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MONTH: April 2007

Kenya wildlife policy policy committee pushes "cropping," not "hunting"

 

NAIROBI--"The National Steering Committee," drafting revisions to Kenyan wildlife policy, "has dropped recommendations for killing animals for fun," revealed The Nation environment correspondent John Mbaria on March 16, 2007. Instead, Mbaria wrote, "it has adopted cropping wildlife." Mbaria explained that the draft policy "defines cropping as 'harvesting free-ranging animals for a range of products, including meat and wildlife trophies.'

"In Kenya," Mbaria continued, "most animals are free-ranging. Apart from Saiwa Swamp in Western Kenya, and Aberdares and Lake Nakuru national parks, which have electric fences, the rest of the parks and reserves are open."

The new draft policy position "is just a matter of semantics. Cropping is hunting by another name," International Fund for Animal Welfare regional communications officer Elizabeth Wamba told Mbaria.

"Kenya will now not have trophy hunting," affirmed African Network for Animal Welfare founder Josphat Ngonyo. "However, it will have cropping. This has been abused before," Ngonyo warned. "Besides, wildlife numbers have declined, and we do not know the correct population position yet. We are therefore campaigning that this be put at bay."

"Fear that cropping might further diminish wildlife in Kenya is underscored by past practice," Mbaria wrote, "especially by big-time game ranchers who were given a go-ahead to engage in cropping on an experimental basis by the Kenya Wildlife Service between 1991 and 2003."

The experiment ended after a company called Tasha Bioservices Ltd., headed by Moi University lecturer Jim Kairu, spent 2001 gathering data. Tasha Bioservices found that "Some croppers are known to abuse their licences by injuring both target and non-target animals, shooting animals indiscriminately, shooting species not included in the allocated quotas, and killing animals beyond the scheduled boundaries." The Kenya Wildlife Service had incorrectly believed, based on reports and complaints from private landowners, that "many non-protected wildlife areas were teeming with excess wildlife," Mbaria summarize. This proved to be false.

"Cropping does not benefit the local communities," Ngonyo said, "and will jeopardize the strategies proposed to curb the bush meat problem and compensation through human-wildlife conflict."

Ngonyo was a close observer of the previous failure of cropping. As an employee of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust elephant and rhinoceros orphanage, Ngonyo helped to raise animals orphaned by poachers who used cropping as a cover. Ngonyo later founded Youth for Conservation to attack the bush meat trade, which also used cropping as a cover. Since 1998 Youth for Conservation has organized volunteers to remove poachers' snares from the Kenyan national parks.

States the March 5, 2007 edition of the draft wildlife policy, "Cropping will be allowed, subject to verified scientific information and clear framework for benefit sharing."

The draft policy "encourages and promotes as appropriate" manufacturing and exporting products made from wildlife. "For the time being," the draft policy says, "sport hunting is excluded from wildlife user rights until such time (as) there is developed effective mechanisms for ensuring that there are direct benefits to local communities."

This leaves the door open to allowing sport hunting at a future date. Mbaria had on February 24, 2007 extensively exposed efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development and Safari Club International to undermine the Kenyan hunting ban.

"Cropping has now replaced sport hunting," Mbaria observed. "But many Kenyans living with wildlife are still opposed to it. Representatives of communities from different regions organized a demonstration [during the second week of March, 2007], at which they hoped to present their grievances to tourism and wildlife minister Morris Dzoro. But the demonstration was scuttled by the police, who said the group of about 200 representatives had not notified them properly."

"Just as in the current process of making the country's wildlife policy, the earlier cropping experiment was introduced at the behest of powerful international forces," Mbaria wrote. "Seemingly, the country's wildlife resource has been targeted by such elitist hunting groups as Safari Club International," which was also behind the passage of a stealth bill to repeal the hunting ban in December 2004.

Kenyan President Mwai Kbaki vetoed the repeal after Youth for Conservation mobilized nationwide opposition.

Cropping previously "had very little benefit to local communities," Mbaria noted, "as it was meant for large-scale landholders hosting wild animals on their properties. "Many people who took part in a nationwide views-gathering exercise were opposed to the introduction of cropping in the draft policy," Mbaria added. "Communities in 18 of the 21 wildlife regions in Kenya ruled out hunting, cropping, culling, or any other consumptive use of wild animals."

"It needs to be understood once and for all that the intention of the Kenyan nation is to not kill but preserve all of its wildlife. Period," The Nation editorialized on March 18, 2007, as the largest and most influential Kenyan newspaper.

"The whole philosophy of wildlife management in the mind of the average Kenyan is to benefit from wildlife by caring for animals, not by killing them. The draft wildlife policy is neither entirely honest nor does it take into consideration the strategic and long term interests of Kenya," The Nation continued. "Kenyan wildlife must not be killed for trophies.

"Those who wish to eat meat ought to be encouraged to keep a cow or a goat. Those in the wildlife business who have determined that the easiest way to benefit from animals is by killing them should shift their business to the 22 African countries which see no problem in killing their animals.

"Creating a legal market for game trophies is the equivalent of putting a gun to the economy and pulling the trigger. Wildlife is a strategic economic resource," The Nation reminded. "Kenya has no minerals. It relies on agriculture and tourism. Its future prospects are tied around these two sectors. The management of wildlife is therefore not down to a few MPs taking a junket and having their views swayed. It is also not down to the views of a couple of NGOs with an eye to a potentially lucrative donor.

"Our wild animals contribute 25% of our gross domestic product, according to some government estimates, and account for 10% of all formal jobs. Yet, we have lost 60% of our wildlife in the last 20 years or so. "One would have thought that the sensible thing to do is to devise a policy that protects these animals and replenishes populations. "The view of the Sunday Nation is that the Draft Wildlife Policy should be thrown out of the window, together with the committee that wrote it," the editorial concluded.