On Sept 19th, a team of our rangers responded quickly to black smoke they saw rising from the bush far from their stations on our Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project in Kenya.
They arrived at the fire in the lorry with everyone who was available.
Fortunately the wind was blowing softly and the fire was easy to beat out with branches.
The smoke blacked the sky and the front of the fire was over 2 miles long and took almost 8 hours to put out.
This is the first cheetah cub we found hiding in the grass near the front of the fire. Cheetahs have a white ridge so that they are hard to spot and it was only the hissing noise this one made that alerted one of our rangers to it being there.
Henry and Costa cradled two of the cubs as they were taken to safety… Our VP of Ops, Rob Dodson had the other one in the front seat as our Director of Ops, Jamie Hendriksen drove the cubs back to the office.
The cubs were happy to have milk, even from a human baby bottle!
Foster moms for 14 hours: Sofia, Lore and Cara fed the babies in the tranquil basket room of Rob’s home. The next morning, Kenya Wildlife Services’ came to transfer the cubs to their orphanage in Nairobi, where they will be well taken care of. The Tsavo Trust will soon be launching a local orphanage for our area so wildlife found here can stay in our eco system in the future. We have also identified the mother who seems to be in good health so we are hopeful that she will have cubs again soon.
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Wildlife Works is the world’s leading REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), project development and management company with an effective approach to applying innovative market based solutions to the conservation of biodiversity. REDD+ was originated by the United Nations (UN) to help stop the destruction of the world’s forests.
Over a 15 year history Wildlife Works established a successful model that uses the emerging marketplace for REDD+ Carbon Offsets to protect threatened forests, wildlife, and communities.
The company helps local landowners in the developing world monetize their forest and biodiversity assets whether they are governments, communities, ownership groups, or private individuals.