Aden Ali, 2019 Wildlife warrior

Aden Elmi Ali is a hirola ranger with the hirola conservation programme based within Ijara Subcounty Garissa County, Kenya. Aden joined our Hirola family in 2017 as a community scout tasked with carrying out monitoring patrols and community education. In the two years that Aden has been with us, he has shown exemplary skills which saw him rise through the to a lead scout and field research assistant for hcp.

Aden is also a local of Kotile village which is adjacent to the Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy and the only hirola predator proof sanctuary in the world. Having schooled at Kotile primary school and later Kotile secondary school, Aden is very familiar with the wildlife occurring in the area. He loves nature, the outdoors and especially the wildlife in the area. “My favorite animal is the Hirola” he says.

His daily tasks revolve around helping the team in conducting patrols of both wildlife and Hirola monitoring on a daily basis, deploying and checking on the camera traps and helping with collection of transect data in the conservancy. In addition, Aden is also a great community liaison officer for hcp and the community as he works with the herders and the adjacent community members especially in handling human-wildlife conflict within the hirola rangelands of Ijara Subcounty. Aden is also a role model to many of the kids back in his Alma mater, who would want to take up conservation as a career in life as he does conduct frequent school visits to mentor the young children. He believes it’s upon them that the future for conservation lies.