National Parks and Wildlife Reserves

Growing up, we always used to see documentaries, movies, circus and especially animal cartoons of course in English. So I automatically assumed that there is wildlife all over the world. I had no idea that most of the wildlife portrayed in the media was actually only in Africa and some in Asia. I was very disappointed to learn that.

Unlike what most people think, as a Kenyan, very few of us really get to see the animals like the foreign tourists do, we actually don’t see the need to do that. The only close way we could get to a wild life is to go to an enclosed national park where animals are caged.


I have been on a safari before to one of the many national parks in Kenya, Tsavo National Park. It is so big and wild that one day trip is not enough.  You need like 3 or 4 days to explore everything properly.

The more I know about other places, the more questions I have about their wildlife preservation. Almost each and every country has a wildlife but only in small numbers. I wonder what happened before that they have such small numbers of wildlife and why they are not doing anything now to correct the mistakes they did before.

Here in Belize, most of the country is a jungle but it is not easy to come into contact with any wildlife. You have to go to the closed national park to see the caged animals. I was surprised to see that they have big cats here too. Why aren’t there places secured for wildlife preservation like we have in Africa? Places declared as forests for wildlife and no one is allowed to live those areas leave alone entering without permission.

We cannot change the past but we can change the future.  Africa was also on the verge of loosing all its wildlife to poaching but everything was turned around in the eighties and now things are much better.

Wouldn’t it be beautiful if people could come to Belize and would be able to go on a safari to see the beautiful jungle and wildlife they have? It looks like there used to be a bigger wildlife before but was not protected.