorenzo, 2 days old

Growing family: but three is enough!

Resemblance or not, a visit to a certain doctor for a certain operation has been booked for Luca, who is not particularly thrilled by the idea&

About the bigger families (getting also bigger)

Campi ya Kanzi news:

Kanzi Conservancy: After many months (actually a few years&) of tireless negotiations, meetings, discussions with elders and with warriors, we have finally established Kanzi Conservancy.
A meaningful 5,000 acres conservancy where livestock will not graze.
It is per se a milestone, but it is even more so as the agreement was signed in one of the worst drought we have ever experienced.
This tale tells how Campi ya Kanzi has achieved his fundamental goal: proving to the Maasai landlords that wilderness with thriving wildlife pays off.

Webcam live with Kili view: Literally hundreds of zebra are enjoying the new Kanzi conservancy. Our unique filtering system (every single drop of water used at the camp is recycled through natural filtration) is providing them with meaningful drinking water.
Not a bad idea to let you see them drinking at our pond, while enjoying a great view of Kili: we just installed a webcam and we will soon make it live on our website. Wait to receive the link.
Meanwhile this is what is happening at the pond while we are writing.

Chaimu, our adopted elephant: Kristin Davis, who will soon pass from the Advisory to the main Board of MWCF, was here in June, to plan with Luca how the Trust can be more vocal and visible in its conservation efforts. Together Kristin, Ame and Luca, assisted by Samson, Anna (our new pilot for Alaska!) and a team of Maasai, rescued a baby elephant that lost his mom. Chaimu (named after a nearby lava crater, as he was found in a forest growing over a huge lava flow) is blind from one eye, perhaps thats how he got lost. It was not easy to help him, see sequence of photos.

A worried Chaimu Luca, Lucrezia, Ame giving water to Chaimu

A very thirsty Chaimu, very happy to drink, and drink, and drink. We reckoned we has without his mom for more than 2 days.

Once he managed to sip some water off our hands he was totally happy and helped us helping him! What an incredibly smart animal. Angela Sheldrick acted quickly and so did East African Air Charters, within two hours of our rescuing Chaimu a team from Sheldrick Trust was on the field. They looked after Chaimu well, feeding him with the right milk formula.

You can see his right blind eye in the photo below. He was flown to Sheldrick Orphanage in Nairobi, where Kristin and Ame checked on him the next day. Angela is reporting him doing very well indeed.

Yummy milk!

Off to the Sheldrick Orphanage

How did we manage to get Chaimu?
Our game scouts reported a baby elephant wondering alone, without his mother. Luca and Kristin were visiting the Conservation and Research Camp (see below news) and offered a reward to anybody leading to save the elephant. A Maasai elder approached us and assured us he was going to get him. We were puzzled, but hopeful. See in the photo below Samson explaining how the elder did the trick: he put in the corner of his shuka (the Maasai cloth) a hand of soil where Chaimu left his footprint earlier in the morning. Thats what gifted Maasai elders do when they loose their livestock. He preyed to retrieve the animal who stepped in the soil he now was wearing in his cloth&. and& magic, Chaimu was found by the elder in a lava forest, where we managed to safely rescue him.

Maasai wizard at work

We look forward for the long rehabilitation of Chaimu and for his coming back to Tsavo once he will pass his puberty.

Great deal for a holiday package
Thinking of a last minute booking for your summer holiday? We have a great offer of stay 4 nights pay 3, or stay 7 pay 5 (with excursions to Tsavo and Amboseli NP). Just contact Luca for more details. You will be supporting our conservation efforts, as for each day you stay at Campi ya Kanzi, you contribute $100 of conservation fee to Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust.

Come and enjoy a safari with us

Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust news:

Regional Conservation and Research Camp.
MWCT has created his headquarter near the Group Ranch border with Tsavo. A great spot where we have now a nice field tented camp, with an amazing view of Kilimanjaro. The camp is not just the headquarter of the Trust, but it is our centre for conservation and research. We received the blessing of a black rhino that came drinking at the water hole of the camp the first day we open it! We will let you know about our plans of collaboration with Yale University for our researches, and about the program for volunteers we are about to start.

Simba Project
Despite the skepticism of many educated conservationists our Simba Project is thriving. Is thriving on our pockets (we are about to pay $16,000 compensation for the livestock killed in the last three months), but most importantly- the lions population is thriving.

We know of at least 52 lions living in Kuku Group Ranch at the moment, and we are convinced they are actually 57. This is more than 300% growth since we started the project in 2007.
On a game drive with Kristin we saw ten lions one afternoon, another group of five the next day.
Very rewarding, to say the least.

Soon on our website you will be able to see the movement on a map of the satellite collared lion that has provided meaningful information to let us run the project more efficiently.

Yes, Simba Project costs money, but they are worth spent: did you know that there are more polar bears (a widely agreed figure is 24,000 to 30,000) than lions (12,000 to 18,000).
Lions are an endangered species and MWCT is fighting a meaningful cause, please support us.
We need $95,000 a year to run Simba Project: it is less than $5 a day per lion. Think about it and consider adopting a lion. Please. Contact Luca, lucasaf@africaonline.co.ke should you wish to contribute.

You can also support us through the Cartier Love Campaign. A new beautiful bracelet has just been launched; it features a nice diamond on the Love bracelet. It costs $700 and we receive $150 for our Simba Project.

New York Marathon
Luca, Samson, Parashi and Sunte will run with Edward Norton the New York Marathon, in a joint effort to secure enough funds for MWCT 2010 budget. We will give you all the details in September, should you like to sponsor us.

We hope to have you soon at Campi ya Kanzi, happy (hopefully in Africa!) holidays,
Luca (with Antonella, Lucrezia, Jacopo, Lorenzo, and Samson, Stefano, Anna and all the Maasai of CyK and MWCT)

P.S. Keep supporting our efforts and we will keep accomplishing a lot together.
See here below what your donation will do.

What your money will do:

A donation of	Can	For
$50	Buy stationery for 10 kids at a primary school	1 year
$60	Buy a new desk for two students	5 years
$100	Pay the salary of a kindergarten teacher	1 month
$150	Pay the salary of a game scout	1 month
$250	Pay the salary of a teacher	1 month
	And more money can&.
$350	Buy one radio collar to help us track and protect lions	2 year
$500	Buy and install a new pit latrine for a school or a family	10 years
$500	Pay the salary of the coordinator of the Trust	1 month
$550	Buy medicine, needles, antibiotics	3 months
$600	Buy a hand held radio for the game scouts	Ever
$750	Pay for a pupil at secondary school	1 year
$1,800	Pay a game scout for 1 year	1 year
	Buy all the books the school needs	1 year
$2,500	Pay the salary of a doctor	1 month
	And MUCH more money can&.
	Build a waterhole to draw more wildlife and elephants into the reserve
	Buy a second hand Land Rover for helping the dispensary and the scouts
	Yearly fee for the Maasai landlords for 5,000 acres Kanzi conservancy
$40,000	Build a volunteer house, to help the school and dispensary
$50,000	Buy a Land Rover ambulance, to let the doctor serve the entire community
$95,000	Run Simba Project for a year

The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Fund (www.maasaifoundation.org) is a US 501 c (3) nonprofit corporation that has supported the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust with grants for wildlife conservation, medical and educational projects. Your donation will be directed to the sector, project or program you choose.