Kenya: Taveta Leaders Condemn Grazing in Tsavo Park


LEADERS in Taveta have lamented increased illegal grazing of livestock in the Tsavo National Park. According to councillor Chanzo Khamadi, the illegal grazers from North Eastern province had sneaked thousands of herds of cattle in the park and had overtaken all the watering points for the elephants thus leading to human wildlife conflict. "Elephants only come out of the park in search of pasture and water during the drought season," lamented Khamadi. He blamed the Kenya Wildlife Services for not taking stringent measures to curb grazing in the park.

Early this year, KWS director Julius Kipng'etich while addressing a leaders meeting in Mwatate, said lenient penalties on those arrested grazing in the park were to blame since the herders go to court and pay a paltry Sh500 as bond.

Wildlife conservationists have lamented that the illegal grazing was endangering the life of the wildlife since they could be infected with diseases. Kipng'etich said stringent penalties was the only solution to bar the illegal grazers from moving into the parks.

Tourists visiting the park have in many times lamented that they see more livestock than wildlife in the park amidst being charged hefty park entrance fees.

Some sources revealed that some unscrupulous KWS rangers were colluding with grazers who give them some fee to graze their animals in the park at night.

The news comes at a time when residents of Taveta are counting losses following increased invasion of their farms by hundreds of elephants from Tsavo West National Park.

More than 100 marauding elephants have invaded farms in areas of Mwakitau and Taveta where they destroyed acres of bananas, maize, peas, pumpkins among other crops.

This go's on in most of the Reserves in that area.

that Hilarious the Taveta leaders are a dam joke. the largest elephant poaching town in kenya is Makuki right smack dab in the middle of taveta district and six kilometers from tsavo. the MP there is so crocked there going to have to screw him into the ground when he die's. some of his buddies murdered Campbell Bridges and got away with it by hiding behind his skirts.

Machete mob murders British gemstone miner in Kenya

Campbell Bridges, a renowned British gemstone mine owner, has been murdered in the Kenyan bush by a gang of illegal prospectors armed with machetes, spears and bows and arrows.

Mr Bridges, 71, was stabbed repeatedly after he and his son Bruce were ambushed as they drove on Tuesday to their mine, 190 miles southeast of Nairobi.

The murder was the culmination of a three-year battle with squatters stealing rare tsavorite gems, first discovered more than 40 years ago by Mr Bridges, a senior jewel consultant with Tiffany and Company in New York.

"They had dragged thorn bushes across the road and as soon as we got out of the vehicle, eight of them came running towards us, screaming "We are going to kill you all," Bruce Bridges, 32, told The Daily Telegraph in Nairobi.

"They had machetes, spears, bows and arrows, heavy wooden clubs and we had a couple of clubs, no real weapons.

"One guy went at my dad with a spear, my father grabbed the end of the spear and held it away from him. Right as that happened I saw another run up and stab my father.

"I went to the man with the spear who was right above my father, he tried to get me, I hit the spear out of his hand and chased him into the bush.

"When I ran back another one came at me with a machete and got me across the right side of the neck. Thank God it's nothing bad at all."

Two of their Kenyan colleagues were "cut to ribbons" but survived. His father was fatally wounded.

"I looked down and he didn't look good, he was pale and I knew it was bad. I put him in the back of the truck and drove as fast as I could to the hospital," said Mr Bridges.

However, doctors pronounced his father dead on arrival. His body has been flown to Nairobi, his home for the last 30 years.

Campbell Bridges was born in Scotland but travelled to Africa in the late 1960s to explore for rare gems only then being discovered along the Kenya-Tanzania border.

Soon after he arrived, he and his wife lived in a tree-house 25ft above the ground to keep clear of wild animals roaming the territory where he was prospecting.

He was the first to bring tanzanite to the West, earning him a consultancy with the famous Tiffany's jewellers in New York.

He later found the first deposits of tsavorite, a green gem more brilliant than an emerald, in the hills around Taita Taveta in Kenya, and staked a claim which his company still mines today.

Last year he was honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the International Colored (CORR) Gemstone Association, of which he was a founding member.

But despite a court last month confirming that his mining licence was valid and approving his prospecting rights, he had recently come up against powerful local figures who wanted him off his mine, Bruce Bridges said.

"We had been receiving death threats for quite a while, this whole thing has been going on for three years," he said.

"We told the police all about it, but they didn't do anything, we're pretty sure they were being ordered to drag their heels by the higher-ups.

"My father knew Africa, he knew that if you give these people your hand, they want to take your arm, then your leg, then your head. They will stop at nothing to have their way."

A police spokesman in Voi, the provincial capital closest to the Bridges' Scorpion mine, said that the authorities were investigating "the unfortunate death of a white miner".

He refused to comment on Bruce Bridges' allegations of a lack of police action on the earlier death threats.

The British High Commission in Nairobi was "ready to offer whatever assistance is necessary", a spokesman said.

yeeep the claim jumper's where back by the district MP kalisis matela( spelling ) I worked for campbell four month before he was killed. we where having trouble then every week. the police now want the Bridges family to pay for them to arrest the murders. last time I talked to Bruce nothing has changed with the police refusing to do there job