Student Mentorship and Capacity Building

Since 1990 we have excelled at mentoring, supporting and training the next generation of raptor biologists. Our program has supported 27 students including 20 Africans from 6 countries, including Kenya (14), Ethiopia (2), Uganda (1), Rwanda (1), Swaziland (1) and Nigeria (1). To date, our students have completed 4 PhDs, 15 Master’s, 5 Bachelor and 1 diploma-level degrees. Many of our former students remain active in raptor conservation across the globe or are current leaders across a range of environmental fields in Africa. We have also been at the forefront in conducting and supporting knowledge exchange workshops to benefit vulture conservation in Africa.

In 2022 we held a novel 5-day workshop to address key aspects in the fight against wildlife poisoning. The workshop brought together two main stakeholders, namely wildlife veterinarians from Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), the Wildlife Research and Training Institute (WRTI) and their conservation partners, and six Kenyan laboratories that test suspected poisoned samples or that have the mandate to do so. The aim of the workshop was to improve analytically sound detection in wildlife toxicology by expanding the scientific capacity of wildlife authorities to better address national law enforcement and veterinary interventions to save poisoned wildlife. Follow up activities are planned.

In partnership with other conservation NGOs, we hosted a 2-day Wildlife Poisoning Response Training in November 2016. One way of limiting the impact of individual poisoning events is through informed and rapid response. This training was aimed at rangers, law enforcement officers and conservation organizations to increase local knowledge about how to effectively respond to a poisoning incident, what data to collect, and how to safely decontaminate the scene.

We co-organized and hosted the 1st Pan-African Vulture Summit in the Masai Mara in April 2012. The summit convened vulture experts from across Africa and globally to develop the first Pan-African vulture strategy aimed at implementing conservation measures to prevent populations from reaching critically low levels and creating greater awareness of the plight of African vultures worldwide.