21ST KENYA/TANZANIA WILDLIFE OFFICERS CROSS BORDER MEETING HELD AT LEOPARD LODGE, VOI KENYA

The meeting which was attended by 36 wildlife officers from Kenya and Tanzania took place on 31st August 2010 to 5th September 2010. The Director of the Lusaka Agreement Mr. Bonaventure Ebayi opened the meeting.

The meeting adopted 13 resolutions including the formation of 3 task forces for identifying strategic areas of focus and develop a concept paper for purposes of developing a strategic plan and also develop rules and procedures to facilitate and guide the cross border meetings, to formulate strategies to combat the human-elephant conflict involving some identified areas on short and long term basis and lastly to review the progress and challenges of cross border wildlife Security.

Furthermore the meeting discussed and underscored the need to convene the Wildlife Directors’ meetings as an agreed strategy to enhance cross border mechanism through direct interaction at policy and decision making level and that such a forum should be an immediate culmination of a wildlife officers cross border meeting.

The Lusaka Agreement Task Force was given a co-ordination role for the implementation of the resolutions by all sectors as well as participants based at the headquarters and members were urged to implement the resolutions to make the cross border meeting serve the purpose it was initiated for by the two wildlife authorities.

The 21st meeting was a testimony of capitalized knowledge, experiences and human resources in addressing critical transnational wildlife conservation issues. LATF congratulated the officers and their agencies for the achievement and encouraged them to continue working in the same spirit. 

The participants of the 21st Kenya/Tanzania Wildlife Officers Cross Border Meeting