I rented a car and drove from Atlanta to Virginia.. arriving on the doorstep of Miriam Westervelt after eight hours behind the wheel. Miriam is a former US Fish and Wildlife Service – environmental educator. She spent only a week with ACK after previously working on strategic planning for the education department of CCF in Namibia. She is currently studying conservation planning and has a passion for Kenya. I enjoyed tours of the environmental work that Miriam does in her own back yard, and we chatted extensively about conservation planning for ACK.
On Monday morning I drove to Front Royal to meet with Adrienne Crosier. Adrianne specializes in cheetah reproductive physiology. She has agreed to supervise the fecal analysis of gluticosteroids (stress hormones) through advising the two students we have selected to carry out this portion of the study. Additionally Erica will be spending some time at SCBI testing camera traps and bait interest of the cheetahs (once all permissions are received). The camera trapping and fecal studies will be conducted by three master’s students who will be working simultaneously in the Salama and Athi-Kapiti study sites. We will use SCBI and CCF to calibrate work here in Kenya to set up labs for hormone and DNA analysis.