Cheryl-Samantha Owen

SWARA is the quarterly magazine of the East African Wildlife Society. It enjoys global readership, and is recognised as among the best wildlife magazines in the world, and certainly the best in the region. Founded in 1961, after 5 years of operating as the Kenya Wild Life Society, the East African Wild Life Society has been at the forefront of active conservation in the region. With members from both the East African region and other countries around the world, EAWLS is committed to promoting the conservation and wise use of East Africa’s wildlife and the environment’.

One of my bat eared fox cub images adorns the cover of the latest, October - December 2007, Issue. A feature story on these diminutive members of the Canidae family gives them a spot in the limelight.

In Kenya bat-eared foxes tend to be confined to protected areas, yet they are often overlooked by visitors intent on finding larger predators or keen to get back to their comfortable lodges.

The  story of Dwesa - a  paradise where the beaches write their own story - was published in Vol 14, No 8. There is a part of South Africa where animals still move freely along the coast and use beaches as highways. I went to Dwesa Nature Reserve on the Wild Coast with the World Wide Fund for Nature's marine programme and found that it might be small, but there's a lot to it: 300 bird species on record, abundant mammals, a diverse rocky shore fauna, and diverse flora, not to mention the unusual ocean backdrop to wildlife-viewing.

Knowledge creates empowerment and  raising public awareness of the threats currently facing Kenya's Tana River Delta is key to ensuring this coastal wilderness gains formal protection. Spreading into the heart of the wetlands, sugarcane fields will destroy much of the Delta's biological diversity, and the local Orma tribe who are opposed to the project need the support of  organisations such as BirdLife International and the East African Wildlife Society. The December/January 2008 issue of Africa Geographic published my news article  highlighting the main issues.