Baraza

Category: Africa, Climate change, In the News, Kenya, Lions, National Parks and protected areas, Rhinoceros, big cats, drought, national parks, richard leakey, tourism, wildlife, wildlifedirect | Date: Sep 05 2009 | By: admin

In a previous story about cattle dying in the Nairobi Park We have been going purple in the face trying to raise awareness about the public health, ecological and economic threat facing Kenya as a consequence of uncontrolled movements of cattle during the current drought.

This is Dauti Kahura  story published in today’s East African Standard

A week ago, a man died of anthrax in Nyeri after eating infected cow meat. A week earlier, although not reported, two rhinos from Nairobi National Park died of anthrax. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) confirmed the cause of deaths.

The death of the man should raise the red flag. There is great fear that some of the meat being sold in and around Kitengela and Ongata Rongai butcheries could be contaminated with anthrax, foot and mouth and east coast fever. Investigations by The Standard on Saturday revealed that sick and dying cattle are slaughtered on the roadsides and expose nearby communities to outbreaks.

Temporary bomas

Last week, five kilometres into Masai Lodge Road in Ongata Rongai where herders have set up temporary bomas, The Standard on Saturday team found sickly cattle being slaughtered for distribution to neighbouring butcheries.

Mr Rolf Schmid, a restaurateur who has lived in the area for almost two decades, raised the alarm.

“My first instinct was to contact the Ministry of Health and veterinary officials to come and witness the slaughter of dying cattle,” he said.

The Ministry of Public Health officers and vets from Kajiado concur that some of the cattle appeared sickly although not all were emaciated. The Government health officials, who sought anonymity because they are not authorised to be quoted, confirmed that the animals pose danger.

Due to drought, Maasai herders drive the cattle up to the city and many of them are kept in bomas along Mombasa Road. Tens of thousands of cattle that have been migrating from Loitokitok, Tsavo West, Kibwezi, Sultan Hamud and Kajiado are also being held in bomas on the northern and southern sides of the Nairobi National Park.

By day, these cattle are hosted on the local ranches around the park and by night driven inside it for grazing. Early this week, The Standard on Saturday observed hundreds of cattle being driven into the park on the southern end from the Masai Lodge Road. Tired and exhausted, they walked in a profile, with some not completing the journey.

herding in parks

According to a KWS senior warden, herders have been cutting the fence to allow large numbers of cattle into the park. KWS impounded 1,000 cattle and when the herders came for them the next day, they said some of the animals belong to “well connected Kenyans”.

Due to severe drought and exhaustion of grazing fields, Nairobi National Park is the only location in city with ample grazing field.

But now it is also massively threatened with decimation. More worrying is the fact that the wild animals are also at great risk of being infected with diseases. KWS officials say some antelopes have been infected with foot and mouth.

Tags: anthrax, cattle, Dauti Kahura, Lion, Lions, LIvestock, Nairobi Park, rhino, wildlifedirect

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Category: Africa, China, Ivory, Kenya, Rhinoceros, elephants, poaching, wildlife trade | Date: Jul 20 2009 | By: Maina

On Tuesday last week, Kenyan authorities seized a 300kg haul of elephant tusks and rhino horn hidden in coffins at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). This large haul, valued at approximately $ 1-million, is thought to have either come from Tanzania or South Africa and was headed for Laos. Officials of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) however speculate that the load’s final destination was indeed China, but through Laos, the de-facto ‘gateway to China’.

A previous haul of illegal ivory as reported on Baraza in April 2009

The KWS has been complaining about increasing ivory poaching since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) allowed a one-off sale of ivory from southern Africa to China and Japan.  The entry of China into the world trade in ivory was in itself a cause for alarm amongst many conservationists on account of what is viewed as China’s laissez-faire attitude towards wildlife - except the giant panda.  There have been reports from the KWS and other organizations in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa indicating that there is definitely a rise in poaching for ivory and rhino horn.

According to the KWS, the rise in ivory poaching is partly caused by the CITES declaration to allow minimal trade from southern Africa. They say that this declaration created the illusion that it was OK to trade in ivory. If the number of seizures of ivory being witnessed today is anything to go by, then the KWS are right: the CITES declaration is indeed responsible for this mess.

It’s not just elephant poaching that is a problem. Just the previous week, a report was made public that indicates that rhino poaching has reached a 15 year high. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN, and the global conservation organization WWF, and their affiliated wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC, told a CITES committee in a recent meeting that poachers in Africa and Asia are killing as many as two to three animals a week in some areas to meet a growing demand for the horns. What is more worrying is that this poaching is no longer a subsistence activity but it has now evolved into organized crime similar to cocaine and small arms rackets.

Elephants and rhinos are in a very dire situation as this new wave of wanton decimation of the majestic creatures picks up pace. We are witnessing the inevitable extinction of - in the case of the rhino - an evolutionary relic that generations upon generations of humans have marveled at; and the total loss of - in the case of the elephant - the gentle intelligent giant that has been the centre of almost all mythology.

Sentimental values aside, these are ‘keystone’ species that shape the environment that they occur in. Keeping a balance in the ecology of their habitat, and therefore determining the biological diversity of these habitats. The looming departure of these two could permanently alter ecosystems - in the most part - for the worst.

Poaching can do that, and this is going to happen in our lifetime.

A solution has to be found. We first have to stop lying to ourselves that there can be any sustainable trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn. We have seen this with our own eyes. It’s never going to happen. Having realized that, governments should tighten the noose on illegal traffic routes, cut down the poachers on sight, and increase punishment for poaching offenders. China and it’s Asian friends will need to be re-educated.

Dr Richard Leakey, while he was the head of KWS, led an elephant anti-poaching campaign back in the mid-1980s which brought down a large number of poaching rings. It has been 20 years since the symbolic burning of  12 tonnes of ivory - then worth about $3 million and from approximately 2000 dead elephants - at the height of the campaign. Today, elephant population that had dropped from 167, 000 in 1973 to a paltry 16,000 in 1989, now stand at 32,ooo. These numbers could easily start falling if nothing is done about the recent upsurge in poaching. Current wildlife officials could learn from this and step up the fight against poachers on the local level, while all conservationists push for the total ban on trade in ivory and rhino horn.

The symbolic ivory burning in 1989

Again, China and the Asian world that still believes that rhino horn has medicinal value, and carvings from elephant ivory  are ‘cute’, needs re-education.

Tags: Africa, Asia, burning ivory, China, CITES, elephant, Ivory, KWS, poaching, rhino, rhino horn, richard leakey, wildlife trade

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Category: Rhinoceros, wildlife, wildlife trade | Date: Oct 08 2008 | By: Maina

As the world was busy watching for the outcome of the US financial bailout plan, another bailout plan had come to fruition in Kenya. This second bailout was geared not at rescuing the people from the rising cost of living or the high cost of food but at saving the black rhino, one of the most critically endangered animals in the planet.

For the first time in 25 years, some 15 rhinos were released from captivity after successful breeding in Kenya’s Ngulia Rhino Sanctuary at the heart of Tsavo West National Park. This is a great achievement that follows a long breeding project that begun with the hope of bringing back Kenya’s black rhinos from the brink of extinction. Kenya had, in two decades, seen its black rhino population plummet from an estimated 20,000 rhinos to paltry 350 animals.

This was during the poaching crisis of the 1980s when rhinos were poached en masse for their horn. This poaching inferno was fanned by the demand for rhino horn in Asia and the Middle east for use in traditional medicine and for artifacts. When Dr Richard Leakey spearheaded the formation of the Kenya Wildlife Service in the 80s, the remaining rhinos were put into sanctuaries and accorded 24 hour armed protection inside the fenced-in sanctuaries. Ngulia is the prime government rhino sanctuary in Kenya.

The rhino population has been improving steadily since then and now some 500 black rhinos are estimated to live in Kenya. This release into the open wild is therefore an attempt to have the rhinos breed naturally again in the land - in the greater Tsavo - that they once roamed free and in abundance. Should the release be successful, the project partnership composed of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) hope they can replicate it in Tanzania and Uganda.

Quite a significant population of rhinos - in Kenyan measure - have been successfully breeding in private sanctuaries. In January 2007, for instance, the most important rhino sanctuaries in northern Kenya, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Ol Jogi and Solio ranches, conducted the largest rhino translocation in human history when they moved around - as part of a gene and population improvement project - some 34 rhinos. In this translocation exercise, Ol Pejeta got 26 rhinos from Solio and 4 from Ol Jogi. Ol Jogi then got 4 rhinos from Solio to improve the gene pool among their rhinos. This translocation in 2007 was helped a lot by the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy.

Rhino conservation in Kenya is becoming a model of how active species management can actually pull back a species from the very jaws of extinction. I commend the KWS and the ZSL for this achievement.

You can watch clips of the release of the rhinos at the BBC
You can also read the October 3rd news item at ZSL

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