Bill Toone, a conservation program specialist for CRES, helped implement a teacher training program in Kenya. In blogs, he shares his experience as he works with Dan Rubenstein, a Princeton University scientist, and Louise Bradshaw, the St. Louis Zoo's education director, to inspire the next generation of Kenyans to work for wildlife conservation. Read Bill's previous blog, Kenya: Camp Life.

Mpala Research Center, where our teacher training program is held, has lots of people doing ecology and conservation work. Most of them, it seems, are affiliated with Dan Rubenstein. Dan has been key in bringing this classroom session together. He is so keenly aware of the socio-political situation in Kenya. Dan is enthusiastic, high energy, and, in spite of his clear and focused interest in the endangered Grevy's zebra, he and his students are working on everything from restoration ecology to wild dogs, social behavior of starlings, water, and tons of other things.

Today his associate, Dr. Elizabeth (Lizzie) King, who has lived here for 12 years, gave a presentation. She is a restoration ecologist and encapsulates all of the good things about a foreigner working in another country. Her dress is casual"”it's colorful, local, and clearly comfortable for her. She is high energy, bright, and hands on. According to our students, her Swahili is flawless. She gave a brief lecture and whenever she hit what she thought might be a complicated point, she shifted into rapid-fire Swahili to clarify. The teachers were wowed.

She then took us out for a demonstration on grasslands restoration. First, you have to know that overgrazing is a huge problem here, in fact in much of East Africa. For the Samburu and Maasai, wealth is measured with cattle and goats. When the land is overgrazed, runoff and soil erosion occurs.

Lizzie explained that by disturbing the soil and adding seed, you could increase the penetration of water, slow the runoff, and restore grasslands. She showed everyone that by using a bucket of ashes from their fires, 2 sticks, and 10 feet (3 meters) of clear tubing, they could determine levels across a long distance. We practiced and cut our level grooves across a hillside in one area and did nothing in another area. Then, with big buckets of water we created a downpour. Where we had done nothing the water raced down the hill a very long way; when we checked to see the depth of penetration, we found that because it moved so quickly and had spread out so far, it did not penetrate the surface of the soil at all. In our test area, most water was captured in the cuts; even where the water overflowed the grooves, we had reduced its speed of flow. In the grooves, of course, the water sat and penetrated deeply, but in between our grooves we were really surprised at how deeply it penetrated simply because it was moving slower.

Bill Toone is a conservation program specialist for Conservation Education/CRES.

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