Mutula king of the jungle

As the setting sun splashes its golden rays across the bushes of the Athi plains, a majestic lion named Mutula makes a regal walk about his Sh2 million cage.

He’s not oblivious of his surroundings and the visitors hanging around the 16-feet high, heavy gauge chain link fence. His harem, comprising Nduku and Sis, is less interested in the goings-on. The lionesses doze away in the lush grass.

Big cats

The three big cats were rescued from the Maasai Mara reserve by the Kenya Wildlife Service after their mother died. As KWS searched for a home for the cubs, Justice minister Mutula Kilonzo offered them a sanctuary on his 1,500-acre Kwa Kyelu Ranch off the Nairobi-Mombasa highway.

Today, as he feeds them on fresh meat from livestock culled from his huge herd of cattle and goats, the minister has no regrets about his decision.

Dressed in blue jeans, an untucked yellow shirt and casual brown shoes – in contrast to the lawyerly garb we are used to seeing him in – he appears more at home here than when arguing his cases before judges or contributing to debate in Parliament.

The minister is famous for spewing out many a chapter and article reference to law volumes during a legal argument or debate in the House.

That’s how he has cut a niche for himself in the corridors of justice as one of Kenya’s finest and most controversial lawyers, and in Parliament as an indefatigable debater.

Conservation

But something quite apart from law holds a special place in his heart.

“Conservation is my heart. I have been doing it for 20 years,” he says. “I wish Kenyans would know how much of a priceless heritage our environment is.”

He says he loves to watch the lions eat. “Until you watch a lion eat from this close, you never understand the meaning of passion,” he says as he admiringly watches his namesake devour a luscious chunk of meat while his sisters drool from a distance.

At his office on the 10th floor of the Co-operative Bank House, pictures of his beloved two-year-old lion and two lionesses hang on the wall. They seem to represent a larger picture and another lifestyle for the Mbooni MP.

At Kwa Kyelu, workers feed the carnivores on eight to 10 kilos of meat every day for five days a week. Mr Kilonzo says it costs about Sh700,000 to maintain a lion a year. This means that in the past two years he has had them, he has spent not less than Sh4 million on them.

“We used to feed them seven days a week but we discovered they were getting too fat,” says Mr Kilonzo, an honorary KWS game warden appointed last year.

The KWS chief licensing officer, Mr Ibrahim Lubia, says the minister requested and was granted permission to host “any problematic lions” in 2007.

Living environment

KWS veterinarians regularly visit Kwa Kyelu to inspect the animals’ living environment and to treat them if sick.

“You can imagine what you need to do when treating a sick lion. It’s no joke,” says the minister.

He says the KWS personnel have to come with two guns – one to sedate the animal and the other to be used by a warden standing guard “in case of any eventuality”.

A few metres from the rock cage that houses Mutula, Nduku (named after his wife) and Sis, are the two cheetahs that the ranch received from KWS a fortnight ago. The two cheetahs were promptly named Mutula and Ocampo.

“My children have also said that the cage must be called The Hague because that is the place that everyone is afraid of visiting,” Mr Kilonzo says. The cheetahs are fed on rabbits, chickens and goats.

Rare species

Driving off the highway, there’s little to tell that a wildlife sanctuary with common and rare species is located less than five kilometres away – aside from the vegetation that has obviously been undisturbed for decades.

The savannah feel of the plains rolling off the Mua Hills – formerly the Ukambani White Highlands – serves the visitor coming from the hustle and bustle of the city an exhilarating welcome.

The Kwa Kyelu Ranch, in which the Justice minister practises his other favourite occupation -- conservation -- neighbours several other large ranches that stretch southeastward towards Kilome.

The other of the Big Five hosted in the ranch are three buffaloes that were rescued from Nakuru, Meru and Magadi.

The three are kept on a 100-acre paddock that has been fenced off for their exclusive use. They seem quite at home with their herders – and one might mistake them for domestic animals – since they were adopted while quite young.

The herders, who say they have been trained by the minister to conserve even deadwood, however, say they have to be careful and always keep in mind that they are dealing with wild animals when in the buffalo paddock.

Rare animals

“We never forget that these animals are wild. Never,” says Joseph Mbolu, one of the supervisors in the ranch.

Mr Kilonzo’s conservation efforts did not start with the rare animals.

“I started off conservation about 20 years ago in my farm in Nakuru, where I rear ostriches,” he says.

But it is at the Kwa Kyelu Ranch that Mr Kilonzo has taken conservation to new heights.

“We not only have a wild pig called Mutula but we have more than 1,200 leopard tortoises, of which 960 are below six months old and have been hatched at our centre,” he says. “The mature ones were rescued from human-wildlife conflict in Baringo.”

The others, he adds, came from Uganda through the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and were confiscated by KWS officers from persons allegedly attempting to sell them for their shells.

The little tortoises are the size of a chicken egg and the oldest stands at about two feet with a length of about two-and-a-half feet.

Mr Kilonzo was raised in a homestead with three huts, a picture of which he still hangs in his ranch house. It is one of the pieces hanging on walls in a modern house that has been designed to keep a rustic feel.

The roof takes the shape of a traditional grass-thatched house. His home office, which is a few metres away, is another extension of the rustic design.

The furniture is made from deadwood, tree trunks, twigs and branches. They are polished, furnished and cut to fit their place.

Grass-thatched

As part of his ranch office, which is grass-thatched, Mr Kilonzo has a dining table whose props are made from deadwood and whose top is from a flat rock collected from a riverbed.

His television cabinets are also made from deadwood, as are his chandeliers.

Outside the office, Mr Kilonzo has created a fountain for birds to bathe and swim. But, aside from the birds from the wild that visit the fountain, Mr Kilonzo has domesticated other rare species, including the lammergeier, bantams, ostriches, pigeons, guinea fowl and Egyptian geese.

The most exclusive of these is the lammergeier. Unlike most vultures, it does not have a bald head. This huge bird is 95 cm to 125 cm long with a wingspan of 275 cm to 308 cm. When full grown, a lammergeier weighs between 4.5 kg and 7.5 kg.

“The lammergeiers breed in cliffs but they have become rarer because of human activity. They used to be found in Baringo. I have been trying to find a partner for this one that I have and found none in East Africa. I have specialists looking for a partner and they tell me that they have found one in Ethiopia,” Mr Kilonzo says.

Open field

In the open field are numerous herds of Thompson’s gazelle, zebra, giraffes, elands other types of deer and ferret monkeys while the minister rears camels, donkeys, beef and dairy cattle, goats and sheep.

Additionally, the ranch boasts three established greenhouses which serve the sanctuary and the neighbouring community with fresh produce ranging from tomatoes, capsicum, kale (sukuma wiki), spinach, cabbages and maize. All these are grown under organic farming conditions.

Next to the greenhouses is a large collection of Langstroth beehives and three tilapia fishponds.

“The minister takes conservation very seriously. He doesn’t want anything in its natural habitat disturbed. He has told us that even if we as much as cut a tree, we are touching his soul,” said Mr Mbolu.