Have licensed killers become poachers?

2008-08-27 10:44:54
By John Mbaria


Some years ago, a study recommended that Kenya`s wildlife cropping programme be suspended due to abuse by licensed croppers, but this was disregarded.

As Kenya`s Ksh20 billion ($256 million) a year tourism industry receives a pounding from the ongoing war in Iraq, its wildlife resources, the heart of that industry, are facing a more subtle but equally deadly threat - poaching for bushmeat and cropping for game meat.

The killing has been going on in nearly all the country`s wildlife-dominated areas. Unlike poaching, which is illegal, game meat cropping is done in broad daylight by large-scale game ranchers licensed by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). These ranchers also happen to be members of the Laikipia, Nakuru and Machakos wildlife forums.

The trouble is that the cropping has been taking place without any mechanism of control. And, whatever the cause, Kenya is losing much of its wildlife population.

In a talk on ``Kenya`s Conservation Options`` he gave to members of the East African Wildlife Society (EAWLS) on February 13, a former KWS director, David Western, said that between 1977 (the year hunting was banned in Kenya through a presidential decree) and the late 1990s, Kenya lost between 30 and 50 per cent of its large mammals, an extermination rate he described as ``unprecedented anywhere in history.``

He added that bushbucks, lesser kudus, dik diks, gerenuks and giant forest hogs have disappeared from the Amboseli National Park and that ``pretty soon, we will lose giraffes and impalas.``

On its part, the Department of Remote Sensing and Resource Survey (DRSRS) put the wildlife loss at 58 per cent over the same period. From its aerial surveys, DRSRS reported that there had been no sighting of hartebeest and oryx in the Amboseli area since the late 1990s.

The cropping programme was initiated in 1990 on an experimental basis that was meant to allow a number of landowners to cull ``excess`` wildlife living on their farms.

However, 13 years down the line, the programme remains a ``pilot`` one even after a study commissioned by KWS and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) two years ago recommended that it be suspended due to abuse by licensed croppers and because it has been operating in a legal and information vacuum.

Entitled Evaluation of the Wildlife Pilot Cropping Project, the report, compiled by Tasha Bioservices Ltd, was completed in April 2001 and handed over to KWS.

But the wildlife body disregarded it and has instead allowed wildlife cropping to go on without attempting to acquire vital information on the populations of different species of wildlife in and outside Kenya`s national parks and reserves.

The report says that the wildlife-cropping programme is carried out without ``fundamental information on wildlife numbers, age, sex, spatial and temporal distribution.``

It adds that ``the magnitude of change in wildlife numbers has neither been adequately monitored and evaluated after cropping nor have effects of drought, poaching and natural mortality, in relation to prevailing range conditions, been taken into account.``

The report says that ``several croppers were reported to kill plains game animals that are not in the approved quota for an area`` and that croppers have engaged in poaching in order to meet their customers` needs, ``whether or not they have exhausted their approved quota.``

After KWS received the report, it organised an internal forum to discuss its contents. ``A heated debate ensued, with a number of board members urging participants to disregard it,`` said a source, who declined to be named.

The KWS board has a representative of the big-time game ranchers, most of whom have been licensed to cull the animals.

The ongoing cropping has not only emboldened poachers, it has also created an unprecedented demand for wildlife meat.

Much of the meat output of licensed croppers is sold to upmarket restaurants in Nairobi, tourist hotels and lodges, and a select number of butchers.

This has left a big, and growing, demand for the meat from many corners of the country unmet, even though some of the meat is exported to Europe and the United States.

A significant proportion of the meat, especially zebra, is sold to feed dogs and other carnivorous pets.

To meet the growing demand for bushmeat, poachers have taken advantage of the licensed killing.

The report says that ``poaching is on the increase in areas where cropping is being carried out, without the affected communities benefiting from the activity.``

This observation was confirmed by Dr Western, who observed that the country`s experiment in wildlife utilisation had invited illegal hunting.

``Pastoralists throughout Kajiado and Narok are now inviting in poachers and are in fact poaching themselves.``

However, he then contradicted himself by saying that wildlife utilisation ``complements tourism, it does not compete with it.``

Previous reports had it that widespread poaching for the bushmeat trade was currently going on in almost all wildlife areas.

There was a racket in which some of the big game and livestock ranchers around Laikipia district have been contracting Samburu morans, ex-police and ex-army personnel to kill animals in local group ranches and selling the meat as part of their allocated quotas.

This is currently going on in a number of farms located between Rumuruti centre - 43 kilometres north of Nyahururu town - and Mararal town in Samburu district.

Much of this meat is transported to Nairobi, where it is sold in posh restaurants and hotels, while the animal skins are exported, mainly to South Africa.

Moreover, smaller-scale but consistent poaching is currently going on in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, in parts of Kajiado district and especially in Mashuru division, between Loitokitok town and the Tsavo West National Park, along the Nairobi-Mombasa road, and in Taita Taveta district.

Poaching carried out in, and close to, those national parks and reserves near the Kenya-Tanzania border is mainly done by Tanzanian nationals.

Members of the Kuria community in Tanzania were identified by officials of the Mara Conservancy Ltd as the main culprits in the 690-square-kilometre Mara Triangle while the Chagga, who live along the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, were reported to be poaching between Amboseli National Park, Loitokitok town and the Chyulu Hills National Park.

``Poaching between Amboseli and Loitokitok town is mostly done by the Chagga from Tanzania,`` said Mark Cheruiyot, a KWS officer in-charge of investigations at the Amboseli National Park.

Tanzanian poachers prefer to operate in the country because, unlike in Kenya, the law against poaching in Tanzania is uncompromising.

While poachers prosecuted in Kenyan courts usually get a slap on the wrist - with sentences ranging from one to six months in jail with the option of a fine of between Ksh2,000 ($26) and Ksh6,000 ($78) - the Tanzanian law stipulates that poachers be handed jail sentences ranging from 15 to 50 years.

But Tanzanians do not poach on their own. They usually conspire with Kenyan collaborators, who are recruited either to provide information on where the wild animals spend the night or to provide intelligence on where KWS anti-poaching units are likely to be making patrols.

Most poaching operations are loosely organised. However, poachers operating between Bisil and Namanga town on the Kenyan side are organised in gangs of between 20 and 50 that systematically waylay wildlife migrating between Nairobi and Amboseli National Parks.

These poachers recruit members of the Maasai community to direct them to areas where herds of wild herbivores spend the night.

Much of the bushmeat acquired from the vast Kajiado district - which, needless to say, is uninspected by veterinarians - is sold as boneless livestock meat in Nairobi and other smaller towns along the busy Nairobi-Mombasa Road.

Principal bushmeat outlets in Nairobi include the Shauri Moyo Market (also called Burma Market), Huruma Market (Kiamaiko), City Market and many outlets in a number of residential areas.

The meat is handled in a most unhygienic manner. In the Mara Triangle, Kuria poachers from Tanzania are known to set up temporary poaching camps, mainly along the Mara river, where they dry the meat before transporting it on their backs to villages in Tarime district of Tanzania.

The chief warden of the reserve, David ole Seour, said recently that within two months his rangers had arrested 105 poachers, while members of the Youth for Conservation, who occasionally conduct desnaring campaigns in the reserve, dismantled over 600 snares within the same period.

In Kajiado district, some of the meat is stored in holes dug in dry river beds. This serves the dual purposes of preserving the meat in the wet sand and securing it from carnivores as poachers wait for their colleagues to deliver more meat for onward transportation to Nairobi, Emali, Mlolongo Makindu and other towns along the Nairobi-Mombasa road.

Poachers target nearly all the big and small herbivores - zebras, wildebeest, antelopes, gazelles, elands, warthogs, hippos and buffalos - and such birds as ostriches and guinea fowl.

An unusual victim in Malolo area of Kajiado is the monitor lizard, which is lured from its hideouts in a most ingenious manner. A chick is tied to a sisal sack in an open place.

This usually attracts a hawk, which, attempting to grab the chick, ends up with its talons hooked to the empty sack. Each time the hawk tries to fly off, the sack hampers it and the commotion attracts the monitor lizard from its burrow.

When it approaches, the lizard is shot using bows and arrows. It is then skinned and the whitish meat transported to outlets we could not determine in Nairobi.

Guinea fowl and warthogs are poached by leaving out cans of chang\'aa (a fiery bootleg gin) or roronkena (a potent local brew made of yeast and whole maize flour). The guinea fowl and warthog are both partial to alcohol and, once drunk, are easy prey.

Some of the meat is transported to Nairobi on trains belonging to the Kenya Railways Corporation. Although it was not possible to determine whether any corporation officials were involved in the racket, we learnt that the poachers wait for the slow moving cargo trains from Mombasa between Athi River and Sultan Hamud towns and hurl bags full of the meat into the wagons.

Though KWS has been conducting anti-poaching campaigns, it has not managed to come to grips with the problem.

This is largely because the wildlife body not only lacks enough rangers, it has also largely been applying a military solution to a problem that is rooted in the economic deprivation of the communities living with wildlife, in the traditions of some communities and the KWS`s own contradictory wildlife conservation policies.

An official with the Maasai Environmental and Resource Coalition, Daniel Leturesh, was reported to have said that apart from a few group ranches around Amboseli National Park, many of the communities do not benefit at all from the wildlife living on their land.

This has emphasised human-wildlife conflicts in which an average pastoralist, according to Dr Western, has been losing about 20 per cent of his livestock.

As a result, some landowners in Mashuru Division confessed by saying that they had resorted to inviting poachers to get rid of marauding animals for them.

SOURCE: Guardian