Keep wildlife migration corridors open

When compared to animals, human newborns are like computers with little or no operating software.

Except for the ability to cry and suckle, it takes months before a baby learns elementary survival skills like crawling, walking and running.

In contrast, most calves are ready to sprint away from stalking predators only minutes after birth.

Over the years, man has noted that these unique animal characteristics go beyond readily observable capabilities.

For instance, mature animals possess a capacity to guide the herd away from over-grazed or parched areas to plentiful locations thousands, of miles away.

East Africans resident in wildlife habitats know that elephants always recognise the bones of dead relatives upon encounter, and almost instantly, delve into a mysterious solemn ceremony in honour of the departed.

After concluding this bizarre ritual, elephants then carefully arrange the bones of the departed on the ground before leaving the site.

This unique behaviour is only an additional trait to the jumbo’s renowned memory, and high sense of smell.

These traits are passed on from generation to generation as essential instruments of survival in the unforgiving jungle. Indeed, hunters and residents of animal habitats must learn to interpret animal behaviour to avoid danger of attack.

For example, it is extremely rare to see a Maasai aim sticks or stones at birds or animals in bushes or walk around with a dog or jog in animal habitats since such action may provoke a wild animal hiding in the vicinity to attack.

The annual wildlife migration from the Mara in Kenya to Serengeti in Tanzania may run into problems unless the sister nations enter into negotiations on how to protect existing animal migration corridors at both sides of the border.

Above all else, the agreement should ban the construction of infrastructure works such as roads cutting across this sensitive ecosystem.

Constructing a road along wildlife corridors or within dispersal areas in Kenya or Tanzania will inevitably disturb the inherited animal instinct to seek pasture elsewhere, which may lead to the extinction of certain animal and plant species.

As animals crisscross the Mara and Serengeti, plant seeds are also dispersed along the corridor and throughout the grasslands, itself an essential ingredient in maintaining this valuable ecosystem.

In this connection, Kenyan and Tanzanian policymakers should organise a joint visit to the Far East to appreciate fully the value of animal instinct in human survival.

The policymakers may find that all that our experts require in forecasting when the next devastating drought is due to observe both domestic and wild animal behaviour over a period of time.

Just before the December 26, 2004 tsunami that hit the Far East, residents noticed an hour before that domestic and wild animals as well as birds rushed to high ground to escape disaster. In the forests, no wild animals were found dead.

To avoid a natural disaster likely to cost thousands of lives, man needs only to launch a more thorough study into animal instinctive behaviour to develop instruments able to project when earthquakes and tsunamis are about to strike.