Kenya Conservation and Education Safari
Samford University, May 2004

Professors of Biology, Robert Stiles and Paul Blanchard, of Samford University will lead an 18-day safari to Kenya, Africa, in May - June 2004.  This safari (May 24-June 10) is designed to provide a hands-on learning experience in some of Kenya's most unspoiled wildlife areas.  The program includes a diversity of habitats and activities and provides participants with the opportunity to explore Kenya's natural history and culture and evaluate some of the important conservation issues facing this developing nation.  By making use of private property, we avoid the restrictions imposed by the national parks. Here we can walk, take night drives, and truly experience the wildlife and ecology of Africa. Our education officers and naturalist guides are eager to assist and help us get the most from this educational safari.

The photographs below were taken by Dr. Robert Stiles
and Dr. Paul Blanchard in a preview trip to Kenya, November 1999

One of the highlights of the trip is a visit to the Maasai Mara Game Reserve where the group will stay at the Mara River Camp.  This northern extension of the Serengeti ecosystem virtually throbs with life and is especially famous for its concentration of herbivores and large predators -- lion, leopard, cheetah, and hyena.
	Pleased to have his photograph taken is a young elder from the Maasai tribe (on left), dressed in traditional costume.  The ostrich-plume headdress denotes that this fierce warrior has been given special honors.  An ambitious young man, he told our Professors Blanchard and Stiles that he has one wife but is hoping to get enough cattle to afford a second one.
The "secretary" bird (above), which was named for the quill-like "pens" stuck in its hair, is an especially important member of the Kenyan ecology because it eats both small rodents and snakes.  The acacia tree is characteristic of the Serengeti plain.

	This massive crocodile preparing for a belly-flop into the Mara River, has just been feeding on an unlucky wilderbeast that drowned probably because he forded the river too slowly.
A matriarchal group of elephants, staying close together for protection, contentedly graze on the lush Serengeti.