Operation clean-up
To help protect local wild animals, Born Free’s team in Ethiopia recently organised a huge community tidy up campaign, picking up an incredible 3,500kg of litter.
The clean team! (c) Born Free Ethiopia
Why would an international wildlife charity spend time cleaning up rubbish? Dealing with local environmental challenges, which impact both people and wildlife, is a key focus for our Community Engagement team, in Ethiopia and, sadly, litter can pose a significant threat to wild animals and their habitats.
Individuals can ingest plastic and other rubbish, become trapped or injured, and their homes damaged or polluted. So, waste management is an issue Born Free very much cares about, as our Community Engagement Officer, Ayano Urgecha, reports.
Ayano Urgecha
Waste is a big problem for wildlife. Rubbish strewn alongside roads can encourage animals to venture into danger from traffic, or forage amongst litter, resulting in significant health implications if consumed by accident.
This is a problem for baboons and other animals that live in and around Ensessa Kotteh, Born Free’s Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre in Ethiopia, based 21 miles from capital city Addis Ababa. Unfortunately, a huge amount of waste is disposed of and accumulates along the roadside between Kolobo and Sadamo, just outside the centre boundary.
As a team, we have frequently tried to clear the area and keep it clean. But people driving from different areas continue to bring waste materials from other towns and dump it during the night, making it a hard issue to address. We realised this problem couldn’t be solved by Born Free staff alone, and needed a new plan, to involve both our neighbours and other important stakeholders.
Firstly, we organised a workshop and discussion forum on waste management with representatives from nearby Kolobo Municipality, Sadamo and Wolmera village administration, Holeta municipality and a local military institution nearby to Ensessa Kotteh.
During this workshop, we agreed the need to collaborate, and come together to remove the waste and monitor the area to keep it clean continuously. After this, we arranged for a team of nine individuals from Sadamo, Born Free and the local military institution to undertake a site visit, to identify the main areas in need of cleaning.
Finally, an incredible 291-strong team, including 20 individuals from Sadamo community, 21 Born Free team members and 250 people from the local military institution, conducted a massive cleaning campaign. From the main focus area a remarkable 3,500kg of dumped waste was removed and disposed of.
The new banner goes up!
Once the cleaning work was complete, we then discussed how the work should be continued. It was agreed that the Sadamo administrators should involve the local community to continue this vital clean-up work. The military community would also involve their members and Born Free, involving our wider team and day workers, will ensure this work continues without interruption.
To see the change these efforts make, we are monitoring the situation to compare how the area looked at the beginning, before it was cleaned, what it looked like after the completed cleaning campaign, and what changes have been seen since then. So, every week we take pictures of the area to see the change.
However, clean-ups will solve the immediate problem, but they are ultimately only part of the solution. Preventing the litter reaching the site in the first place is our long-term goal. This will be achieved through a combination of awareness creation amongst local communities, as well as ongoing monitoring and enforcement.
To contribute towards this goal, we have been working with the local military institution to hang a banner on the roadside stating: Do not dump! It is illegal to dump your waste here.
But, of course, litter – not least dumping rubbish on roadsides, is not just a problem for wildlife in Ethiopia. It is in fact an issue impacting wild animals and their habitats all around the world.
What can you do about this in your local area?!