This blog chronicles the rescued baby Hippo, Owen, who was adopted by a 130 year old giant Aldabran tortoise, Mzee. This remarkable story of compassion has found its way on BBC and NPR and a documentary film will premier at the Tribeca Film Festival in May 2006.

The supporting organization of Haller Park is Lafarge Eco Systems:

The vision of Lafarge Eco Systems is to create paradise from wastelands. We invented the wheel when it comes to rehabilitation of quarries in Kenya. We have been taking exhausted, barren limestone quarries, and turning them into premier attractions for over three decades.

Quarries that we have restored have won international acclaim for best practice. Our parent company has won awards for its stewardship of the environment and Dr Rene Haller, our founder, won recognition from the UN for his outstanding work.

After thirty years of experience and repeated successes behind us, we realise it is time to pass on the lessons. We aim to become an internationally recognized reference in tropical ecosystem restoration and the sustainable management of restored landscapes. We are already at the forefront of this cutting edge science and will continue to develop and improve in order to stay there.

Lafarge is committed to environmental and social responsibility. Central to its success in the cement business, is an unequivocal understanding that Lafarge’s capacity to repair the damage caused by its mining activities is its license to operate. Lafarge cannot turn its neighbours against it, it cannot soil its own nests, for then Lafarge would have no future.

The new ecosystems must be enduring; it would be no good planting trees only for them to die in a few years due to ecosystem weaknesses or financial constraints. Lafarge Eco Systems operates with a keen awareness of the “bottom line�?; we must be both environmentally and economically sustainable.

We seek to not only to repair the land, but also to improve it, make it better than it was before quarrying begun. The result is more than just a green space, it is a living laboratory that is rich with diversity and shows us much about the way ecosystems function. They are reservoirs of endangered species in a region where biodiversity is shrinking quickly. They are open classrooms, inspiring young and old alike to take an interest in nature and the value of the environment. And they are paradise for the hundreds of thousands of visitors seeking refuge from the chaos of a post-industrial world.