Tom Tom Club

 Tom

Tom Silvester and his wife Jo have both been involved with the Loisaba Conservancy since 1992. Jo had been offered a job setting up the stables and riding safaris for the newly refurbished lodge and shortly afterwards Tom, who has a degree in Agriculture from Edinburgh University, was offered the job as Cattle Manager. He was delighted at the age of twenty-four to be looking after 60,000 acres of wilderness and has never lost his enthusiasm or optimism since.

“I was passionate about ranching, livestock and wildlife and felt that I had arrived in a place where I could engage in all of those things. I wanted to make a difference and contribution to wildlife conservation at scale.”

Now the Chief Executive Officer of Loisaba Conservancy, there is no doubt that Tom has achieved everything that he aimed for and yet there is still so much more he wants to do. Despite some phoenix-like moments, for example when a fire swept through more than half of Loisaba and destroyed the lodge, the Conservancy has transitioned from a privately owned ranch into an internationally supported and globally recognised wildlife conservancy. The creation of a Kenyan Trust will ensure that Loisaba continues to remain dedicated to conservation in perpetuity. This added certainty has enabled the Conservancy to confidently invest in its fabric, staff and security.

As well as protecting the resident and migratory elephants, the lions and other big cats, facilitating research and education, it has been Tom’s personal ambition to reintroduce rhinos to a landscape where they roamed freely nearly fifty years ago when sadly they were poached out by Shifta poaching gangs. The Conservancy has received conditional approval from the Kenyan Wildlife Service to set up a sanctuary and now Tom is raising the budget to get going on the development of the infrastructure that will be needed. Protection will be at the top of the list of priorities.

Whilst Tom dreams of rhino walking the plains and valleys of Loisaba, his nightmares are all about cactus. Numerous ways have been tried and failed at eradicating the Opuntia cactus but a new system of burying extremely deeply is working well and there is a full time team dedicated to the problem. The bio-gas digester is also playing a part in getting rid of it.

Naturally modest, Tom is an incredible man who has managed to develop a respectful and mutually beneficial arrangement with his community neighbours, helping them with the management of their livestock, education, and medical provision. It is fair to say that they, along with all of the staff, love and respect him and Jo. There is a deep loyalty throughout the Conservancy and an acknowledgement that Tom has got it right; his attitude towards other people is always friendly and polite without any colonial overtones. It says a lot that there are only six white people working in the Conservancy and that everyone else is drawn entirely on merit from indigenous Kenyan workers.

Jo is responsible for many changes at Loisaba herself and is as much a part of Loisaba as Tom. She recently designed the landscaping for the newly built Lodo Springs Lodge. She is a brilliant artist, horsewoman, and botanist too. The couple have been married for twenty six years and have two children, Max who is twenty-two who is studying International Business at Loughborough University, and Imara, nineteen, reading Zoology at Exeter University. It is Max that owns the milking camels and his dissertation will be on building a business model for the furtherance of the milking activity.