Operations Manager Lucy King estimated it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild the facility. STE is now seeking donations to help with rebuilding efforts.

“We would like to extend our gratitude to our donors and partners who have already pledged funds for the rebuilding of the facility. They recognize that the elephant research projects we are conducting are too important to halt due to this calamity,” says Operations Manager Lucy King.

Another camp, the Elephant Watch Safari Camp, was also struck, leaving some employees trapped in trees for hours. Tourists and others were able to seek higher ground.

Two bridges in the Samburu National Reserve were also destroyed.

STE was founded by Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, one of the world’s leading elephant experts. The organization works both on elephant research and conservation initiatives.

“It’s nothing short of a disaster, but we will take a deep breath and rebuild,” Iain Douglas-Hamilton told the Telegraph.

Source: Mongabay (http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0308-hance_samburu.html)

The private sectors on both sides of the border are very alarmed at their governments’ inability to produce this document. Not only is the report important for the continued luxury of having the Victoria Falls as a World Heritage Site, but it is also important in its content.

UNESCO required the governments to form a Joint Management Team and an Integrated Management Plan for the site. It also requested that certain issues were addressed. The main issue in 2006 was Zambia’s worrying commitment to further development within the site; development which UNESCO felt compromised its beauty and integrity. Other concerns were on invasive species such as lantana and water hyacinth; pollution in the river; the water extraction by Zambia for hydro-electricity generation; and the continued licensing of helicopters, microlights, and other tourism services.

To be fair to both governments, some measures have been undertaken to protect the World Heritage Site. A balloon operation, which started its life in Zimbabwe and then moved over to Zambia, was discontinued. The lantana on the Zambian side is being eradicated with private sector assistance; in the meantime, though, the lantana has become a forest on the Zimbabwe side. Again, on the Zambian side, the water hyacinth problem is being tackled. The development of a hotel on the Zambian side was stopped because of concerns from the private sector but still rumbles on in the background.

The Victoria Falls World Heritage Site was proclaimed in 1989. It covers the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park in Zambia and the Victoria Falls National Park in Zimbabwe. A buffer zone surrounds the site, which extends to a 30 kilometer radius around the Victoria Falls. When both governments signed the agreement with UNESCO in 1989, they committed themselves to work together for the protection of the Victoria Falls and its surrounding area. It seems that their half-hearted attempts at protection will avail them nothing if they cannot produce one report and work together.

There is a small window for Zambia and Zimbabwe to submit the report before the 2010 session of the World Heritage Committee; all documents have to reach UNESCO by March 15. The scramble to complete the document is to try to meet that date. In the meantime, a large delegation from Zambia’s Ministry of Tourism starts a three-week tour of Europe, visiting London, Paris, Berlin, and Madrid, to promote tourism. As Victoria Falls is Zambia’s main tourist attraction, one can only wonder how this team will explain to the world how Zambia’s main tourist attraction has been downgraded, while they were on a tour to promote it.

Source: eTurbo News (http://www.eturbonews.com/14631/victoria-falls-world-heritage-status-under-threat)

The count is targeting large mammals and will cover the entire 6000 square kilometre Amboseli ecosystem, including the Amboseli National Park and the surrounding community ranches on the Kenyan and Tanzanian sides.

According to the Kenya Wildlife Society, the count will establish the ecosystem’s wildlife population size and distribution following the drought — the worst in many years. The result will be used for ecological balancing (increasing some species in areas their population is less and reducing others where they are in oversupply).

The exercise will also determine how the distribution and abundance of large carnivores relate to vegetation types and human activities, to help in regenerating vegetation and restoring habitats. “This year’s census is particularly crucial given that the park’s ecosystem was among the hardest hit by the recent prolonged drought which led to massive deaths of zebra, elephants, buffaloes and wildebeest as well as the local community’s livestock,” according to KWS.

The exercise will be performed by a technical team and experts who will carry out both ground and aerial survey in the area for five days. It comes at a time when KWS has sounded alarm bells over the decline of large carnivores in the country.

Specifically, lions are the most endangered. With their population declining by 100 every year, conservationists have warned that they may become extinct in the next two decades if the trend is not stopped.

The rhino and elephant are the other species whose fate is on the spot following a tussle between African countries on whether a ban on ivory trade should be extended. While Zambia and Tanzania want the ban lifted, Kenya and other African countries want it extended, fearing that such a move would be a set back to conservation.

The last aerial census in Amboseli was carried out in 2007, and since then, the region has experienced a series of droughts that have not only put pressure on humans and livestock but also on the wild population, increasing human-wildlife conflicts.

According to KWS, the Amboseli National Park remains a crucial dry season refuge for wildlife for the bigger ecosystem due to the availability of water. The park has the highest density of most species, hence its importance in the conservation efforts. The society has pumped in Sh3.2 million for the census, whose results will be released in March.

Source: Sunday Nation (http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/870588/-/vr4dhu/-/)

Fly540 is backed by the giant 100 year old, UK based investment and mining conglomerate, Lonrho PLC and Fly540 plans to become the first pan-African low cost carrier operating to International safety standards.

The airline with its headquarters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, began operations between Nairobi international Airport (Jomo Kenyatta) and Kenya’s second largest city and premier port, Mombasa on 24th November 2006. By summer 2009, Fly540 was already uplifting 20,000 passengers per month and operating to nine airports in Kenya as well as to eleven international destinations: including Entebbe in Uganda and Zanzibar, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Grumeti, Serengeti, Lake Manyara and Mwaza in Tanzania, Juba and Rumbek in Sudan and Bujumburra in Burundi. In 2010 the airline also announced plans to open new hubs in
Angola, Ghana and Zimbabwe.

Fly540 provides daily domestic services to both the Kenyan Coastal regions of Mombassa, Malindi and Lamu as well as to the Western Kenya
tourist circuits of Kisimu, Eldoret, and Kitale, plus the world renowned Maasi Mara Game reserve (as featured in the BBC TV wildlife programme, “Big Cat Diary”).

Daily flights from Nairobi to Zanzibar are becoming increasingly popular and the Nairobi to Kilimanjaro route has been linked with daily services to Lake Manyara and Serengeti for the growing number of adventure seeking holidaymakers who wish to combine game viewing in the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti with climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

The airline has a fleet of six modern turbo prop aircraft plus one regional jet, all offering an ideal mix of comfort, speed and economic operating costs.

The current fleet is as follows:
3 ATR 42-320 aircraft with capacity for 46 passengers.
1 Dash 8-102 aircraft with capacity for 37 passengers
1 Beechcraft 19000D with capacity for 19 passengers
2 all cargo Fokker F27
and the latest addition a Canadair Regional Jet CRJ-200 with capacity
for 50 passengers.

The new CRJ aircraft has initially been deployed on the Nairobi to Entebbe and Bujumbura /Mwanza routes and has enabled Fly540 to reduce the flying time between the two capital cities to 50 minutes.

Further CRJ aircraft and new turboprops are planned to join the fleet during 2010.

Fly540 combine a strong emphasis on quality customer service with a no-frills business concept. The senior management team comprises of highly qualified Kenyan and International staff with many years experience working for global, regional and domestic airlines.
Fly540’s Joint Chief Executive Officers are Don Smith and Neil Steffen. The post of Operations Director is held by Nixon Ooko who worked for 24 years in British Airways and held senior positions in both Kenya and South Africa.

In order to promote Fly540 in the UK market, Fly540 have appointed a specialist UK representative, Flight Directors, to support their UK sales and Marketing initiative.

Source: Breaking Travel News (http://www.breakingtravelnews.com/news/article/africas-low-cost-airline-fly-540-launches-uk-sales-campaign/)

1. Drive it

You can get almost anywhere in Mauritius within about an hour but, if you hire a car, a trip around the 180km circumference of the island could easily fill a day, with stops to see and do things. Drive on the left, with a maximum speed of 90km/h on highways, and usually 60 to 80km/h elsewhere.

Taxis are also a viable alternative, as the country’s roads are a bit of a confusing web to strangers, with only one real highway along the west coast through Port Louis. Set a price for the excursion before you go.

Most roads are narrow and often tree-lined, passing through sugar plantations dotted with heaps of black volcanic rock, and villages lined with old, street-fronting shops. It’s not always easy to stop and explore, but traffic is seldom heavy enough to make it dangerous.

The most scenic route is along the east coast from the beautiful fishing village of Trou d’eau Douce to the old town of Mahébourg.

The road hugs the shore most of the way, winding around bays and passing through villages in various stages of disrepair and renovation, always against the dramatic backdrop of the pinnacled mountains. As is common in Mauritius, small-scale farmers cultivate much of the available land for vegetables, and you will find the occasional ruined fort, such as at Pointe du Diable, where the French built one to defend Mahébourg in the 18th century.

2. Go to Pamplemousses

It’s officially called the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Gardens after the first post-independence prime minister, but most just call it the Pamplemousses Botanical Garden, after the town it’s in.

Covering 30ha, it has a huge collection of trees, 80 palm species alone among 800 plant species. Its charm is in its age, as it dates back to 1729, when it was an estate called Mon Plaisir.

Pierre Poivre bought it in 1770 and started planting the present garden, testing exotic trees in the local climate and collecting indigenous ones.

Its most famous feature is the long pond full of water lilies, including the giant Victoria amazonica, but, once you have seen that, simply wander the grid of tarred walkways that criss-cross the garden. Near the new western entrance are giant Aldabra tortoises, which once roamed the island along with dodos.

It’s open from 8.30am to 5.30pm, all week.

3. Go to market

The biggest market is to be found in the capital, Port Louis, selling a great range of fruit and vegetables, herbal remedies, and fish and meat, in different sections. If you are staying in a hotel, this is mainly for photographing, but stock up if you’re in self-catering accommodation. Either way, the best buy is vanilla pods, so fragrant you can smell them through plastic bags, and other spices. Many of the stalls are family-owned and have been passed down through generations.

It’s always great to pick up a CD of local music as well, even if you don’t know what you’re buying. It will probably be Sega music: the grandfather of the genre is Serge Lebrasse.

There is a fair amount of tourist tat as well, but bargains are to be found in tablecloths and baskets.

For more upmarket shopping, head to Curepipe.

4. Say a prayer

Mauritius has a mix of religions, with Hindu (53%) accounting for the largest portion of the population. Colourful temples, churches and mosques are scattered all over the island and are always worth a visit, although there is no organised guide to them.

There are Chinese pagodas around Port Louis, which is also home to a Dravidian-style Hindu temple, and the Jummah mosque on Royal Street in Chinatown. It was built in 1850 and is the largest, but tourists are not allowed beyond the courtyard.

The St Francis of Assisi church at Pamplemousses, built of basalt rock, is the oldest building in the country (built in 1756) but the most photographed is the white-walled, red-roofed Catholic Notre Dame Auxiliatrice at Cap Malheureux, where the British landed in 1810.

Curepipe has a large church dedicated to St Helen, and Mahébourg has a cathedral dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels.

Perhaps the most significant religious site is not a building at all but the Sacred Lake (or Ganga Talab, lake of the Ganges) at Grand Bassin in the Savanne region. Thousands of Hindus converge here every year for the Maha Shivaratri festival. The lake has a giant statue of Lord Shiva, the second-biggest in the world.

5. Commune with nature

When done with the lazing in luxury at your hotel, head for the peaked mountains which dominate the interior. There are many hiking trails, but the easiest way to enjoy the flora is to visit the Black River Gorges National Park in the south, established in 1994. Its 6574ha include all the remaining hardwood and tropical forests of the island. Visitors enter the park from Vacoas.

The Pétrin visitors’ centre has trained guides and all the maps and tourist information you will need.

Just outside the park is the strange site of Terre de Sept Couleurs, the Seven-Coloured Earth, at Chamarel, a landscape of rich blue, green, red and brown earth compacted into mounds on which no vegetation grows. The surrounding park of under 5ha has rope bridges through the forest canopy.

The nearby Chamarel Falls are the highest on the island, tumbling 100m over a curved cliff.

6. Visit the Past

The “creole” architecture of the working-class – often homes built of wood and iron – is increasingly rare, replaced by modern brick and concrete, but it is still to be found.

The grander, elegant homes of the sugar-baron aristocracy were, of course, more permanent, but many have been lost to hurricanes or neglect. In the past, almost every village had a verandahed house on a sugar estate.

In the Pamplemousses garden you can hardly avoid Le Chateau de Mon Plaisir, built in 1858 to replace an earlier home built by Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais, the first French governor of the island.

La Bourdonnais also gave his name to an estate near Mapou, which has one of the grandest surviving chateaux, built in 1858 and complete with a driveway of banyan trees planted in 1820. But the most visited chateau is Eureka, near Moka. Built in 1830 with a bizarre 109 doors, it is now a museum (open daily) and there is even a waterfall in the garden.

7. Take in a museum

The Natural History Museum in Port Louis has the only known skeleton of a dodo, found in 1990. The National History Museum in Mahébourg has the bronze bell from the St Géran, which sank off the coast in 1744, giving rise to the national legend of the doomed lovers Paul and Virginia, but stuffy museums are not really part of a holiday package.

Rather head for the Café des Arts at Trou d’eau Douce, where an 1840s sugar mill is now an excellent restaurant-cum-art-gallery featuring the work of Yvette Maniglier, the last private student of Matisse.

The chimney towers that dot the cane fields are all that remain of most old sugar mills, but another, on the Beau Plan estate, decommissioned only 11 years ago, has been turned into L’aventure du sucre, which tells the story of sugar on the island, including the colonial trade, slavery, freed workers, and the indentured 19th-century labourers from India and China. A tour takes about 90 minutes and even kids can relate to the history, through pictures, films, video clips and comic strips.

Le Domaine les Pailles, just 5km south of Port Louis, was never a real plantation, but it’s a tolerable, modern theme park that includes 1500ha of nature reserve. There are recreated or relocated historical buildings, an ox-driven sugar mill, a rum distillery, coffee grinding and basket making using dried aloe vera plants. It also has the only working steam train left, performances of Sega music and dancing, four restaurants and a night-time casino. You can take a full-day hike in the reserve with a picnic lunch, or take a 4×4 tour or carriage ride.

Source: Times Live (http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/article326171.ece)

The Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP), released by Davies last week, notes that most of the forests are on communal land where “a number of value-added opportunities can be explored for smaller growers” currently supplying their timber to big companies for pulp and paper mills. IPAP says that opportunities exist to expand the small-scale milling industry and to use jungle wattle that would otherwise go to waste for charcoal production. The action plan says the issuing of water licences has become “a serious obstacle for forestry development” and communities are unable sometimes to afford the required environmental impact assessment.

It wants a national task team in place by the end of June to oversee the afforestation process and for the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs (DWEA) to have conducted reserve determination and hydrological surveys for targeted catchments within the same time frame. By the end of September, Trade and Industry will have appointed facilitators to mobilise communities and “provide capacity for them to apply for water use licences issued by DWEA and access capital”.

Funding for the EIAs will be provided by Asgisa EC and Trade and Industry. Davies is also looking at charcoal manufacturing enterprises in the Eastern Cape and KZN using jungle wattle – an alien species. He points out the market requires low levels of capital inputs, limited technical knowledge, uses unskilled workers and is labour-intensive. “The project has the potential of increasing participation in the rural areas, employment creation and skills transfer.” IPAP wants Asgisa EC to undertake the required EIAs in identified areas by the end of June and for the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA) to train and register 12 cooperatives in communities with an interest in charcoal production within the same timeframes. The National Empowerment Fund and IDC must also provide funding for the enterprises by the end of September. IPAP is also looking at the biomass sub-sector for SMMEs and a feasibility study will be undertaken before the end of this year as well as a business plan developed before the end of March next year.

Source: Weekend Post (http://www.weekendpost.co.za/business/article.aspx?id=535623)

Besides bringing in the foreign cash, which these economies badly need, the industry also creates employment.

However, its impact would be felt even more if these countries pooled their resources and jointly marketed their attractions. So far, each country has been going it alone, and yet they have tourism products that if sold together would be a marvelous attraction to the foreign visitors.

There are a lot of advantages the region can realise if it comes up with a coordinated policy in some or all the aspects connected with the industry. One of these is having a single visa for all the five countries – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

As the region forges closer ties, having a common market, joint tourism promotion is the way to go. And a single visa will go a long way in easing travel arrangements for those intending to visit one or all of the member countries of the East African Community (EAC).

We are, therefore, happy to learn that consultations are going on to have a single tourist visa for all EAC member countries. We are told this will be the first step in efforts to harmonise tourist policies and laws.

Efforts to boost the tourism in the region should be encouraged. A single visa will save potential tourists time and the agony of having to hop from one embassy to another to apply for different visas to come to East Africa.

They should be able to obtain this one document and visit and sample the diverse tourism attractions in the five countries.

Such an arrangement will definitely lead to an increase in the number of tourists to the region. This effort should be speeded up so that the benefits can be realised as soon as possible.

Source: eTurbo News (http://www.eturbonews.com/14464/tanzania-single-east-africa-tourist-visa-great-idea)

Air Mauritius will operate four flights during the Northern Summer (April to October 2010). An additional frequency is also planned during the peak period.

Mr R K Ujoodha, G.O.S.K., Air Mauritius CEO, says: “This move by Air Mauritius translates into increases of up to 67% of the weekly capacity currently scheduled and should provide the necessary momentum for growth of the UK market towards a daily frequency as soon as the market is ready. It comes at an opportune time as Mauritius gears itself to welcome one million tourists this year”.

Source: eTravelBlackboard.com (http://www.etravelblackboard.com/showarticle.asp?id=101946&nav=2)