Baraza

Just days after four Northern White rhino’s were returned to Kenya, the KWS boss Julius Kipng’etich has announced that poachers have killed a southern white rhino in central Kenya on Dec. 28.  The suspected poachers and suspected buyers were arrested on Sunday – all 12 suspects are Kenyans.

This is not a good news story for the new year in Kenya where the rhino population was reduced from tens of thousands to a few hundred in the 1970s forcing Kenya to take all the remaining rhinos into captivity. Today, there are an estimated 850 rhinos in Kenya.

Northern White  rhinos are the rarest mammal remaining on the planet and none exist in the wild. The return of 4 of these animals to Kenya from a Czech zoo last week is a last effort to bring this species back from extinction. It is not going to be easy, these animals have been in captivity for 24 years during which time they did not reproduce. Even if they do reproduce it’s unlikely that the species can be rescued entirely without diluting the gene pool by cross breeding with theri closes relatives, the southern White rhino.

The four Northern White rhino in Kenya are homed on Ol Pajeta Ranch in Laikpia. They represent 50% of the remaining global population.

Ol Pajeta will have their tasks cut out fort hem. Rhino Poachers are no sissys;

I have to put out a warning because many Kenyans have forgotten that on October 30th 1988 five White rhinos were slaughtered in Meru National Park right under the noses of the authorities. This group had been translocated from South Africa and were under 24 hour guards- here’s an exerpt from the news piece

“NAIROBI Heavily armed poachers raided the headquarters of the Kenyan Meru National Park and killed the only five white rhinos there, Tourism and Wildlife Minister George Muhoho said Tuesday.

“It is a catastrophe, a tremendous blow to anyone who has been working to save the rhino,” a Kenyan conservationist said.

Authorities said as many as 30 poachers raided the park, 130 miles northeast of Nairobi, and wounded at least two game wardens in an exchange of gunfire before killing the white rhinos and escaping with their horns.”

Here’s one of the rangers holding a white rhino by the tail. That’s how docile these lovely creatures are.

With poachers still stalking the area and taking rhino in the Laikipia, it is going to be  a tough job keeping these five animals safe. Representing 50% f the remaining northern White Rhino global population – they are worth their weight in gold – something every poacher will be aware of.

We wish the managers of Ol Pajeta and KWS much luck in their efforts to breed and we hope to keep bringing you good news about them.

Today three of the ten new white rhino’s of Nairobi National Park did a runner and escaped in to the nearby gorges.

Concerned for their safety, KWS caught them by darting from a helicopter. One of them nearly fell down a cliff but was saved at the last minute. I was able to get a few photos of the recapture and return of this particular rhino.

Drugged, Bound in ropes and with his eyes covered he probably wasn’t aware of the commotion around him.

Once inside the box it was lifted onto the vehicle and he was driven away, back to the National Park where hopefuly, he and the other two will stay this time!

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.

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.