I enjoy what I do for a living. I am a professor of wildlife conservation at a fabulous university. To get to this point I have been both determined and lucky. I am one of those fortunate souls that has achieved a childhood ambition: to study wild animals in wild places. In this capacity, much of my adult life has been spent preparing for-, participating in-, and returning from- field work in distant parts of the world. These field opportunities have been, and still very much are, formative experiences for me. In the field I sharpen my research skillset, observe animals in their natural settings (i.e., not in computer simulations), and hope that I can describe some new or novel aspect of animal ecology which could positively benefit their conservation.

While a big part of me is nourished by fieldwork, another part of me breaks the moment I step aboard an international flight taking me away from my home, from my wife and daughter, and from the normal day-to-day life that my family and I cherish. I can’t seem to fix this ache. This is a feeling that I experience even during relatively short (1-3 weeks) trips abroad. Imagine what the emotions must be like for my African graduate students – Arthur Muneza and Tutilo Mudumba – when they elect to come to Michigan State University (MSU) to pursue graduate research training. The first time that Arthur, for instance, boarded a plane was when he came to MSU last autumn to initiate his M.S. degree. He stepped aboard that flight with the knowledge that he would not see his father or his brother again for at least 9 months. In August of this year Tutilo left Uganda, left his job, his home, his wife, and his two children to start his own graduate degree in RECaP. Try to conceptualize for a moment what Tutilo must have felt when taking off in that plane knowing that he would not hold his daughter’s hand or read a book to his son for at least 5 months. 

My 5-year old daughter seems to manage my own absence far better than I do. She is the one that gives me the pep talks. Over a pancake breakfast this morning, for instance, she told me that “the giraffes and lions need your help Daddy. And Tutilo and Arthur need your help too.” In her sweet voice, my daughter summed up the two Grand Challenges facing wildlife conservation in the 21st century. Challenge 1) To stop the precipitous drop of wildlife populations, like lions and giraffes, throughout East Africa. Challenge 2) To create opportunities for students, like Arthur and Tutilo, to attain Ph.D. degrees in wildlife conservation in East Africa so that they don't have to leave their home, their family, and their friends. When I say that these are Grand Challenges I mean that they are extremely complex and difficult issues to solve.

​Giraffe and lion populations have reduced by half in just the last 15 years. There are now less than 75,000 giraffes and less than 25,000 lions remaining in Africa. While these populations are dropping rapidly, it is important to note that we are in no risk of losing species like giraffes or lions from the world. Zoos have demonstrated their masterful capability to maintain studbooks for each species of interest, along with an accompanying Species Survival Plan which determines how best to combine genetic pools from captive facilities across the world to maintain healthy, and non in-bred, animals. So if you are a person that is fine having access to interesting animals in a zoo, then there is really nothing more that we need to do. We are good. If instead, you are person that needs to know, even if you never experience it first-hand, that a lion’s roar still echoes across a valley in some distant land, then now is the time to act. If we fail to act now, these dramatic population declines will continue to progress and we will lose these iconic species from the wild.

Because there are no PhD-level training programs in wildlife conservation in East Africa, students with a passion to preserve animal populations need to go abroad to attain their terminal degree. It is remarkable that the East African region, widely considered to be the veritable Eden for large mammals, is devoid of advanced educational research and training opportunities for students that intend to devote their careers to wildlife conservation.

My responsibility as the Director of the RECaP Laboratory is to find solutions to these Grand Challenges. And the quest for these solutions takes me abroad. With the power of collaborative partnerships with organizations such as Makerere University, Giraffe Conservation Foundation, and Uganda Wildlife Authority I can envision what these solutions might look like. This trip will help to refine that vision. 

The bags are packed and it is almost time to go. Graduate students Steve, Kyle, Leandro, and Rem are writing-up their research projects preparing manuscripts for peer-reviewed publications. Undergraduate students Clara, Mollie, Waldemar, and Mikki and collating  new data for analysis looking for solutions to some the most important conservation issues across the world. These are the students that will be 'holding down the fort' while I am in the field. Tutilo and Arthur, two more of RECaP's graduate students, are already in the field. Specifically, they are having an amazing time in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda studying lions and giraffes, respectively. Tutilo, along with partners at the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), is working to describe the movements of lions in relation to a variety of human-caused disturbances including snares, vehicles, and oil development. Arthur is assisting the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and UWA in an incredible large-scale giraffe translocation project. Rothchild's giraffes are the most endangered subspecies of giraffe in Africa with a population that hovers around 1,000 individuals. As such, these animals desperately need help if we are to have them on earth in future. One of the last spots where they exist is in northwestern Uganda where for the last 100 years (maybe more, maybe less) these animals have been trapped north of the source of the Nile River. Giraffe Conservation Foundation will shortly change that. Arthur is helping to capture, fit with GPS collars, and relocate 20 giraffes to fruitful habitat south of the Nile. You can imagine what an undertaking this will be. 

I am ready to be in the field with Arthur and Tutilo, to assist in their incredibly-exciting and important research projects. I am ready to collaborate with our partners in GCF and UWA so that we can sit down and talk about the pressing conservation issues at hand and the novel and original solutions that are just beyond our grasp. I am ready to meet friends at Makerere University in Kampala to continue our conversations of how we can work to train the next generation of wildlife conservation leaders in Africa.

By helping in efforts to restore giraffes to habitat where they have not existed for a century or by working to decrease the human disturbance of lions, RECaP strives to recapture some balance in the relationships of humans, wildlife, and wild places. If you have interest in this work, please check back to this site. Make a good cup of coffee, snuggle into your most comfortable arm chair, and prepare yourself for a thrilling read of this exciting research in real time. We will keep you informed of our efforts via my own chronicles (The Director's Cut) as well as our field correspondences maintained by our student community (Notes from the Field). Thanks for being part of RECaP!