Joan Root shot dead
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/in...al/17root.html

Just FYI.

bumping - she was shot dead in her lakeside Kenya home. Thought some of you would be interested.

Very sad.

Thanks for the reply....was beginning to feel like I was in the twilight zone....

Very sad indeed.

Hi. a few words about
Joan was best known as part of a couple team - Joan & Alan.
Joan & Alan Root were pioneer wildlife film-makers. "Year of the Wildebeest" (1976) is one of the best (& first) migration films (putting cameras inside tortoises they filmed the stampede from ground level)...
Alan called it "Brave Gnu World"...
others like "Mzima Springs" {this is a film 4u KIMBURU}.
"Two in the Bush" has pieces of the other films (a bit self-glorifying but funny)
made 4 Anglia Television’s Survival series.
@ Alan Root was probably the first hot-air Baloon pilot to take us tourists around (the couple cruised over Kili !)

in the last years she was involved with conservation issues around Lake Naivasha. some think maybe it has to do with her death. Poachers etc'...
. . .

Very, very sad. Joan Root sounds like a person I should have heard and read about, but I hadn’t before she was killed.

I also hadn't heard of Joan Root until I read this thread. So tragic.

for Nyamera & Patty
maybe some others

read this: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...995396,00.html

but the best is to see their films
simply classics !!

aby
PS i remember lodges showing their films (Block Hotels at Samburu, Baringo & Mara Sopa...)

Same here, I didn't know her name either. A sad ending to a creative and successful life.

I'm glad you all are reading this - I remembered the Roots from seeing their films in my high school science classes. I'm sure their work was featured in Nat. Geographic as well. It is a tragic story and one that is appearing to be less and less isolated which is troubling to say the very least.

Those of you interested in what happened to Joan Root and the situation in this part of Kenya might want to see http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teac...60125wednesday.
html

Thanks for sharing this.

I can't tell you how sad this situation make me. Sometimes I feel that there is just no hope. When problems get out of hand, it seems that it is almost impossible to right them. And by saying this, I am not condoning poaching of any type, but what can be done when ever larger populations of extremely poor people end up competing for wildlife (or fish) for habitat? We (meaning the human race) have just screwed up this planet beyond belief. BTW, for more on this topic, see Jared Diamond's book "Collapse". Frightening and enlightening.

And we go on debating which is the best/most luxurious/most amazing safari camps. Now I feel like we are just asking for one more great dance tune on the deck of the Titanic. Sorry to be such a downer.

Well said, dggatina. I include myself in the Titanic metaphor, of course.

Another thing I worry about when I read stuff like this is that people will localize these problems in their minds. "Kenya's so dangerous; I'll never go there. Fortunately, XXX (pick your fave African country) just isn't like that."

Nice metaphor, ddgattina...

Katt58, thanks for the link.

Ddgattina, thanks for the metaphor. With all this aviation fuel we’re even making the ship sink faster. And my biggest worry is not being invited to the dance…
This has made me remember an incident in April in the same area as Naivasha when a KWS ranger, Samson ole Sisina, who was investigating poaching on lord Delamere’s ranch Soysambu was shot and killed by lord Delamere’s son, Thomas Cholmondeley (sp. ?) who said he had mistaken the ranger for a robber – it might have been true or it might have been cold blooded murder, or something in between. The murder charges were dropped extremely quickly and the Maasai were threatening with invading the ranch, but then everything became very quiet. I suppose money changed hands. In June I asked a manager at a camp in the area about this incident and he said that Delamere’s son was approximately as innocent as Michael Jackson.

For more on Joan Root -- there is a new biography -- Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa by Mark Seal. Not sure there is a lot new in it, but it made me feel she lived a very sad life after her divorce from Alan.

Also, I read last week that Tom Cholmondeley was just realased from prison where he had been serving for killing another man on his property -- perhaps as much as 12 years in prison.