Vancouver couple’s Little Elephant Camp dream now a reality in Uganda | 24CA News

Camping has all the time been a giant a part of Kevin and Michelle Sutton’s ethos.

Originally from British Columbia, they’re drawn to coastal forests and towering mountains and have mastered the menu round many camp stoves.

The Vancouver couple has now arrange camp, so to talk, on the opposite facet of the globe and turned it right into a business.

“You don’t really think you are going to get into the tourism industry, but we started to see the tourism industry grow,” mentioned Kevin.

“We decided to take a leap for it,” Kevin Sutton.

“If you told me when I landed in Uganda this is where I’d be sitting, well here we are,” Michelle Sutton.

“My favorite part in all of this is giving people an experience,” added Michelle.

The couple initially moved to the bustling capital metropolis of Kampala and ran a furnishings constructing firm. But their dream was all the time to get again out into nature and mix their love for the outside with tenting and cooking.

“So we wanted to give people an experience of camping but put a safari spin on it” mentioned Kevin ” You know the traditional canvas tents the fireplace exterior the celebs,”  he mentioned.

The Little Elephant Camp was born. It sits on the sting of postcard-perfect Queen Elizabeth National Park. It’s subsequent degree glamping with flush bogs, cook dinner tents and infrequently a entrance row seat to among the best creatures to roam the sprawling savannah stretching throughout it.

” You’re doing all your day by day issues on the camp and an elephant walks by. It’s fairly surreal, you do should pinch your self generally, like ‘Wow, that is my yard!’” Michelle Sutton.

But the Suttons should not simply catering to vacationers in search of a novel expertise in Africa.  They’re additionally taking part in a giant position within the lives of among the native individuals right here, locally they now name their very own.

“It’s a very impoverished community,” defined Michelle. “The labour is fairly unskilled and our M.O. is basically to employee those people and give them a job, give them a focus, on the job training, and develop their skills so that they can provide for their families.”

The tourism trade is gaining steam in western Uganda.

Open-air overland rigs carrying excited vacationers gripping lengthy lenses, buzz alongside the crimson grime roads. Everyone is sitting or standing on their seats hoping to get a glimpse of an elusive leopard or lazy lion with it’s paws dangling from a prickly tree.  Hippos bob their heads out of cool lake water, sweeping the shoulders of their buddies within the elephant herd who’re additionally taking a reprieve from the unforgiving solar overhead.

While there was an enormous effort to guard weak species right here, individuals are nonetheless the primary menace and it’s not simply ivory poachers.

“With the economy as well, people sometimes go in to hunt for bush meat,” defined Derrick Kafuko, conservation educator with Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Centre. “Doing so, you are also reducing on the prey that animals feed, say antelope.

“What happens if lions and leopards have nothing to hunt? So they may move into the community to kill our livestock. Then there is a conflict people get angry and maybe retaliate.”

Elephants in Queen Elizabeth National Park

“When elephants or hippos are coming into your crops and eating the cabbage or maise, or elephants eating your mangos that is a nuisance,” mentioned Kevin Sutton.

“Some local people have never even visited the park before,” added Michelle.

But as extra individuals turn into employed within the tourism sector right here, consciousness grows about the good thing about the wild useful resource in entrance of them.

“We are seeing more lions than before,” mentioned Sadam a tour information in Queen Elizabeth National Park. “The park rangers are doing their jobs in conserving the wildlife and we appreciate that.

“Since the park started to create employment opportunities to the people living in the communities they go on educating people in the community about the importance of these animals.”

An electrical fence has been put up on the opposite facet The Little Elephant Camp’s property. It now acts as a buffer between the park and the neighborhood, a aim the Suttons had from the start.

“We’ve seen the wildlife population around here increase and we’ve definitely made the community around here understand the value of what they have in front of them, which is a national park, and tourism can be something to get involved with,” mentioned Kevin Sutton.

“We’d prefer to see future generations to return be capable to see these animals,   mentioned Michelle.

“So it really is our responsibility to do what we can now.”

The transplanted Canadians mentioned they’ve made this place their dwelling and are hoping to present again to it as a lot because it has enriched them.

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