Amazing Born Free - Ensessakoteh

The time I knew about Born Free started with the movie (Born Free) and the story of Elsa the lioness still lingering as nostalgic memory in my mind. From there it continued to when I was in college studying Animal & Range Science for which the few range science courses took me & my friends on a few epic educational tours to some of the country’s natural ecosystems covered by plains and shrublands. One of them was Bale Mountains National Park. By that time about a decade ago, while I was a teenager, I saw and even photographed my first Ethiopian Wolf and came to know what Born Free did to help these majestic and landmark species to the needy Ethiopian wildlife/biodiversity. A few years later I was following James Young and his blog trying to set up the Wildlife Sanctuary. He later disappeared from sight and I was caught up in animal right & environmental activism & didn’t have time to look back at Born Free except after some suggestions from EWCA people while I was there to expose ivory traders a while ago and a meeting I took part at “Friends’ of Ethiopian Wildlife” that for some reasons didn’t want to keep me- partly maybe the reason was that I was new to everybody except Dr. Yirmed who took me there

It was on Thursday 12th of June when I paid a visit to Ensessakotteh a place that I can call heaven for the lucky residents, and Stephen Brand, the man running it -Robin Hood for captive Ethiopian wild animals. Ensessakotteh is another Born Free run wildlife rescue center at western outskirts of Addis Ababa on the way from Menagesha to Holeta.

This one unfolded to be exceptional though. It took me only a few emails to be invited by Stephen to visit his site and I did it in the afternoon of June 12th, 2014. It was to my amusement indeed and found everything as one of its kind. I just didn’t want to leave the place and wish we have it everywhere and that our so called parks and 14% protected areas were capable of receiving some of the residents. Who wouldn’t want to see those animals in better conditions especially after learning their seemingly fairytale stories?

Storytelling has important role in awareness raising and igniting the public’s sense of concern and I hopefully with the help of Born Free I will be doing it one by one and will leave the details for later. And if anyone’s mission in visiting is not for learning to be stewards of these needy animals and their friends’ there’s no need in visiting for they would prefer to be alone and amongst themselves.

But the question is who wouldn’t be moved by Dolo the lion’s story, and stories of the nine speed jets (cheetahs) some with heated engines ready to fly, servals, caracals, hyenas and even flocks of baboons and a few duikers so taken care of some even look ready to face the wild by their own and I hope the day will come soon for I believe that’s how their stories shall end in the best way.

We have a lot of stories to be told over there. Stories that will push your sense of concern out on the field and question humanity’s deeds and moral ground. Well, we all love stories with happy endings, so we have many of them there. But we also have to be told those sad ones to appreciate and learn. We all know that keeping animals captive is wrong and if not we have to know. If what we are doing to destroy their habitat, pollute it, put on invasive species and change the climate is not enough by itself, we make a living by abducting & selling them to others, keeping them captive for other reasons, murder them for their bodyparts and even shoot them for “fun”. Even as kids we grew up throwing stones and still don’t care when others do it.

Let me tell you a story I heard about way before my visit to Ensessakotteh. As it always seems, I’m always treated like a geek amongst my friends when it comes to wild animals in clearing out misconceptions and everyone turns to me during discussions. So one day while talking on the same topic with friends at a public place, someone I didn’t know from just the next seat was inspired to share us his story. He told us he was a retired military man now on a driving career which once took him to a town in the Somali region of Ethiopia. After a long and tiring journey, he had to spend a night in a small town. With his assistant’s help, he found a small place owned by Somalis and was offered a balcony to stay at as usually is the case in most arid areas. So tired, he took a sleep right away. But suddenly in the middle of the night he was faced with one of the most terrorizing moments of his life. He heard a seemingly weak but still vibrating roar of a lion from very close. Scrapping for his life, he told us that within a few seconds in his long deep sleep, he found himself on the roof of the house calling for someone to help. And suddenly the owner appeared with a very calm attitude. Trying to cool him down, the man apologized & took him to a chained and totally helpless barely living lion on a corner in the compound. He told us that he lost all his fears right away and he didn’t know that a lion could look so humble. The man with little regrets told him that he “owns” the lion since he was a little cub and charges people a few birr for sight. The lion was kept on barely any food that could make him look like a lion. And the man told us that he still had the memory of that poor helpless lion long after that da

This man as I learned had seen a lot of ugly and gruesome moments in his life but still didn’t take him a moment to feel sad for Dolo the lion who is now a resident at Ensessakoteh with his new mate Safia. We all know that it’s not ok to chain a lion or any animal for that matter and I’m glad Born Free is here to remind us that reality by action and hopefully we (all people) will have something to contribute.

In the meantime I’d like to invite anyone to remember that Born Free didn’t put this sanctuary for us to visit in amusement but to help these helpless individuals and offer them better lives and as possible their ultimate lifetime reward- free living in the wild completely unlike what is going on in the horrific and inhumane “anbasa gibi” with a deservedly translation to “animals’ ghetto”. Born Free is not a recreational institution but an animal welfare organization ambitioning free living in the wild for captive animals or the ending of captivity, abuse and exploitation of wild animals. Within the animal movement, rights and welfare issues have their own different issues though are closer on a wider perspective with a gap that gets even narrower with wild animals. I mean if you ask anyone from either group they would tell you it’s unacceptable to keep wild animals captive, to use or abuse them in any way or take them away from the places they love to be. They have all the right to live and we have moral obligation to keep that and educate others to do the same. That’s why Born Free’s concept of Compassionate Conservation I learned from their website took my attention exceptionally. I mean Compassionate Conservation? I am in animals rights movement and my lifetime ambition stays being a conservationist and living on conservation fields. I would say there can’t be a better place to be than Ensessakotteh. Who knows I may get a career there.

For more intormation about the site, here's the link to Born Free Ethiopia

World Environment Day ( #WED14 ) Message : Youth Voice

This will be my first in a series of blog posts related to major environmental days which was supposed to focus on youth participation in the environmental sector in Ethiopia turned to one big plea due to on one hand the circumstances I see everyday and partly from the complete absence of the word youth in major policy or strategy documents (Environment Policy of Ethiopia, CRGE, NBSAP) of the country I tried to navigate through. However in the generalized context of the fight to curb the environmental catastrophe of our time, the lack of youth participation is a mere representation of the problems but overall popular awareness and participation had to be questioned. So anything that relates to youth in this article shall also be addressed to all men and women, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, local and marginalized communities and all within the civil community of Ethiopia.

The 2014 theme for World Environment Day will focus on 'Small Islands and Climate Change' and the official slogan for the year 2014 is 'Raise Your Voice Not The Sea Level. There as a result is a good chance to relate the global & local perspectives of environmental protection especially climate change and biodiversity loss that directly and indirectly relates with climate, with the need to raise our voices together. Our action, their action and everyone’s action whether good or bad will be reflected everywhere across the planet. Our inaction in emission reduction or inaction in raising our voices together against the major emitters affects all including the islanders and coastal communities suffering from rising sea level at the other end of the world.

We therefore need to move beyond our biggest challenges like lack of awareness and other critical social factors like poverty and apathy from the great majority of our communities coupled with limited sense of ownership & responsibility amongst the more aware community to problems of only finger pointing and short-sighted attitudes disregarding current and importantly future emission rates thus regarding mitigation efforts as insignificant while a good and strategic environmental movement that systematically and effectively deals with the challenges and that could come out of our efforts in addressing environmental issues could bring about a greater sense of unity, public responsibility and concern to face any challenge threatening humanity and nature in general as an opportunity.

Yes we don’t have much to do about current changing climate, but we need to be part of the solution. We need to make sure that we don’t take the same environmentally destructive path in our fast developing country like our western/northern counterparts. Besides awareness raising and offering adaptation and coping mechanisms, we need to directly face the emerging villains while standing in solidarity with our global campaigning friends for they also have our voices to share as we definitely are the biggest losers in climate change. We need to take motivation by the fact that our country and its great majority of poor farming community members dwelling on natural trends for their livelihood remain very affected by changing climate. These people don’t know how exactly the change happens especially in form of its global perspectives with the lack of knowhow on ways of mitigating and adapting to the effects. Most of them could answer loss of trees or creator’s might if asked about the cause of change climate that they are continually observing. The answer could partly be true but what we don’t know is the effect of emission from western countries taking the biggest share. Furthermore, the fact that our need to stand for nature and the broader environment that all life dwells upon are being threatened by climate change should motivate us and our peers to be part of a climate and pro environment movement.

It is fact that young people constitute a large part of the world’s population not to mention the African or Ethiopian perspective. Youth also have both special concerns and special responsibilities in relation to the environment. A number of environmental risks and hazards disproportionately affect young people, who have to live for an extended period with the deteriorating environment bequeathed to them by earlier generations. In addition, young people will have to live longer with the consequences of current environmental decisions than will their elders. Future generations will also be affected by these decisions and the extent to which they have addressed concerns such as the depletion of resources, climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and long-lived chemical wastes.

Consequently, young people have to be empowered and prompted to engage in any forms of action and activism that will generate effective responses to ecological challenges. Beyond youth themselves, the responsibility will have to be on the government, CSOs and INGOs while the later two are better off in dealing with the situation. I can provide testimony to UNEP Liaison Office to AU, UNECA in Addis Ababa to their efforts in trying to engage youth groups as major partners in their limited ability with special credits to two of their outgoing expat volunteers.

When it comes to overall environmental ambitions that directly or indirectly affect us all, the government especially those at the higher level have to be credited for the ambitions put in most policy and strategic documents which unfortunately have to be said more rhetoric than practical. Consequently this has to be the time to engage more practically and inclusively on most of our ecological issues as the country moves fast forward in the economical path and not to bring it in the same destructive way western countries had travelled. If the same path continues we will have grim consequences in the futurity of our current development as our people are being engulfed in western consumerist lifestyle with almost complete lack of awareness of their path while on the other hand public infrastructures are devouring local ecosystems and communities, virgin ecosystems and even parts of the mere 14% designated as protected area and the proposed only Ramsar site are being given away to corporate monoculture farming companies. Our government and its environmental institutions had to move beyond focusing on political gains to ecological ones to prove worthy for the environment and achieve the policy put on the table. Public environmental & conservation institutions have to be given better chance in restructuring their management process to better effect as other institutions.

These problems are mere representations amongst many while all Ethiopians had to be accounted for them. Citizens especially youth, in politics, can help by making their influence felt as constituency for the long term, calling political leaders to account for the long range environmental consequences of their decision. Representing the concerns of future generations should not necessarily be difficult in the context of policy-making even though the focus is often on short term profits and advantages for which efforts had to begin from today.

On the other hand, the importance of youth participation was already confirmed by Agenda 21, which was adopted at the Rio Summit in 1992 and its subsequent conventions particularly UNFCC & CBD which Ethiopia is party to. Agenda 21 states: It is imperative that youth from all parts of the world participate actively in all relevant levels of decision-making processes because it affects their lives today and has implications for their futures.”. This has to be the ground to positive concerns for youth participation within the UN system especially UNEP and its major subsidiary bodies - with YOUNGO notably being one of the most actively visible groups during the UNFCC COP meetings and GYBN to a lesser extent within the CBD COP meetings besides its MGCY and Tunza.

The process in engaging Ethiopian youth in environmental affairs had to begin from this and now is the time, as it always seems, to give us representation locally and in the aforementioned global youth platforms to facilitate the awareness raising and catching up process. It’s time to curb the almost complete oblivion within children & young people of Ethiopia on what is and had been going on at the global, regional and local environmental policy arena. It’s time to start giving youth the chance to participate in the COPs. It’s time to end what is rumored that the place for youth delegates within the national team for the annual UNFCC COP meetings is given away to friends/relatives within those responsible for the selection process of national delegates. It’s time to find solution to the status quo that CSOs are finding it difficult to send their reps as well for bizarrely restrictive budgetary regulations despite being able to finance their participation which could have had the opening door for youth participation and knowledge sharing process.

Now it’s not difficult to imagine the advantage if some highly motivated young environmental activists like Yohannes “Green” had the chance to take part in global environmental meetings notably UNFCC COPs to network and share ideas/knowledge with youth environmental movements like YOUNGO (youth constituency within the UNFCC system) and learn the values and basics of environmental activism and the debilitating effects of gigantic HEP dams on local ecosystems among others. In speaking of big HEPs, our case made me realize the negative effects of patriotism/nationalism even further and how it can completely brainwash whole populations altogether or be used to brainwash them in favor of many ill factored deeds ecological ones included. I will have more to say on that some other time.

Finally, we all have our own problems to deal with individually but ecological ones have to be those that we have to deal with together- all of us. Let’s unite for the environment!

Good to start with positive and encouraging virtues and move on to the others. Ethiopia has CRGE already in action which aims to achieve zero net emission status for the country by 2025 and is doing good at soil and water conservation efforts while America is trying to adopt Clean Air Act aimed at penalizing highly emitting power generation facilities. Let’s support these and raise our concerns on others, educate one another and push on all members of our society to share knowledge and act together for most of our critical environmental challenges.

Thank You!!