TSEIKURU, Kenya — Long before Jimmy Musili stood in the climate labs of Yale University, he was just a barefoot boy darting through the dry forests of eastern Kenya, chasing squirrels and drinking from cold spring water hidden beneath the acacia trees.
The forest wasn’t a wonder to young Musili it was life itself.
“I didn’t think of it as special,” he says. “It was just part of our world. A place to play. A place that fed us.”
But slowly, things changed.
By the time he finished secondary school, the rains had grown erratic. The thatching grass his family once gathered freely had vanished. Wildlife once part of the landscape was rarely seen. Even the lions fell silent.
It wasn’t until a trip to Nairobi that Musili saw the bigger picture. On a flickering TV in a relative’s house, he watched footage of Wangari Maathai being beaten for protesting forest destruction.
“It shocked me,” he says. “That’s when I heard the words ‘climate change’ for the first time and suddenly, everything I had noticed back home made sense.”
That moment would alter his course for good.
From Engineering Dreams to Wildlife Duty
Musili originally hoped to study architecture. But the call of the forest pulled harder. He enrolled instead in Wildlife Management at the University of Nairobi. Later, in 2015, he joined the Kitui County Government as a senior game warden, overseeing conservation efforts in the neglected Mwingi National Reserve, just a short drive from his home in Tseikuru.
The work was rewarding but far from easy.
“The ecosystem was in bad shape,” he recalls. “And counties don’t prioritise ecological restoration. The funding is small, and the progress is slow.”
More troubling to him was the human cost of conservation often ignored in official reports and glossy tourism brochures.
“People living near protected areas face serious risks,” he says. “I’ve seen crop destruction, injuries, even deaths. I’ve had to help families bury loved ones killed by animals we’re told to protect.”
One case haunts him still: a family that waited five years for compensation after a fatal wildlife attack. “If that’s how long it takes when someone dies, imagine the delay for those who lose crops or livestock. It creates real anger understandably so.”
A Scholar with Dirt Under His Nails
Determined to bring deeper understanding and real solutions to these challenges, Musili pursued a Master’s degree in Environmental Management at Yale. It was no small leap, but with support from the Rotary Club of Athi River and a host club in Westport, Connecticut, he made it.
At Yale, Musili focused on climate modelling and ecosystem science. His research now explores how rising temperatures and shifting rainfall will affect everything from elephant migration to soil health.
“By 2060, we could see a serious collapse in elephant habitat if current trends continue,” he warns, citing recent projections from his studies.
But Musili isn’t only interested in data. He’s just as concerned with people.
“Conservation can’t just be about fences and fines,” he says. “We need to make it meaningful for the people who live with the land.”
To him, that means involving communities not just as beneficiaries but as leaders. He argues that forests, rivers and wildlife must be seen not as isolated wonders but as parts of a whole, deeply connected to farming, water access and even public health.
“When herbivores graze, they help keep the ecosystem in check,” he explains. “Their droppings return nutrients to the soil, storing carbon and keeping it fertile. Without them, things start to fall apart.”
Rooted in Home, Looking Outward
Though Musili now moves between global conferences and policy meetings, his heart remains in Tseikuru, where children once played among the trees with wild dik-dik and birdsong filled the air.
He still dreams of seeing the lions return—and hearing them again at night.
“We need to stop thinking of nature as something out there,” he says. “We are part of it. Conservation isn’t about saving animals it’s about saving ourselves.”
Musili knows he alone can’t change everything. But his journey from a forest child in rural Kenya to a Yale-trained environmental thinker is a reminder of what’s possible when care for land and love for people are kept together.
And in a world of rising temperatures and deepening divides, that may be exactly what the planet needs.
