From the GMF website:
The Conservancy supports programs in education, biodiversity research, habitat protection, reforestation, community service, peace and reconciliation, poverty alleviation and public health. GMF promotes environmental education of Kenyan students. Gallmann has dedicated Ol ari Nyiro to this ideal, converting it into the Laikipia Nature Conservancy nearly 100,000 acre refuge is base for science, research, education, and community projects benefitting the people, flora and fauna of the region.
About Kuki:
Fascinated by Africa, Gallmann moved to Kenya in 1972 with her husband Paolo and son Emanuele, and acquired Ol ari Nyiro in Western Laikipia, in Kenya's Great Rift Valley. At the time the estate was still a cattle ranch, which she would later transform into a conservation park. Both her husband and son eventually died in tragic accidents within a few years. Kuki later wrote the bestseller, I Dreamed of Africa, of which a film was made.
She decided to stay on in Kenya and to make a difference, choosing to work toward ecological conservation in the early '80s, becoming a Kenyan citizen.
As a living memorial to Paolo and Emanuele, she established The Gallmann Memorial Foundation (GMF), which, until last week, included:
- Archeological sites which had been discovered on Ol ari Nyiro and were being studied.
- A Black Rhino Sanctuary which supported the largest known undisturbed indigenous population of the endangered black rhino outside of Kenya's national parks. The estate was a refuge for over 450 elephant, 4000 buffalo, zebra, cheetah, leopard-including melanistic leopard, lion, gazelles and antelopes.
-The only protected indigenous relic forest remaining in the area. Its extraordinary biodiversity comprised natural springs, sixty two man-made lakes, the Mukutan Gorge that plunges 4000 feet, and the spectacular landscape ranging from 3000-7000 feet. The conservancy supported over 450 species of birds (86 of which are listed in the IUCN red list for vulnerable and endangered species). Over 800 insects, many rare species, and 2350 species and subspecies of plants had been identified, some of which were unique to the conservancy.
This tragic loss leaves the world a smaller place. For all of those who fought the flames, and the innocents that grew and flew and breathed the paradise that was the forest ~
My personal story from time at Ol ari Nyiro and the Eng'elecha Forest when it was alive and thriving; this is how I will remember paradise - an excerpt from the chapter An Adventure in the Mukutan Gorge:
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