In
1994 Peter Jones, his son Eric, and wife Margot Kiser-Jones,
fell in love with Ndarakwai’s dry savannah beauty as
they came across it while looking for a smaller parcel of land
outside Arusha as a base.
Peter, a British archaeologist who worked as Dr. Mary Leakey’s
colleague for eight years (1976-’84) at Olduvai Gorge in
the Serengeti, had eschewed an academic life to live in the wilds
of Tanzania. A safari guide fluent in Swahili, Peter had started
his own company,
Tanganyika
Films and Safari Outfitters in 1990
to lead his own specialist safaris. Margot, a writer and from Montana,
had packed her Labrador Retriever, Zoë, and moved to Tanzania
to start a new life with Peter and Eric.
The area, named long ago by the Maasai after cedars native to the
area, was a former German (the area saw significant action during
WW1 and trenches can still be found on the farm), then British
Colonial ranch until Tanzanian Independence in 1961. Ndarakwai
was nationalized in 1975. Between 75 and 94 unregulated grazing,
tree cutting, and poaching, decimated the ranch’s grasslands
and drove out the elephant and other wildlife. The area was turned
into a waste-land. |
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In
1994, the Peter Jones committed himself to restoring the
Ranch’s
health to support wildlife populations – a bold experiment
in self-sustaining conservation. The impact of his efforts
have been profound. With protected trees and vegetation,
there is now less run-off after the rains, the water table
has risen
and grass resources improved. Today, elephant, zebra, eland,
giraffe, wildebeest, gerenuk, lesser kudu, and mountain reedbuck
are among the permanent residents.
In 2002, The
Kilimanjaro Conservancy, a nonprofit organization was created to
help maintain nonprofit activities in the West Kilimanjaro area - a living,
working landscape - that integrates and benefits local populations.
Margot has since moved on and Peter continues to run the project at Ndarakwai.
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