David Andrew visits the Taita Discovery Centre in Kenya.

Rukinga Ranch, immediately south of Kenya's Tsavo East National Park, is a working cattle ranch in what is known to locals as the nyika, a vast area of thorny bushland where the little rainfall soon runs off the kopjes into the parched soil. But it's also in the middle of an ancient elephant migration corridor: every year nearly 1,000 elephants move between Lake Jipe in Tsavo West and the Galana River in Tsavo East, temporarily giving Rukinga one of the largest populations of elephants on private land in Kenya.

The area boasts a high concentration of lion, and other natural attractions include excellent birdwatching, herbivores such as Grevy's and common zebras, gerenuk, and two endemic plants- Classen's aloe and Rukinga cycad. With so many elephants, Lesser kudu breaking from cover as you explore the network of tracks, and Mt Kilimanjaro visible on clear days from atop the kopjes, it's no surprise that plans are afoot to turn Rukinga into a dedicated wildlife conservancy.

Tucked away in this remote wilderness is the Taita Discovery Centre, where local and overseas students participate in programmes aimed at providing environmental education and research, community service and guide training. Funds generated by the Centre are helping to establish Rukinga as a conservancy, and for every 16 overseas students, the Centre's supporters sponsor four scholarship students from Wildlife Clubs of Kenya or a similar source.

In appearance like an African village, the Centre's 16 makuti-thatched rondavels were built using local techniques, materials and labour. Two dormitories sleep up to 40 students, and there is: a fully equipped laboratory; a study room; a library; on-line computers and a shade house complete with chameleons, tortoises and butterflies. Ongoing projects look at the effects of fire and grazing on the wilderness, monitor elephants and study the endemic plants.

One of the most popular activities is making elephant dung paper, a coarse fibrous paper that makes a popular souvenir for student visitors. Dry dung is collected and broken down with a mortar and pestle, then mixed with a solution of shredded newspaper soaked in water. When the solution has attained the desired consistency, a thin layer is lifted from its bath with a square sieve, excess moisture sponged off and the paper set to dry. The technique has been perfected by the Discovery Centre's alchemists-Education Officers Edwin Selempo and Fidel Kaylo. In his spare time Edwin paints watercolours on the finished product.

The average elephant consumes 100 tonnes of herbage annually; by the time it reaches the other end, that's an awful lot of, well, recycled vegetation. When you consider that an average (dry) dung ball weighs 250g and can produce about 20 A4 sheets of paper, the "harvest" for paper manufacture would hardly be noticed even if every tourist in Kenya wanted a piece. But at Taita they're taking no chances and only collect dung dropped in vehicle tracks, from where its removal will have little impact on the environment.

Elephant by-products are one thing, but water is quite another. There's little enough as it is, and when 1,000 elephants come trumpeting through Rukinga, people in nearby villages get understandably nervous. Management aims to provide a year-round water source on the ranch to minimise conflict, but most water is piped to Rukinga and costs $1 per cubic metre (1,000 litres)-that's KSh60 compared to KSh3 for domestic consumption in Nairobi. At 20 gallons a day per trunk the water bill soon adds up, but Taita's donors and supporters sponsor permanent waterholes for the elephants.

Part of Taita Discovery Centre's philosophy is to put something back into local communities to whose largesse the ranch owes its existence. A typical 10-day programme takes in a community service day, in which students can help with painting schools and churches, road maintenance and digging ditches for water pipes. Other projects have been instigated to raise local environmental awareness and to generate revenue for local communities. Visitors can sponsor a tree and for their donation they receive a certificate printed on elephant dung paper. Silk worms indigenous to the area produce a fine silk that shows commercial promise. And a lateral, but audacious plan is to develop fish-farming in artificial ponds to provide people with an additional source of protein.

Published in Travel Africa Edition Ten: Winter 1999/2000 Text is subject to Worldwide Copyright (c)