Over the last six months to a year there has been increased pressure on the Sibiloi National Park from livestock and people due to the failure of the rains to the north. As a result it seems that there is more livestock inside the national park than outside it to the north. In fact when we were looking to buy goats for meat for the camp, we were told we needed to go into the park and find someone to sell us goats there. This situation represents a very real threat to the little remaining wildlife and the fossil sites in the area.

It is illegal for the people to graze their livestock Kenyan National Parks at any time of the year and to carry weapons. However currently the Kenya Wildlife Service authorities based here have very limited resources and are therefore unable to patrol or police the area. Sibiloi National Park is 976 square miles and the roads are very poor and demand 4 wheel drive vehicles. The park has only two extremely unreliable vehicles to use. In addition they are budgeted less than 100 dollars a month to use as a fuel allowance, which barely gets them to the north end of the park in the event that any of the vehicles are serviceable at the time.

I flew several patrols with the park authorities and representatives of the Ileret community to map the extent of the incursion. Over thirty homesteads, each with dozens of women and young children and thousands of sheep were found. By plotting the homesteads with a GPS from the air it enables the park rangers to return to the sites more easily on the ground. Over the next few weeks there will be an intensive effort to move the livestock out of the park. At the time of the first aerial patrol during which time photographs were taken to facilitate counting, over 100000 head of livestock was in the park in the manyattas (homesteads) that were recorded.

On the work front, the excavation at Ileret is now finished and unfortunately nothing else was recovered. We will have to complete the wet sieving to be sure we have nothing from the sediment. This will be done over the next few months from Koobi Fora.