The fence that opens friendship between man and beast

It all happened in a blur. Just when Patrick Njagi’s dad asked him to pass on the torch to illuminate the jumbo that had invaded their small shamba, he saw his father tossed in the air by another elephant which they had not spotted.

Njagi ran off to call for help but when he turned back, his father, Apiel Njoka Njeru, lay critically injured on the ground and the two elephants which trampled on him had retreated back into the darkness.

As Nairobi has been transfixed in recent weeks by the escape from the national park of several lions, Njagi has watched the news all too aware of the pain that living next to a wildlife sanctuary can bring.

The death of his dad on January 17, 1990, which left him tending for a family of eight because his mother had passed on 16 years earlier, was the defining moment of his life.

But these days, Njagi sleeps soundly because after decades of agony, elephants no longer roam in his village in Chuka, right next to the Mt Kenya forest.

One of the most ambitious conservation projects in the world, the erection of a game-proof 450 kilometre electric fence to encircle the giant Mt Kenya forest and keep marauding animals from people’s farms has brought peace to thousands of farmers whose lives had become a waking nightmare due to human-wildlife conflict.

The fence project, which is being built around 2,700 square kilometres of dense forest land under a partnership between Rhino Ark, Upper Tana Natural Resources Management Project, Kenya Wildlife Service, Mount Kenya Trust and Kenya Forest Service, offers clues as to how clashes such as those being witnessed in Nairobi and other parts of the country can be tackled.

The community has been enlisted to act as the custodian of the fence, providing labour and, more importantly, offering maintenance services with one community member engaged to patrol the fence every four kilometres.

“The objective is simply to bring harmony between humans and nature,” says Christian Lambrechts, a former policy and programmes officer at the United Nations Environment Programme, who is now executive director of the Rhino Ark Trust. “The only way the community can be involved in conservation efforts is if they see nature as an ally and not an enemy and this project seeks to re-engage the community by creating a situation where animals are fenced in and safe, the forest is protected and people can invest in their land and draw a profit without suffering losses.”

The project follows on from the completed 21-year effort to fence in 2,000 square kilometres of the Aberdare forest range.

The two forests are regarded as among the most critical water towers in the country.

Mount Kenya feeds the Ewaso Nyiro river and the Tana, Kenya’s largest river, which supplies water to the Seven Forks hydropower stations representing 44 per cent of the country’s total installed electricity generation capacity.

ELEPHANT PROBLEMS

The Aberdare mountain, on the other hand, channels water to four of the country’s largest rivers that provide water and power to seven major towns, including Nairobi. The mountain waters the farms of four million farmers in a region in which 70 per cent of the country’s coffee and 30 per cent of its tea is produced.

On a recent tour across six counties around Mt Kenya in which the electrified fence project is being carried out, the contrast between the communities that have been spared the problem of elephants trampling on their crops and those like the besieged farmers of Kithoka in Meru who are still exposed to the crisis was striking.  

The trip started at the offices of Simon Gitau, the Senior Warden at the Mt Kenya National Park and Reserve, whose headquarters is located high above altitude, an hour’s drive from Nanyuki in a patch of land surrounded by thick forest with towering trees covered in fern and crawlers and, everywhere one turns, the sight of the haunting, brooding mountain to be seen, with clouds kissing its blue shoulders.

Mr Gitau counts himself as one of the beneficiaries of the fencing initiative.

“My workload has dramatically decreased in recent months,” he said. “Before, whether I was on leave or at work, the phone was always ringing and at all times of the day and night. People wouldn’t even say ‘hi’. The story was always: ‘Warden! Elephants are on my farm! They have destroyed all my crops!’ It was a nightmare.”

Mr Gitau, whose association with Mt Kenya stretches back to his days as a university student in the mid 1990s when he raised funds to help clean up the mountain of debris left by climbers, said the fencing project had changed the lives of many farmers around the national park and reserve area but called on Kenyans to pressure their leaders to do more to protect the fragile environment.

“We should judge those in authority by how seriously they take issues relating to conservation. All the other resources such as oil and other minerals are finite. But forests can be perpetual. They can help stabilise climate change and ensure our survival. It is essential that we teach people the importance of conservation.”

On the foothills of the mountain in the Thumaita area of Kirinyaga, 45-year-old Patrick Muriuki and Eliud Njagi, 53, are among the farmers reaping the fruits of the new fence.

“We were born into problems with elephants here,” said Muriuki. “Going to school was a big problem but at some point we got used to them and would just dodge them. But no one could grow arrow roots, bananas, maize, sweet potatoes or irish potatoes here. Especially maize, the elephants had a strange habit of waiting until the maize ripens and is ready for harvest and then they would come, in July, and eat everything.”

Some like Mr Njagi had turned to tea farming because the elephants avoided tea plantations but now the local farmers are able to grow a full range of crops.

Not that there have been no losers. Illegal loggers and others who used to exploit the forest have gone out of work but reflecting on their plight, Muriuki, the chairman of the local community forest users association, said:

“The ngoroko (smugglers) have found other lines of work such as riding boda boda.”

DESPERATE TIMES

The story is very different a three hours drive away on the eastern side of the mountain.

The Kithoka area of Meru is one of the more prestigious addresses in the town.

Because it is warmer than other parts of the Imenti forest area, however, it is also a favourite stomping ground of the roughly 100 elephants which inhabit that section of the forest, making it the site of perhaps one of the most vicious human-wildlife conflicts in the country.

Nicholas Mugambi, a civil servant and community leader, told the Sunday Nation that the activities of the elephants had made life unbearable for locals.

“The situation is desperate. People feel helpless. Many people locally depend on farming but when you have to employ 10 to 15 people to watch your farm every night at a cost of Sh300 each that obviously means that your activities are not economically viable.”

Mugambi’s neighbour, John Manyara, 53, gave the example of his farm where he had started a fish pond project and kept about 400 fish which were ready for harvest before elephants came visiting and decided to take a dip in the pond, destroying all the pipe work and the fish.

Locals have come up with a solution which has alarmed conservationists and the KWS as much as the occasional spearing of lions which stray into manyattas in the Kitengela area in Nairobi has.

In recent months, some within the community have begun to tap electricity directly from the main power lines and channel it into crude wire fences erected around their homes.

The voltage transferred onto those lines is lethal. In the past two months alone, four elephants have been killed after trying to access farms surrounded by those fences.

On the day the Sunday Nation team arrived, the thick hide of one giant jumbo lay stretched on the ground, thousands of flies buzzing about it after locals had taken all its meat. Only a solitary large tooth remained on the scene.

Such improvised fences have also brought tragedy. On February 9, 30-year-old Purity Karimi was going to work when she accidentally made contact with one of the fences, dying on the spot.

The situation has turned into a classic example of humans and wildlife living in acute disharmony, a serious headache for Meru Senior Warden Zablon Omulako.

Mr Omulako has only 15 rangers to patrol a vast area and reports receiving calls 30 days a month with complaints about encroachment.

The Rhino Ark fencing project has been extended to the area ahead of schedule to tame the conflict.

During the reporting trip, Adam Mwangi, the Rhino Ark field manager, and John Andati, a fence officer from the KWS, told locals that teams would soon be on the ground to start work but emphasised the need to maintain the fence better than a previous one built in 1997, which fell into disuse due mainly to vandalism.

The fencing project, which has been heavily supported by the funds provided by participants in the annual off-road Rhino Charge rally and which offers a model for conservation with its emphasis on community involvement, might soon bring the same peace to Meru residents that it affords those on the Chuka and Kirinyaga sections of the forest.

Patrick Njagi who lost his father when jumbos ended up on the wrong side of the fence – and under the old compensation laws received only Sh30,000 from the government – is one of those who can offer a before-and-after story on the potential to bring harmony between man and nature through such solutions.

“It was hard to live for so long without a father. But today, I feel like this fence was built just for me. It is true that we can’t graze in the forest exactly the same way as we did any more, but now we can get a full harvest and a good night’s sleep without keeping one ear open for the animals.”

CONSERVATION

One of the signature issues that Pope Francis has adopted during his papacy is the question of protecting the environment.

On June 18, 2015, he issued a 180-page papal letter (encyclical) urging the world to pay more attention to the need to engage in conservation and to promote harmony between humans and nature. 

He also spoke about climate change, calling it “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day”.

During his visit to Nairobi last November, Pope Francis took a keen interest in the Rhino ark fencing project and agreed to bless three specially ornamented poles made from recycled plastic to show his endorsement of the fencing project.

“It was a real honour,” said Christian Lambrechts, executive director of the Rhino Ark Trust. “The Pope’s core teaching on the environment is on the need to have harmony between humans and nature, which is precisely the same aim that the fencing projects around water towers aim to achieve.”

One pole will be erected in the Mt Kenya fencing project, which has attained the 100 km mark after two years of construction, while another will be planted in the Aberdare and the third in the Mau Forest.