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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: April 2008

Effort to repair Kenyan animal services amid post-election strife hints at job ahead in Zimbabwe

 

 

NAIROBI, HARARE--The difficulty of restoring Kenyan animal services after just a few weeks of unrest following the disputed outcome of the December 27, 2007 national election hints at the magnitude of the job ahead in Zimbabwe, where a similar post-election risis appears to be capping nearly nine years of conditions almost as dysfunctional as the worst Kenya experienced.

As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, rioting had just resumed in the Kibera slum district of Nairobi, near the headquarters of the Kenya Wildlife Service, after talks broke down that were intended to achieve a power-sharing arrangement satisfactory to supporters of both incumbent president Mwai Kibaki and challenger Raila Odinga. As earlier, all Kenyan animal advocates could do was hunker down, try to stay out of the line of fire, and help the animals they could with whatever they had, wherever they were caught when the trouble started.

The outcome of the March 29, 2008 Zimbabwean national election likewise remained uncertain. The Zanu-PF party, ruling Zimbabwe since 1980, appeared to have lost control of the national parliament, but Harare Daily News editor Barnabas Thondiana told ANIMAL PEOPLE that agents of Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president since 1980, "secretly stuffed ballots to enable him to achieve a respectable election figure." Claiming military support, Mugabe tried to remain in power despite many indications that he had been electorally defeated.

Cadres loyal to Mugabe had resumed invading farms owned by Zimbabweans of European descent, as they often have since 2000, while Mugabe announced new measures to reallocate land. A frequent Mugabe tactic in times of political challenge, land redistribution has both kept the Zanu-PF government in power and bankrupted the national economy. Farm invasions have typically brought the slaughter of domestic animals for immediate consumption and the destruction of wildlife habitat to create awkwardly and ineffectively cultivated fields, where families struggle to grow food in a nation previously among Africa's net food exporters, now struggling through perpetual food scarcity.

Amid the turmoil, the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority in mid-March claimed to have raised about $900,000 U.S. from its annual auction of animals from three safari camps in the Zambezi Valley--about 10% less than the 2007 auction raised, and only 60% of the 2006 receipts, even at the questionable official exchange rates. The animals are sold chiefly to be shot by trophy-hunting tourists. Long-term investments in hunting ranch breeding stock have declined due to political instability and a steep drop in hunter visits.

Amid the Zimbabwean wildlife disaster, internationally distributed e-mails and photos from Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force chair Johnny Rodrigues turned orphaned baby black rhinos named Tatenda, Carla, and Lisa Marie into national symbols of hope.

Tatenda's mother and two other black rhinos were killed at the Imre Safari Ranch, operated by John and Judy Travers, on November 7, 2007, when "Four armed poachers dressed in camouflage uniform assaulted and tied up the rhino guards and opened fire on the three adult rhinos in their pens," Rodrigues reported.

While John and Judy Travers undertook bottle-feeding Tatenda, then just six weeks old, Janie Style of Buffalo Range bottle-fed Carla and Lisa Marie, each six months old. "Carla's mother was shot and killed," Rodrigues wrote, "and little Carla was shot through her shoulders and chopped on her face with a panga (machete). Lisa Marie was caught in a snare and almost lost her back foot."

Rodrigues' appeals brought repeated donations of urgently needed milk powder from the Clover Milk company of South Africa and other South Africans who usually personally deliver their contributions, also including nipples and medications, as far as Bulawayo. Rodrigues takes the supplies the rest of the way to the rhinos.

The bottle-feeders have also raised an orphaned hyena and and an orphaned warthog during the long effort--and most importantly, have demonstrated to the world that people who care about animals still exist in Zimbabe.

The 13 branches of the Zimbabwe National SPCA have continued operations throughout the prolonged national crisis, but since July 2007 have had to euthanize most animals rather than holding them, because pet food is no longer available. Some supplies have been donated by the South African National SPCA.

 

 

ANAW in camps

In Kenya, while Kibaki and Odinga negotiated, the African Network for Animal Welfare spent much of March vaccinating and/or deworming 883 animals at 10 camps for internally displaced persons. ANAW also took food to the animals in camps where supplies were locally scarce.

How soon the camp residents will all be resettled, with their surviving animals, is among the open questions in the abruptly and violently redrawn ethnic landscape.

Another open question is the fate of Amboseli National Park, explored on March 17 by Rupi Mangat of the Nairobi East African. "A few years ago," Mangat explained, "Amboseli was to be degazetted and handed back to the Ol Kejuado County Council. This was seen as political maneuver [by the Kbaki government] to win favor. However, the move was unlawful. For degazettement, a whole process has to be followed. One requirements is to win 60% approval from parliament. This never happened, but [the proposed return of the park to the county council] caused tremendous confusion. To make things worse, a new district was carved out of Kajiado [as Ol Kejuado is now more often called]. Now the park lies in Loitoktok."

Amboseli is still managed by the Kenya Wildlife Service, still rich in wildlife, and is increasingly a flashpoint for wildlife/human conflict, surrounded by agriculture and development

."Crops are getting closer and closer to the park," elephant researcher Cynthia Moss told Mangat. "In February," when post-election conflict paralyzed the Kenya Wildlife Service as much as the rest of the nation, "14 elephants were speared and four died. We need to save as much of the ecosystem as we can, because the park on its own cannot survive," Moss said. "If the ecosystem changes, the park will not be viable for other species.

"Amboseli is fascinating because of the swamps," Moss added. "It would never be able to feed a huge number of animals on its own," without the wetlands. "The problem is the land use policy," Moss continued. "There is nothing to stop someone from putting 20-story buildings on the boundary of the park.

"There is also the issue of Mount Kilimanjaro," Moss mentioned. "It is estimated that by 2015, Kili's ice glacier will be gone. We don't really know the long-term impact of this," but runoff from the glacier is the primary source of the water in the wetlands. Without the glacier, Amboseli could become as harsh and dry an environment as Tsavo National Park, to the east. This would inhibit growing crops close to the park, but would increase the pressure to prevent wildlife depredation on whatever still grew, and would increase the desperation of pastoralists to find grazing land.

"Already, a lot of the elephant corridors are blocked off," Moss continued. "There should be a directive for no more lodges and camps, because Amboseli is a fragile ecosystem, and cannot take a big increase in vehicular traffic."

Assessed Mangat, "This is not likely to happen if we are to go by what has happened around the Maasai Mara, where the joke is that there are more lodges than the lions."

Proponents of degazetting Amboseli often cite the Maasai Mara as their model--but Maasai Mara development schemes also have a problematic history. "Particularly in recent years," The New York Times editorialized in 2001, "the millions of dollars in gate receipts and lodging fees brought into the Mara by foreign tourists have been used not for road repair or schooling and health care for the Maasai," as was promised when the Maasai gave up some their ancestral lands to create the park, "but instead to enrich officials...The infrastructure has steadily deteriorated, poaching has persisted, and the Maasai have remained among Kenya's poorest and least educated people."

In June 2001 the Maasai Mara management was turned over to a new nonprofit corporation, the Mara Conservancy, which was supposed to share half of all revenues with the Maasai. Touristic development accelerated, but the economic goals were not met, bringing the formation of a new management regimen, the Greater Maasai Mara Tourism Development Plan, in October 2007.

 

 

 

Poaching increases

Economic ambition during the recent unrest tends to have mostly involved looting in the riot-torn cities, and poaching in rural districts. Tsavo East senior warden Julius Cheptei recently told Pascal Mwandambo of The Nation that poaching for bush meat in the Tsavo region, a growing problem for 20 years, has reached unprecedented levels.

"While very little poaching is going on inside the park," Cheptei said, "outside, especially on community ranches, the menace has increased tenfold."

Poachers apparently took full advantage of several months when Kenyan law enforcement was focused on stopping post-election ethnic violence and inhibitions on travel, including taking livestock to market, made meat relatively scarce and expensive.

Several prominent poaching and wildlife trafficking arrests in late March 2008 signaled that the KWS was back on the job. Eight poachers were caught in possession of 187 dikdik carcasses in the Tana River region; four men were caught in the act of skinning an endangered Hirola antelope they had illegally snared, also in the Tana River region; and a Nakuru parcel delivery driver was on March 31 found in possession of 64 pounds of ivory.

But rebuilding the economic base of wildlife protection in Kenya, one of the few nations that does not allow sport hunting, will require rebuilding visitor confidence that Kenya is a safe destination.

"Revenues to parks and reserves have plummeted, putting at risk countless conservation initiatives carried out by KWS and others," United Nations Environment Program chief Ach-im Steiner told Reuters reporter Lisa Ntungacim-paye on March 26. "If we can't regenerate tourism, then many of these environmental investments will either be severely reduced or collapse," Steiner added, mentioning that KWS has had to cancel the purchase of 200 vehicles due to recent revenue losses.

Tourism is the leading source of foreign exchange in Kenya, worth about $1 billion in 2007, "but has seen massive drops in profits and numbers since television showed images of bloody street protests, burning and looting in the wake of the December 27 vote," wrote Jack Kimball of Reuters.