THE LAST STAND OF THE - GRASP

Recently Training Needs Assessment (TNA) for wildlife conservation
organizations was conducted for the Albertine Rift
Valley countries. This program enabled, among other things,
training people from the Great Lakes countries of Rwanda,
Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Zambia.
The College recognizes that conservation is changing with
newly emerging issues. Course programmes respond to these
emerging issues to equip future managers with tools to tackle
new problems affecting conservation in Africa. Recently TNA
enabled the introduction of new curricula to include courses in
forest conservation and primate conservation to meet the demands
of other countries and conservation initiatives.
PAST PERFORMANCE AND FUTURE PLANS
The College has won several awards including the UNEP-Sasakawa
Environmental Prize. The College is recognized as a Centre
of Excellence in professional and technical wildlife management
training in Africa by the East African Community (EAC) and the
Southern African Development Community (SADC).
In its 47 years of existence CAWM, Mweka has trained over
4511 students and professionals from Countries in Africa and
beyond. Students have come from 57 Countries worldwide. Responding
to the increased demand for wildlife management
professionals in many countries the College has increased its
programs since its establishment and currently is planning to
establish Bachelor degrees in Wildlife Management and Wildlife
Tourism. Recently the College admitted Mozambique and
Sudanese students to meet the demand of these countries in
wildlife professions following decades of civil wars.
The College has introduced short courses such as Wildlife intelligence
to facilitate conservation law-enforcement officers
in curbing the recent boom in poaching and bushmeat problems
in these countries where rampant poverty and uncontrolled
weapons as a result of past civil wars. The College recently
offered a post-graduate diploma programme specifically
dedicated to the bushmeat problem in 2008/2009 academic
year. This programme sponsored by the USFWS through the
African Biodiversity Collaborative Group trained people from
Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Tanzania on bushmeat problems
identification, investigation and combating techniques.
Most wildlife crimes fail to be prosecuted because of lack of evidence
to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. The College
is planning to establish a wildlife forensic laboratory, which
will enable training of wildlife managers and rangers in simple
DNA technologies. The College has successfully offered a week
long course on bushmenat identification using forensics in
2009. When equipped with a forensic laboratory, the College
will be able to offer training in this technology which will be
important to law-enforcement agencies in combating poaching
in African countries.
CHALLENGES
Significant challenge is reduction in student scholarships to
students due to economic slow downs worldwide. This is making
it increasingly difficult for local and foreign students to access
training at this College. Another challenge is equipments.
Despite being endowed with state of the art equipments in
some areas the College is deficient in others such as molecular
technology, night vision goggles, and in particular poor computer
and internet access limit student learning. Finally, lack
of infrastructures for training hampers the College ability to
provide service for more people.
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