THE VIEWFINDERNEWSLETTER: ISSUE NO 48, JUNE 2007 [Filming Fees] [Feature Film] [Tortoise Update] [Virgin Air Touches Down] [Kenya Wins At Missoula] [Chameleons Reclassified] In what might be called a minor coup, we appear to have persuaded the Narok County Council that their astronomical increases in filming fees last November were unrealistic. They have now revised the fees again, going back to the rates used pre-November 2006, plus 33%. New rates for the Narok CC side of the Mara are therefore: 1-5 people KSh 16,000 per week We have not yet managed to get fees reduced for other areas, but are working to get a standard amount agreed to cover all County Councils, who manage the National Reserves. There is talk of Kenya Wildlife Service “looking at” the rates for National Parks, but so far these remain unchanged.
Our picture this time is of a young Klaas’ cuckoo, being fed by a female Variable sunbird. The cuckoo is nearly twice the size of the sunbird. That an adult cuckoo manages to lay an egg in a sunbird nest, which dangles from a fragile thread, is quite an extraordinary achievement. It was announced at the Cannes film festival that a major feature film about the life of Joan Root is to be made by Working Title Pictures, starring Julia Roberts, who will also be one of the producers. How sad it is that, like Dian Fossey and Joy Adamson before her, Joan only achieved worldwide recognition after bring brutally murdered. On 28 March, Sid started digging in the rose bed once more, very slowly and obviously with extreme effort. The soil was very wet, and she abandoned the exercise after an hour and a half. Next day, she started again two feet away from the previous night’s site, and this time she completed the exercise (with some difficulty as the soil was still very damp) and laid 13 eggs. And on 1st May, she did it again, also in the rose bed but carefully avoiding previous sites. This time she laid 15 eggs, bringing the grand total to 115. None have hatched, and we believe that all may have been in vain and Nairobi is just too cold. But the law of averages may kick in, and maybe the film ‘March of the Tortoises’ will one day be completed. Just as we began to upload the newsletter onto the website Sid started to dig again...! Virgin became the latest airline to fly to Nairobi at the beginning of June, offering daily overnight flights from London. Sir Richard Branson has shown his interest in conservation by ‘adopting’ one of Daphne Sheldrick’s orphaned elephants, and going in with mobile phone operator Safaricom to create an elephant ‘corridor’ north from Mt Kenya. We are delighted that Kenya-born film makers Jenny Sharman and Richard Jones (True Nature Films) won the ‘best Independent’ award at Missoula with their film “The Curse of Copper”. The film also picked up merits for music and portrayal of conservation initiative. The film was made in Ecuador, and had the very positive result of stopping a mining project that would have destroyed a unique area of cloud forest. A recent review of East Africa’s chameleons has resulted in a new genus for nine montane chameleons (formerly Chameleo) and now renamed Kinyongia. It seems that molecular structure of nucleic acids of chameleons in this new group proves that they are descended from a common ancestor which excludes all other chameleons. The re-named species are found in the Ruwenzori mountains, the western Albertine rift, Mt Kenya, Kilimanjaro, Taita Hills, Shimba Hills and Usambara Mountains, and north central Tanzania. All have small ranges, and the forests where they occur are not connected.
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