Kenya’s wildlife being destroyed with some help from our own bureaucrats

I was reminded last week of the “cheeky white mentality” that some 15 years ago alerted us to the alarming rise in game poaching, and forced us to take tough action that stemmed the carnage.

It was world famous paleontologist and National Museums director Richard Leakey who led the campaign highlighting the decimation of the elephant population in Tsavo National Park.

The then minister for Tourism and Wildlife, Mr George Muhoho, disputed the numbers, insisting there was no crisis and came out with that racist slur.

Fortunately, Dr Leakey caught the ear of the only office at the time that mattered in the land.

In swift order, President Daniel arap Moi disbanded the corrupt Game Department of the ministry, and replaced it with the brand new Kenya Wildlife Service, with none other than Dr Leakey as its first director.

Although he was himself kicked out a few years later after falling out with Mr Moi, Dr Leakey exited having built an enviable organisation that played a big role in saving our elephants, rhino, lions, leopards, cheetah and other valuable and endangered species from the marauding bands of poachers that previously had licence to roam free in our national parks, game reserves and wildlife dispersal areas.

SENIOR GOVERNMENT FIGURES

Why do I go back to history? Because last week, Dr Leakey was at it again. The legendary conservationist broke a long silence to add his voice to growing concerns about the return of uncontrolled poaching.

He appealed for President Uhuru Kenyatta’s direct intervention to check the suspected involvement of senior government figures and powerful politicians in poaching, and suggested that those presently charged with protecting our precious wildlife be asked to look for alternate employment.

The reaction from KWS indicated a bureaucracy that felt like an endangered species. The entire top brass was assembled to deny that poaching had reached alarming levels.

The KWS management insisted that there was nothing in the poaching statistics to make it a national crisis.

They did not blame negative publicity to any “cheeky white mentality”, but did make vague allusions to unofficial figures cooked up by civil society meddlers, foreign activists and “briefcase conservationists”.

That self-preservation might have been a classic example of what ails this land. It’s always about refusing to take responsibility, evading scrutiny and blaming all criticism, however genuine, on some dark external powers; the old Moi-era game of ‘foreign masters’, ‘enemies of development’, and other scapegoats manufactured to make us rally round our own.

No one can honestly dispute now that rhino and elephant are being killed at record levels to satisfy the insatiable appetite for their tusks and horns in China and other parts of the Far East.

UNHINDERED ACCESS

There are many Kenyans who will say they don’t care if all the animals are wiped out to free the land for the landless and for growing food.

However, we are in the age of terrorism. Our concern should be that we are allowing heavily armed brigands to roam unchallenged across Kenya killing all the game they need, and giving them unhindered access to our international gateways for the export of their cargo.

So generous have we been that the international cartels controlling the trade have found our airports and seaports convenient points for transshipping ivory and rhino horn poached as far afield as South Africa and West Africa.

You might still say that you don’t care, but give a thought to the fact that the international criminal gangs controlling the trade have been proven to have direct links with the merchants of death who deal in narcotic drugs and illegal arms.

Ultimately, those tri-evils – poaching, narcotics and illicit arms – have direct connections to the arming and financing of terrorism.

Therefore when a shopping mall in Nairobi or a church in Mombasa is attacked by terrorists, we must be conscious that those murderous deeds are aided and abetted by business and political merchants in the corridors of power who run the poaching gangs, provide free passage for the contraband, or prefer to look the other way when employed to protect our wildlife or ensure our national security.

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