Baraza

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 28 2009 | By: admin

With the drought biting hard KWS has been aggresively chasing cattle out of the parks and the government of Kenya has been trying to solve the humanitarian crisis by buying huge numbers of cattle. It is not going very well and nature is taking it’s course - cattle are dying all over the country in droves.

The degradation due to over grazing outside of parks has predictably led to wildlife returning to the parks for the only grazing available. Nairobi Park  in particular  now looks like the Serengetti in full migration!

The influx of wildlife has led to the appearance of big cats. Lion, leopard and cheetah sightings are now quite common.

Stalker!

After half an hour of great tension the lion had crept right up to this zebra and seemed about to launch herself onto the stripes when I heard the sound of other cars approaching. Sadly the hunt did not conclude in breakfast for the lioness, my wild gesticulations asking them to slow down and stop, seemed to attract the vehicle even more. The tour van revved up beside me for tourists to get a good shot - which of course flopped because the zebra got spooked and walked off. The lion lay down in the grass and turned to us glaring angrily.

Just seeing this today made me feel proud of what we are doing at WildlifeDirect - saving endangered species so that we can continue to enjoy rare and  precious moments like these.

Thank you all  for reading our blogs and supporting all of our the amazing projects.

Paula

Tags: cattle, conservation, drought, Kenya, Lion, Lions, nairobi national Park, wildlife, wildlifedirect

3 responses so far

Category: Africa, Climate change, drought, national parks, wildlife, wildlifedirect | Date: Aug 24 2009 | By: paula

In a meeting this weekend with the warden of Nairobi National Park, Mr. Michael Wanjau of KWS and some other government officials as well as residents of the area, it was revealed that tens of thousands of cattle are grazing in the Nairobi National Park as a result of the ongoing devastating drought.

Mr Wanjau admitted that the numbers of cattle in the park has reached record levels. So weak from walking hundreds of kilometers in search of grazing, many do not make it.

Some herders are cutting the fence of the park to let cattle in. Some are being herded across rivers.

The southern part of Nairobi park is littered with cattle carcasses and vultures, hyenas and lions have eaten their fill.

Out on the staging grounds in Kitengela adjacent to the park where cattle are gathering, hundreds are dying and nobody is removing carcasses. The Kenya Meat Commission tried to buy up the herds for Ksh 8,000 per cow (about 100$) but herders have refused to sell, they say they are hoping for rain.

Some dead and dying cattle are being butchred on the roadsides which poses a horrific public health situation. The Ministry of Health is being informed as I write this blog post.

Many cows affected by foot and mouth disease simply cannot walk anymore like this calf. She lay down by one of the entrances to KWS and just died right there. It broke my heart that no one would touch her or put her out of her misery for fear of whatever disease she was suffering from.

The meeting on Saturday felt that the situation is a crisis and are demanding that the governmetn conduct compulsoray purchase of cattle to avert a public health and environmental disaster. But it is being whispered that these cattle are owned by rich and powerful Kenyans, a challenge that few Kenyans are willing to take head on.

Technorati : Nairobi National Park, cattle, disease, drought, wildlife, wildlifedirect, zoonosis

Tags: cattle, disease, drought, nairobi national Park, wildlife, wildlifedirect, zoonosis

2 responses so far

Category: National Parks and protected areas, drought | Date: Aug 11 2009 | By: paula

The drought situation in Kenya has reached critical levels far worse than I reported earlier. The government has finally admitted that livestock have invaded the national parks. Kenya has always had droughts but rarely this serious.

“This drought may be at least as bad as the drought of 1964 when 90% of Kenya’s livestock perished”. Richard Leakey

In Nairobi Park the herders are increasingly brazen – a sure sign that enforcement is failing. I’ve watched herds of cattle entering the park in broad daylight and within sight of the KWS rangers and gates. Reports are ignored and it often feels like patrols are sent in the other direction.

The herders don’t bother hiding what they are doing and cattle are no longer kept to out of sight valleys, but are being taken right across the plains reducing habitat for wildlife and forcing herds of zebra, wildebeest, eland and buffalo to move further west close to the KWS main gate and very close to the bustling city.

In my experience, KWS are not keen to answer tough questions so I stopped to talk to the Masai herdsmen in Kitengela as they cooked a pot of tea on a 3 stone fire, beside their makeshift plastic tarp tent. They had over 300 cows in an area 30m x 30 m. The cows had been brought here from Kajado, near the Tanzania border. They are held in tiny fenced plots to sleep on top of their own dung, then herded out to graze and get water. There is no regard for land ownership – most trails lead to the park.

I asked if they were allowed in the park to which they said No, we get chased but we have no choice.

The cattle have devastated the land outside the park and are dying on the road side. A few have even been slaughted for sale to local residents before succumbing to natural death.

These herders know it’s illegal to use the park and they claim that KWS are arresting them. This we’re told leads to a night or two in cells before being released. It’s not a nice experience and the cattle suffer in their absence. To avoid getting arrested the herders are now sending women and children into the park with the cattle. It’s impossible to arrest a child, and women claim that they are starving themselves and can’t control the cattle.

The Kenyan government is meeting today to discuss this urgent issue. But as one person on twitter commented ‘the cows need water and hay, not more cabinet meetings’.

The current situation is bad in Nairobi, but it’s a picnic compared to what’s happening in Samburu.

We have been told by authoritative sources that Shaba National Park in Samburu is not only full of livestock and people, but that they are actually settling there. I suspect that this is happening because the government has been promising to compensate all the settlers in the Mau and other Forest. While it might sound compassionate, this will lead to perverse incentives.  I predict that in coming weeks and months, we will the aggressive invasion of  our national forests and parks and reserves. Those now settled in Shaba National Reserve are unlikely to move, even after the drought ends, unless they get a hefty compensation. Where the money will come from is any ones guess, tourism revenue here is probably a shadow of it’s former potential, and no normal tourist will agree to spend 40$ to see starving and dead cattle in a degraded overgrazed park.

The problem is not unique to Kenya but is also affecting Tanzania and Ethiopia where over 200,000 Kenyan cattle have migrated from northern Kenya into southern Ethiopia, the largest migration in over 10 years.

Tags: cattle, drought, Kenya, KWS, nairobi national Park, wildlifedirect

One response so far

Category: Volunteering, wildlifedirect | Date: May 11 2009 | By: admin

On my way to work this morning I passed through  Nairobi National Park where I met a pride of 5 lions lazing peacefully quite close to the road. As I sat there watching them with my son, I regretted that they were not there two days earlier when I’d taken my brother and his family out to the park.

His children have never seen lions before. There is a real risk that they may never see wild lions in their life time, after all, there are only 2,100 of these amazing animals remaining in Kenya. The park boundary was just a few hundred meters away, it is simply a muddy stream across which thousands of cattle come every night in search of grazing. I know this because I live right on the edge of the park and so have a first hand view of the challenges facing wildlife here. Last week a cow was killed on a neighboring sanctuary by lions, we spent an entire day removing the carcass for fear that the owner would retaliate against the lions by putting poison on it to kill off the predators.

As I watched this lazy family of lions, I felt the pressure mounting - we don’t have time to waste, we must help wildlife conservation efforts now if our children and grand children are to enjoy them. WildlifeDirect is dedicated to over 100 different conservation efforts across Africa, Asia and South America. Never before has the need been so urgent, we receive several new applications for important new projects every day. To be able to help all these projects, WildlifeDirect must survive this painful economic down turn. I personally believe that any person who visits WildlifeDirect online can help us enormously without necessary leaving a donation, by just taking a little time to use the powers of social media.

I have listed 7 simple things that you can do to help us

1. Vote for what you care about The opportunity to share and spread important wildlife information and expose an enormous number of people interested in helping wildlife. We would like you to share what you learn about us through social media websites that focus on news like some groups on facebook, Digg, Stumble, Reddit, and twitter. The more eyeballs we get on WildlifeDirect, the more funds we can raise.  Our target is an online audience of 2 million people.

2. Take action – it’s so easy.
Wildlife conservation depends greatly on policy changes which are often driven by public demand. You can communicate with your political representative or express yourself to any government by writing a letter or an email, and use the internet to spread the word about all kinds of wildlife issues raised on WildlifeDirect.

3. Help us get into the News You can alert your own local media houses to issues you are particularly concerned about. We have done radio and TV interviews all over the world inspired by readers who have helped us make connections with their local media houses. Getting into the  news, especially online news is hugely valuable to us and costs you nothing but a little time - write to your local radio station or newspaper today.

4. Motivate your favourite bloggers Just leave a comment on your favourite blog posts to tell people that you care and to share your thoughts with the authors. This alone is hugely motivating to those conservationists at the frontlines who are often risking their lives every day to save wildlife. This endorsement keeps the bloggers reporting and the more news we get from the field, the greater the global awareness of what is happening to wildlife in remote and dangerous places.

5. Tell all your friends Use your own social networks to share information about what you care about on WildlifeDirect. Let your friends know by joining our facebook causes, linking to us on your own blog, facebook, myspace, twitter or other networks.
6. Campaign for us Hold your own fund raising campaign to help us – just get creative. Sheryl raised over 300$ on her birthday, we’ve had cake sales, sponsored marathon runners, sponsored events, dinner events, yard sales. Use facebook or any other social website linked to our cause or just make donations on the website.

7. Volunteer online – Select a blog you’d like to help and volunteer a few hours a day towards that blog. Some of our bloggers have very poor internet access and it can take hours to upload one post. Volunteering mostly involves helping with uploading posts and photographs  onto the blogs which frees up valuable field time for the bloggers.

8. Send us your own suggestions – we love hearing from you. Please don’t be shy, send us your ideas, views and suggestions. Email us on info@wildlifedirect.org

Tags: conservation, endangered species, fund raising, Lions, nairobi national Park, wildlifedirect

2 responses so far

Category: enforcement | Date: Mar 06 2009 | By: baraza

Today as I left home I shook my head again at the sight of hundreds of cattle in Nairobi National Park. A few weeks ago I asked a senior officer about cattle in the park and I was laughed off and told “Of course we do not tolerate cattle in the park”

But they are in the park - I watch them every day, and a friend reports it every single day and still yet nobody does anything about it. The cattle are brought in a few hundred meters from a major gate into the park.  It seems strange that the park authorities are not acting on information  so I called my friend at KWS who said in a very tired voice

“Yes we are aware of the cattle in the park, there are actually over 20,000 and we are overwhelmed and don’t have the resources to stop them”

and that was it.

I wanted to be angry but how can you be angry with a warden who is underfunded, understaffed, and under equipped? How can he possibly make a difference.  And the people and cattle are suffering. Plus, while grazing cattle the herders sometimes get up to other opportunistic activities like poaching.

Why is this happening? The cattle are in the park because there is no grass outside. Why is there no grass?  Because of overgrazing outside the park…..soooo now the park is getting overgrazed and as a result wildlife will suffer, and tourists will not come to see starving cattle in the park.

While it might seem like a humane short term response, I think that by letting people into the park to graze cattle we are slowly strangling the golden goose.

What do you think?

Tags: cattle, human wildlife conflict, nairobi national Park

4 responses so far