Introducing Gerdame United: Save The Dibatag
After we got back from the Somali Region of Ethiopia a year ago, Charles Foley, Alex Meyer, Ian Thompson and I wondered how we might help conservation around the tiny village of Gerdame, in the heart of Dibatag country.
Promoting local conservation is something many mammalwatchers care about. Just visiting a remote area in the first place can be very important of course. Writing a trip report that might encourage others to visit; even more important.
Some mammalwatchers bring field guides and spare binoculars to give to local guides.
Some might take a particularly promising guide under their wing and help advise them on how to set up a business (if you like that idea then you could contact me to take out a listing for your guide on mammalwatching so they have their own webpage).
It can also be helpful to raise awareness of – and local pride in – the wildlife the locals live alongside. Russ Mittermeier talked about ‘t-shirt diplomacy’ on our podcast: he likes to give a community some t-shirts of their local primate.
In Gerdame we went a step further and decide to sponsor the local football team. OK, so there might not be a football league there. Nor a team. But there are a lot of young footballers, and a pitch. So we sent the village eleven red ‘Save Dibatag’ jerseys (with the mammalwatching logo on the back), beautifully designed by Charles’s talented daughter Sierra and using Brent Huffman’s drawing of a Dibatag.
Håkan Pohlstrand, who led our tour, and was arranging delivery of the team strip, noticed an important flaw in our plans. It could be useful to have shirts in a different colour so the red team would have some well-dressed opposition. So he very quickly ordered more shirts.
They arrived in Gerdame a few days ago and have generated a good deal of excitement. Hopefully a tiny part of that will translate into some pride in the Dibatags. Just wait until one of these guys signs with a Premier League team!
If you’d like to do something similar, or want to contribute to mammalwatching to help us do this again after a future trip, please let me know.
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