Turtle Nest sponsorship.
If anyone is interested to sponsor a turtle nest is $40.
This money goes to the patrol team at Takwa as their bonus
plus project communication cost.The sponsor will be updated on the success of his/her nest.
Later on a certificate will sent through his postal address plus picture of his nest.

           
Turtle Tag sponsorship.
Sometime a turtles have been caught accidentally by a fisherman.These are measured tagged and release,
Instead of the fishermen slaughtering them for meat we give them incentives.
To sponsor a turtle is $25.
Certificate  and picture will be sent.
This sponsorship goes towards capacity building, community networking and fishermen rewards.
All tag sponsors are updated on their turtle when is going to be recaptured.

                        
All update will be available on www.lamumarine.wildlife.org
This is our blog address in the wildlife direct.( Dr.Richard Leakey Associates)
Tusk Trust is the main sponsor of Lamu Marine Conservation Trust( www.tusk.org)

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 Our sincere appreciation and acknowledgement goes to all our friends in conservation. We send our acknowledgement toTusk Trust our main sponsor in England, to whom without their financial assistant we wouldn’t have achieved for what we have.

Furthermore, many thanks go to the pioneers of the project (Carol Korschen and her husband Lars) and the subordinate staff for their dedication. We thank all nest adopters and turtle adopters.
The progress of our project:
 Nest and Tagging
From the beginning of this season we have recorded 20 nests from Manda Island and of which 14 have hatched. 

                                          Tag sponsors

                                                    Mr. Salim

               A green Turtle caught by a fisherman by a fishing line

 The Education Project
Our school education programme continues within four schools of Lamu archipelago (Shella, Ama, Matondoni and Kipungani primary schools). A well new developed syllabus, which covers all angles of environmental conservation, is being implemented by education officer- Famau Shukury. The children are very excited and motivated with the syllabus.  As a matter of fact, Lamcot clubs are the only active clubs in the Lamu District.

Ama primary school

 Bees and conservation.
The bee project is now based at Kibuyuni zone, where dozens of acres of mangroves have been exploited without a single tree being replaced. Lamcot has distributed 10 hives to the community of this area and the harvest will be shared between us. We are looking forward to distribute more hives to the crab fishermen. This is where Ama environmental kindness club will have its project on mangrove rehabilitation, and Matondoni club will have the bee project.
 Blog address
The project has recently started a website with Wildlife Direct which is:   http://lamumarine.wildlifedirect.org.  Here, issues pertaining to marine life in Lamu and its adjacent waters are highlighted and debated all over the world.

Yet to be accomplished……….
 Acquisition of our main turtle nesting zone
We are looking forward to owning at least 5 acres of the nesting sites, so that we can be able to carry out translocation of our nests. On this area, we will have eco-lodge bandas for volunteers to carry out research.   The price is 16000 Sterling Pounds per acre.

 Dhow Project
The purpose of the above project is to distribute conservational information to the Eastern part of Lamu archipelago. This is still pending as we are waiting for sponsorship in reaching the eastern region.  Al Miftah Dhow is ready for transportation. Lars from Peponi Hotel has paid for it while we are looking for the 10,000 Gb to cover its total cost.  The Dhow will not only be used for the  Medical/Educational trips on the Northern part of the Archipelago, but also for taking the kids in our environment clubs out on trips such as: snorkeling, exchange visits, visiting projects on the ground and community mobilization as we are doing it now. This can be illustrated by the coming together of the community, when Pemba fishermen intruded to our fishing grounds with destructive fishing methods.

 Solar panels
We are soon going to install a solar system at Manda for the patrol team, so that they can charge their phones. This is possible through the efforts of Sarah Watson during Lewa Safaricom marathon competition.  We would like to thank Safaricom Company and Sarah for their participation.
How you can get involved in Lamcot and its activities….
Lamu Marine Conservation Trust has its own Bank account for members and well wishers to deposit funds.
to do this you
will need the following information:
Swift Code: KCBLKENXXX Beneficiary: Lamu Marine Conservation Trust
Account Number: 205 670 971
Alternatively funds could be sent to Tusk Trust in England
Tusk Trust Charity Aid Foundation
UK Reg 803118
” Tusk Turtles, Lamu”
And sent to:
Tust Trust, 5 Townbridge House
High Street, Gillingham`
Dorset, SP8 4AA
Tusk is our main sponsors. www.tusk.org

WE ARE HAPPY TO RECEIVE DONATIONS IN FORM OF MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT
IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE SO ALREADY PLEASE SHOW YOUR SUPPORT BY BECOMING AN ACTIVE MEMBER OF LAMCOT
YOU CAN REGISTER YOUR MEMBERSHIP BY EMAILING US AT: dotatwa@yahoo.com or kasa@peponi-lamu.com

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We really thank Tusk Trust www.tusk.org  for their efforts in publishing the
Face books and educational Films with their logistical assistance which are all very usefull to us.

Also special thanks go to the African Env Film Foundation for their env cassettes.

The progrmme is running smoothly and efficiently, we are intending to extend this programme to
the Eastern archipelago once we get more funding.

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Every three years turtles swim hundreds of miles
to lay their eggs on the same beaches where they were born.

The male and female turtle mate in the sea. Then the female turtle
swims to shore. With her flippers she digs a deep hole in the sand,
where she lays many round white eggs.In the hole, her eggs will be
safe and warm until they hatch.

During the next ten to thirty days the female turtle returns to the
beach several times to lay as many as 200 eggs. In their secret nest,
the eggs will stay dry and protected.

When she is sure her eggs are safe, the female turtle returns to the sea.
After seven weeks the eggs starts to hatch!
Each baby turtle has a special egg tooth on its beak. This tooth helps
the baby break through the shell.

After they hatch, the babies dig themselves out of the hole at night
and scamper to the sea.

In a few years they will come back to the same
beach and have babies of their own!

Wel come to Lamu Marine Conservation Trust. 

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This is my DAD salim.  He was fishing in side the Mangroove
channel in Lamu, Shela. Suddenly he fetl some thing heavy and
soo fast in taking his line out of his hand.  Just to let you
know that he was in his small canoe.

In the first place he thought of a big Shark, but after realizing
the way he was skeeing in his canoe he reflected back on what he
use to experience in the past. Yes, he was right, it was a big
Green Turtle.  Imagine he was unable to lift him 1.3 m
( as it was Male one) in to his canoe.  The canoa bellow was
really small to accomadate him. Another two fishermen went to
hep him and eventually he was loaded in ones of the other
fishermens’ canoe.

WAS THAT TURTLE SLAUGHTRED!!!?
Like father like son and like son like father.  My father, new
what is it all about accidentally caught turtle and what does
it mean by tagging them rather than killing. We tagged him and
release him. We gave him his incentive.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any sponsor as we are on off
season till end of next month.

By Atwaa Salim( Manager LamCoT)

Thank you Paula and the entire team at the Wildlife Direct.
The podcast embedded on our blog on my introduction to LamCoT
was really nice.  I am still on the RUN WAY.
Thanks
Atwaa
 

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So when he came back to the office for training I recorded his stories to produce this podcast so that you can enjoy hearing about his groups work in his own words. Enjoy!

Paula

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1. Sea turtles are ancient reptiles and have been on Earth for over 130 million years.

2. The sex of a turtle is determined by the sand’s temperature… a cool nest is dominantly male, a hot nest is dominantly female

3. The ‘tears’ a female turtle has in her eyes when she comes to shore help her to get rid of the salt she absorbed in the ocean.

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Ex poachers now patrol Shella Beach and Takwa Beach, Manda to prevent the illegal poaching of eggs and mark out new nest sites and monitor them until hatching.

Using a grant from Tusk, Donations from Nest and Tag, the local fishermen are paid incentives (depending on the size of the turtle) to bring in turtles caught in their nets accidentally to be measured, treated for any health problems, tagged and released.

These are two green turtles ready for release by sponsors.

LamCoT works under the umbrella organisation Kenya Sea Turtle Conservation Committee, KESCOM, collaborating with all turtle conservation groups up and down the Kenya Coast. Data collected on nesting, releasing, mortality and further activities concerning sustainability of biodiversity and ecosystem is sent to (KESCOM) and Tusk Trust together with the annual reports.

The turtle project has inspired leaders in the community to take it upon themselves to create awareness through the wider community and to establish a greater understanding and more sustainable use of the islands’ resources .

A community meeting with local fishermen on illegal fishing issues.

Atwaa Salim a Graduate from the University of Nairobi, who was coordinating the project via internate once at collage is now back to his community giving them a helping hand and in a full control.

Since then, the project was gaining momentum and by 2001 the project was at the threshold of prosperity. Evidence to that; clubs have been formed at different schools e.g. Shella, Ama, Matondoni and Kipungani.

Local school children on an exciting turtle education excursion.

The project started tree nurseries inconjuction with the school club. It has successfully managed to plant almost 50 seedlings of different species of trees at the airstrip.

The project is disseminating all the conservational information to the school children through videos. LaMCoT’s mobile education unit has been recently established, a projector donated by Tusk Trust. With a screen, projector, generator and video library compiled from many sources such as Wildlife Clubs of Kenya, our educational videos are shown all over Lamu, the mainland and other more inaccessible islands. We give a weekly, interactive class covering relevant local issues: Marine ecosystems, Agroforestry, recycling and AIDS awareness. And have field trips in the area for beach clean ups, nature walks.

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