Kenya: Keep NGOs Out of the New Wildlife Policy Talks
The East African Standard (Nairobi)
November 28, 2006
Imre Loefler
Nairobi
Recently, the Vice-President Mr Moody Awori spoke on wildlife policy. The occasion was a ceremony at which IFAW (International Federation for Animal Welfare), as it frequently does, donated gifts to the Government in exchange for influence.
The nation's wildlife policy is being revised and the animal right activists and welfare organisations are distressed lest Kenya follows other East and southern African countries and adopt a new wildlife policy based on "wise use".
Awori, talking about the numbers of wildlife, is reported to have said: "We should allow nature to regulate." The sentiments were echoed by Dr Manu Chandaria, an IFAW trustee and board member. He waxed lyrical and said: "Let us give wildlife freedom to move and survive!"
With these words, he bizarrely handed to the Vice-President Sh10 million to be used to erect a game fence in Laikipia and equipment needed to capture wildlife.
Romantics may talk about the wisdom of nature regulating itself, including wildlife numbers, yet Kenyans do not want wildlife to interfere with agriculture. This is the view held by the farming and pastoralist populations, including their representatives such as Laikipia West MP Mr GG Kariuki, who, in initiating the wildlife policy review process, pointed out that wildlife and agriculture do not mix.
The only people who appear to want wildlife roaming and multiplying freely outside protected areas are Awori and foreign animal welfare organisations, animal rights' activists, Chandaria and groups of urban Kenyans who are not threatened by human-animal conflicts. But Kenyans who suffer the brunt of wildlife invasion and damage, fence, dig ditches and use all manner of deterrents - fires, spotlights, noise bombs and chemicals - to deny habitat to wild animals.
Millions of shillings are spent to translocate animals from areas where wise nature has allowed them to multiply to the detriment of man, their own environment and even their future. The sad thing is that wildlife numbers continue to decline because of the failure of policy, precisely the kind Western animal welfare NGOs have pressed on Government over the years.
Kenya has lost about 60 per cent of its wildlife in 40 years. Lately, the destruction has accelerated. While politicians and NGO chiefs organise workshops and symposia to talk endlessly on nature, our stewardship, biodiversity, heritage and so forth, wildlife is being exterminated.
It is being chased, shot, trapped, speared, snared and poisoned in increasing numbers. The situation is aggravated by the many large game on non-protected land and are at the mercy of landowners. Only a fraction of the non-protected wildlife areas are suitable for tourism.
As long as the people, who presently compete with wildlife, do not have direct legally obtainable benefits, they will continue to destroy it. If the current trends are extrapolated, it is likely that by the time Kenya Vision 2030 is supposed to be realised, there will be hardly any wildlife left in the non-protected areas.
Policy failure is the result of foreign wildlife NGOs, their local acolytes and successive governments, including their agencies such as the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).
Unless wildlife is well taken care of, it will disappear. Wildlife husbandry means looking after game so that it thrives and only then can it be harvested. The regions suitable for wildlife would be teeming with game if husbandry was allowed on a sound business footing.
Wildlife husbandry would make more money for Kenya than flowers do and at the same time be environmentally sound and help rehabilitate devastated land. Yet the Vice-President, who spoke of nature so warmly and seemed to have made promises in return for gifts, pledges which prejudice the outcome of the ongoing wildlife policy review, also dwelt on management.
Contradicting himself, he called on KWS to "scientifically manage animals". Indeed! What is required is scientific and economic management of wildlife. Having left matters to "nature" for decades, we lost more than half of our wildlife, incurred enormous environmental damage and paid an incalculable opportunity cost.
The wildlife policy struggle is increasingly tedious. What is so galling is that, by ignoring the plight of the people and neglecting their interests, the animal rights' and welfare groups hurt the people and wildlife.
Instead, Kenya promises to continue with a policy that has obviously failed in exchange for paltry gifts. Lake Nakuru is drying up, Lake Naivasha is dying as is Lake Victoria. Silting is rife in Lake Baringo and Lake Turkana is shrinking. The Government excises forests and settles people, allows invasion of protected areas and contemplates destroying wildlife habitat for dodgy sugar business. Turning attention to shortcomings of environmental policies would be more useful than sentimental foreign philosophies .
