It was supposed to be another year of two Olympics. But like the games in Tokyo, Big Life must postpone this year’s Maasai Olympics, including the final events originally planned for December. Given the state of affairs in the world today, it is the only prudent course of action.

We hope things will be better by December, but the Maasai Olympics is more than just a single day.  Events run through most of the year, starting with conservation education meetings that should have started in late March. In May, the first level competitions to select the 30 lucky warriors for each of the 4 participating teams normally occur, and regional competitions then run from July through September, culminating with the finals in December. With a ban on large gatherings and social distancing requirements in place, there is no safe way to hold the games as planned. Big Life will postpone the conservation education and sport competitions until 2021, and resume as usual this time next year.

To all the warriors: use this time to get stronger and faster. The games next year will be the most competitive yet.

To all our supporters: thank you for supporting us from afar, as the rest of our wildlife security programs continue. This delay is meant to protect our community, which is always our priority, both humans and wildlife alike.

Big Life rangers are used to unseen danger, whether it’s tracking armed poachers or unexpected encounters with wild animals. But a virus is a different kind of enemy, and needs a different kind of approach.

Big Life’s conservation success over the years has been built on an honest and open relationship with local communities, ensuring that the needs of humans are treated with the same importance as wildlife conservation. It’s the core of our ethos: if conservation supports the people, then people will support conservation.

Local employment for community rangers is a big part of this support, but it goes much further. It’s also about providing education and healthcare. So if it seems odd that we facilitate mobile health clinics, it shouldn’t.

Especially now.

It is still very early days of COVID-19 in our ecosystem and in Kenya, but the odds are high that it’s more widespread than we know. Recent curfew orders have limited travel to and from hotspot areas, but there was a lot of human movement before these restrictions went into effect.

To help curb the spread in our community, our already established Community Health Volunteers (CHV’s) are educating people on how the virus spreads, how to prevent it, and why staying home is so essential. These volunteers are a trusted resource, who typically work in the community to distribute information about many important health issues, such as family planning.

Thanks to support from CHASE Africa and the Leila and Mickey Straus Family Foundation, Big Life supports 34 CHV’s working across our area of operation. To keep these critical workers safe these same partners are providing funds for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), including face masks, gloves, sanitizer and soap. Thanks to these and all of our generous supporters during this challenging time.

To everyone else in Greater Amboseli, we encourage you to:

• Stay home
• Wash your hands frequently
• Avoid gatherings of 10 or more people
• Cough into your elbow
• Keep sick family members isolated

We’re all in this together.

Our conservation work cannot be put on hold, or done remotely.

While the world battles to get to grips with the spread of COVID-19, and society shuts down to limit the damage caused, at Big Life we are making our own preparations. We must maintain our presence and conservation action in the field, or else risk reversing years of gains.

As such, all Big Life rangers will remain at their field outposts, as will all the staff actively working to mitigate human-wildlife conflict in our area of operation. We are taking all steps to ensure that this work continues safely and in line with government directives, and does not contribute to the spread of the virus in any way. All administrative staff that can work remotely will do so, and continue to contribute to the day-to-day running of Big Life.

The economic impacts of the virus have already been severe, and we are expecting to have a harder time meeting our fundraising target for 2020. Across Kenya, the pressure to reduce employees, particularly in wildlife-related sectors such as tourism, will be high. For now, we are doing what we can to keep all of our staff employed, and maintain the community benefits that we provide.

Big Life programs that involve a high level of social interaction have of course been affected. Schools are closed for the moment, and all education outreach is on hold. The same applies to Big Life’s support for mobile clinics, which involve large congregations of people and are not safe to continue until this crisis has been mitigated. Tryouts and regional tournaments for the forthcoming Maasai Olympics will also be delayed.

There are no reported cases of COVID-19 in the human population of Amboseli at this time, but Maasai communities are highly vulnerable. Daily life here involves extraordinarily high levels of social interaction, including large groups of people living together, often with poor personal hygiene practices. Through our healthcare program, we are working with the Kenyan Ministry of Health, exploring ways to support communities in the areas where we work.

Our thoughts are with everyone in the world that is being affected by this upheaval. It is a particularly important time to stay connected, while staying separated. We will continue to keep you all updated on the situation in Greater Amboseli as this saga unfolds.

By outside appearances, it was just a standard market. But inside could be found caged animals that don’t appear on regular menus: snakes, porcupines, hedgehogs, and a wide range of other wild species. The theory is that that somewhere in that Chinese live-animal market, a microscopic virus made a gigantic leap.

‘Coronavirus’ is not actually the name of this virus. Coronaviruses (named for the crown-like spikes on their surfaces) are a large family of viruses that can cause respiratory illnesses ranging from the common cold to pneumonia.

Coronaviruses were responsible for the global outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012. In fact, this new virus is so similar to the one that caused SARS, that it has been named SARS-CoV-2. The SARS-CoV-2 virus causes a disease called Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The reason that we see new coronaviruses appearing in human populations is because they are zoonotic, meaning that the virus can pass between animals and humans. Other well-known zoonoses with devastating effects on humans include Ebola Virus Disease (Ebola) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). In most cases, these viruses do not kill their animal hosts, who are merely vectors for the diseases, but they can sometimes kill their human hosts. Both SARS and MERS originated in bats, but used ‘bridge animals’ (palm civets and camels, respectively) to make the jump to humans.

It is currently thought that the virus causing COVID-19 also originated in bats, but may have used another wild animal species in making the jump to humans. Pangolins are a potential suspect, but there is no conclusive proof of that as of yet.

We may never know exactly what animal transmitted the virus to humans, but it is almost certainly a wild species, not a domesticated one. Unhygienic conditions and poor treatment of a diverse range of live animals in most ‘wet markets’ creates exactly the right environment for the spread of zoonotic diseases caused by the coronaviruses.

Through this grisly and extensive trade, humans have brought many wildlife species unnaturally close to our own. The negative impacts of this, to the individual animals held captive in live markets and to wild animal populations in general, have been devastating, which is problem enough in itself. But wildlife trade also dramatically increases human exposure to zoonotic diseases, which may have even more devastating impacts on our own species.

This is not the time for angry rants about nature’s revenge; it is a time to take forward-thinking action. Thankfully, there are clear options available to governments and individuals across the world to prevent this from happening again. This particular virus originated in China, and China has already taken the important step of banning the wild animal trade until the current disease crisis is over. There are early signs that this may turn into a permanent ban on consuming wildlife as food; we are hopeful this will come to fruition. These bans are important, but ultimately it is up to individual consumers whether the trade in wild animals dies or lives on as an underground black market.

For now, the world is dealing with an escalating crisis. The economic shocks have already been severe, and will likely get worse. Travel restrictions are already having a huge impact on tourism and related industries across Africa, which will inevitably have negative impacts on wildlife conservation. Big Life’s rangers will continue working and our operations will not shut down, but we have canceled all public meetings and limited our community outreach programs. We are also making sure that all Big Life staff have the correct knowledge to disseminate in their communities about how to avoid the spread of COVID-19.

Our thoughts go out to all of those whose lives are being affected by COVID-19. We are all in this together, and we at Big Life are beyond grateful for your continued support of our work during these difficult and stressful times.

Image credit: We Animals Media/JoAnne McArthur