Updates From Our Northeast Africa Program

It’s been a while since we’ve reported on our Northeast Africa Program, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been hard at work! Our team has checked in with a report on their 2025 activities, which includes notable progress on multiple projects in the region. 

The Coexistence Co-op, which we co-founded in 2018, continues going strong. The effort, which trains communities to build predator-proof livestock corrals known as bomas, limits livestock loss to large predators such as lions and hyenas. Critically for raptors, it also prevents the retaliatory poisoning that sometimes follows, which can have an inadvertent but devastating impact on vulture populations. Over the past three years, our team has detected only three poisoned vultures in our study area, compared to 77 from 2019–2021.

In 2025 alone, our field team trained 560+ community members and rangers, and more than 4,000 total bomas have now been built by community members since the project began. (A training event and an improved boma built by one of our trainees are seen above.) “We’re proud of this progress which has been made possible by close collaborations with Mugie Conservancy, Lion Landscapes, and Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), among others,” says our Northeast Africa Program Director, Dr. Darcy Ogada.

We’ve also launched a new initiative studying the iconic yet highly imperiled Secretarybird, an Endangered species which we deem to be the highest-priority raptor for conservation in the world. “We’re investigating direct threats to the species, particularly during the breeding season,” reports Darcy. Our team is locating nests in Kenya’s Athi-Kapiti region, and will soon be installing camera traps to detect and monitor threats. It’s a crucial first step to ensuring this emblematic raptor remains on the African savannas.

We’ll have much more to share soon! Stay tuned for more from Northeast Africa in the coming months.