Baraza

Category: WildlifeDirect news, enforcement, wildlife trade | Date: Feb 25 2009 | By: baraza

Hello everyone, its Paula here. I read with shock a report in the East African  that the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife has published a new Bill that allows culling of wildlife which is described as “the killing of “excess” wildlife”

Whatever that means - how will it be defined?

If this bill is passed in parliament, which is supposed to happen soon, the law will allow individuals to sell animals on their ranches.

There is an excess of white rhino on some private ranches… should they be culled or will the new law allow ranchers to own these animals and sell them (currently all wild animals are property of the state).

The new law will also split the role of wildlife management between the Kenya Wildlife Service, a Wildlife Department and the Kenya Wildlife Authority.

The Kenya Wildlife Service is a monolithic bureaucracy as it is and overlaps with Forestry and Fisheries permits makes corruption permits a daily issue. I suspect that with three wildlife authorities in place, things will quickly turn into a nightmare when one has three authorities.

Any Kenyan who has tried to get an environmental audit done here will agree that

1. We don’t have the technical capacity to manage all these authorities

2. More authorities leads to more corruption

3. The government  does not have the funds to create and staff two new authorities - and besides, KWS is over staffed as it is.

Having worked at KWS early on (it was set up by Richard Leakey and it worked quit well under his leadership) before I feel strongly about the issues that this bill is trying to address …wildlife on private land is disappearing fast because it is a liability, eating crops, threatening people and property, while generating nothing (the election crisis did that to us).  Meanwhile the bushmeat trade is escalating, and since one can’t raise game meat, cattle and goat rearing is increasing and devastating the landscapes leading to famines and frequent conflict with wildlife at grazing sites and watering holes.

The East African article states :

“The Bill proposes that the Wildlife Authority be similar to the Wildlife Division of Tanzania, which is said to subsist on revenues earned from issuing permits for different forms of wildlife use.

To raise its own income, the Wildlife Division of Tanzania has been increasing hunting quotas arbitrarily and sometimes in disregard of the state of wildlife population in the country”.

How do you deal with migratory wildlife on private land?

That’s what we all fear will happen here.

I don’t know what the answer is  for wildlife in Kenya but I am have a strong gut response as I suspect that this bill will benefit the Elite and some politicians. What do you think? Am I being too harsh? Please take the poll on the right

Tags: endangered species, KWS, richard leakey, wildlife, wildlifedirect