African Tourism Board President Alain St.Ange pays tribute to Colin Church of Kenya Black Rhino Aberdare Park project

1. Colin Church, one of East Africa’s renowned conservationists, died at the age of 81.
2. He was a public advocate for the Black Rhino serving as the Chairman of the Rhino Ark Charitable Trust.
3. Church will also be remembered for the completion of the 250-mile-long electric fence project surrounding the mountain range in Kenya to keep out poachers.

“I have had the pleasure and honor of knowing Colin Church personally when his public relations office, Church Orr & Associates, represented Seychelles in Kenya and in the whole of East Africa.

“He was a go-getter and above all a doer with new ideas to keep his partners ahead of the pack,” said Alain St.Ange, representing the African Tourism Board was also the former Tourism Minister of the Seychelles.

Colin Church, one of East Africa’s renowned conservationists, had also been the public advocate for the Black Rhino serving as the Chairman of the Rhino Ark Charitable Trust (2002 – 2012) as he worked to also protect other attractions of the Aberdare Park of Kenya and also Kenyan wildlife and her forests.

It was Colin Church who will be remembered for the completion of the 250-mile-long electric fence project surrounding the mountain range in Kenya that was designed to keep poachers out and animals in.

Rhino Ark was established in 1988 as a charitable trust to help save Kenya’s Black Rhino population in the Aberdare ecosystem. The rhino were under severe threat at that time from rampant poaching for their highly-valued horn.

Wildlife would invade the farms bordering the park, destroying crops and occasionally killing people. This resulted in fear and aversion towards wildlife which worked in favor of poachers who then had easy access since the local community saw no value in protecting either the wildlife or the forest habitat.

Rhino Ark’s formation was specifically to assist the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to build an electric fence along sections of the Aberdare National Park on its Eastern Salient which has the highest concentration of wildlife and borders directly onto farmland.

Colin Church was born in Nairobi in 1940, and he died just a few weeks ago at the age of 81.