Kenya's wildlife population has plummeted 2/3 since hunting was banned 30 years ago! I love this dimwits quote, "Every time they try to count our animals there are fewer and fewer. I am against hunting because we don't have the capacity to enforce any rules on it. Maybe later, but not now."
Jeez, you think there is anybody in Kenya who knows the hunting business and wildlife? What an elitist bitch.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/travel/hunting-plan-sparks-o.../1176697046843.html#

The majority rule Kenyan Kommies don't have sense enough to pour piss out of their collective boot, it seems.

It's just amazing, the countries that allow sport hunting have PAC hunts and cow elephant hunts, are over their long term carrying capacity, while the ones with a hunting ban decrease by 2/3. Need I say more? This was once the crown jewel of African hunting, but not now.

My worry is that there will come a day when that attitude is adopted by the wrong people and that will happen in the countries that we currently have the privelege of hunting in. Between that, and land reclamation, I hope that when my son (1 year old) is old enough to take his kids, there will still be plenty of places in Africa left to hunt.

luv2safari is spot on.

There is currently more hunting in Africa then ever before available. There will be hunting in the future.

Screw Kenya, I wouldn't go there if they did open it up and it was cheap.

The AP has an article today about the current ongoing "discussion" whether to restore sport hunting in Kenya. (Sorry, but I don't know how to set up links or I would do so).

Kenya Vice President Moody Awori is stated in the article as having "declared the government would maintain the ban {on sport hunting}no matter what a panel of experts said." Interestingly, he spoke at a "ceremony" where the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) had donated $150,000 "to protect elephants". The AP writer also mentioned that the IFAW had annual revenues of $89 million. (The figure was mentioned, I suspect, to show how "prestigious" and well supported the IFAW was. Me, being somewhat twisted in my old age wondered why they were so stingy) BTW, the original AP headline as I saw it on my Yahoo page was something like:" Kenya farmers want to open lands to wealthy hunters". Wasn't there a story some years back about the Kenya government itself (from the president on down) being involved in an illegal ivory trade? Yeah, I expect great things from that crew!

The only way they will have anything worth anything is if they were still a Colony. But isn't all of Africa that way.

D99:

Ssh! How long have you been out of the States? I'm not sure you will be allowed back in!

And to think Kenya believes they have the right to enforce their ideas of game management on Botswana, RSA and Zimbabwe.

By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer
Sun Apr 22, 4:53 AM ET


NAIVASHA, Kenya - For the farmers of Kenya, life is a constant contest for grass and water between their herds and the wild animals that share the land.


Now they are waging a new struggle, this time against the international animal welfare lobby. Pleading poverty, the farmers want to open their land to wealthy fee-paying hunters. The advocacy groups are firmly opposed.

The standoff has made Kenya the latest and perhaps most dramatic arena for the international debate over hunting and its role in financing conservation.

A million tourists a year spend more than $580 million to see and photograph lions, elephants, gazelle and other wildlife on this East African country's savannas. But the revenue isn't enough to protect the animals.

Only 8 percent of land in Kenya, a country twice the size of Nevada, is set aside for wildlife. The rest is privately or communally owned and studies show that most of Kenya's wild animals live there.

By some estimates, wildlife numbers have dropped 60 percent since the mid-1970s and continue to plummet, because of human encroachment and illegal hunting for food.

Landowners say they can only go on maintaining animal sanctuaries if they can sell hunting rights. No one is suggesting killing endangered species, or hunting in existing protected areas. Only common animals on private land would be hunted, in a controlled way that would sustain their numbers, advocates say.

"The losses we are getting from livestock predation, or even medical bills for people who have been injured by elephants, buffaloes and even lions, is quite high," said Yusuf Ole Petenya, secretary of the Shompole Community Trust, a tribal foundation in animal-rich southern Kenya.

The trust opened a luxury wildlife lodge to help lift Petenya's Maasai clan out of poverty, but "it's not working," he said, because the cost of conservation outstrips the profits from tourism.

Kenya has bad health care, low education levels and a government that barely functions outside of the capital, Nairobi. There is no money to buy land or pay people to protect wildlife. Kenya banned sport hunting in 1977, but allowed limited hunting to cull animals and harvest game meat until 2003, when animal rights groups managed to shut it down.

Now the Kenyan government has reopened the debate over hunting by setting up an advisory group to thrash out the pros and cons. In favor are hunting groups such as Safari Club International; opposed are the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Born Free, Action Aid and others.

James Isiche, the East Africa director for IFAW, said his organization seeks a blanket ban on what it calls "consumptive use of wildlife."

"I don't think bringing back hunting ... will enhance wildlife management," said Isiche, a Kenyan. "If you look at wildlife from the point of view that wildlife can bring in money, you begin to get into trouble."

Isiche, who sits on the government advisory committee on hunting, agrees that land is running out and wildlife is suffering. But he says the answer is for donors to buy more land for conservation, strictly limit development in rural areas, and compensate people for losses caused by wildlife. But he acknowledges funding is scarce.

Opposing him is Andrew Enniskillen, also Kenyan and a leader among private landowners. He has combined land rehabilitation, wildlife conservation and commercial cattle breeding on his ranch on Lake Naivasha. He says the wildlife corridor he provides to a nearby national park is losing him money and the resulting boom in the zebra population is destroying his ranch.

A zebra drinks four times more water than a cow.

If he can't manage and profit from the wildlife on his property, "then my operation cannot be sustained," he said.

He argues that revenue from hunting would provide more funds for conservation and help fight the poaching problem. When hunting was allowed, he says, he could control the zebra population by hiring a hunter to kill up to 100 a year and sell the skins and meat.

Farms like Enniskillen's once employed anti-poaching patrols using hunting income, but can no longer afford them. Some organizations estimate as much as 30 percent of the meat consumed in Kenya is from wild animals, such as gazelle, zebra and buffalo.

Hunting "has to be scientific — what we take off must be ethically done and minimize the suffering of the animal," he said.

He could make more money by using his land for housing, but if all landowners did that, wildlife "would be virtually exterminated outside the protected areas in five years," Enniskillen predicted. "National parks will become zoos."

The involvement of international nonprofit organizations in the debate has bred resentment among some. "It is not appropriate for foreigners to tell us what kind of laws or policies we should have," Petenya said.

But IFAW had revenues of more than $89 million in 2006 and donates millions to Kenya, which entitles it to advise the government on policy, Isiche said.

At a ceremony in November, where IFAW donated $150,000 toward protecting elephants, Vice President Moody Awori declared the government would maintain the hunting ban, no matter what a panel of experts determined.

Petenya questioned whether the anti-hunting lobby's donors fully understand the consequences.

"We want our friends to continue donating their money," Petenya said. But "it doesn't make sense that someone from Connecticut can come here and say to me: 'Let me show you how to conserve wildlife,' when my people have managed this land since time immemorial."

___

quote:

Originally posted by Kathi:
"Opposing him is Andrew Enniskillen, also Kenyan and a leader among private landowners. He has combined land rehabilitation, wildlife conservation and commercial cattle breeding on his ranch on Lake Naivasha. He says the wildlife corridor he provides to a nearby national park is losing him money and the resulting boom in the zebra population is destroying his ranch.

A zebra drinks four times more water than a cow.

If he can't manage and profit from the wildlife on his property, "then my operation cannot be sustained," he said.

He argues that revenue from hunting would provide more funds for conservation and help fight the poaching problem. When hunting was allowed, he says, he could control the zebra population by hiring a hunter to kill up to 100 a year and sell the skins and meat."

Who can argue against this statement.

Sustainable use is the only way to help conserve Africas wildlife. The countries where regulated hunting is allowed have lots of game.he rest......... look at the reports

Kenya has done nothing but go backwards and has become a country just over populated and full of crime. It used to be such a wonderful place and doubt that we will ever see it return to anything close to what it used to be. We used to ride into Nairobi on our motor bikes every saturday morning and hang out at the Thorn Tree (Stanleys Hotel). Now, you would never catch me even wanting to go to Nairobi due to its high crime rate and over population, and have not been back there for a very long time.

I remember the days I went to boarding school at Kijabe in Kenya and those were the days of fun. We would go down to the Rift Valley to places like Mount Longonot and Hells Gate and hunt for Thompson and stuff on our motor bikes on the weekends. When we would get up early and train for Rugby or Soccer at 5am it was not unusual to find a couple of dugga boys on our Rugby pitch! There were a couple of times where they had to shoot some Buffalo around school as they would injure some of the staff and became unsafe for students.

There could still be some decent hunting on some of the big ranches there, but if they do not allow it soon, I am afraid Kenya is a lost cause to animal conservation. IFAW is basically just bribing the government to see their anti-hunting views which has ruined the countries great wildlife resources. Some people just do not get it!