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Kenyan wildlife bears brunt of harshest drought

Friday, March 3rd, 2023 08:30 | By
Crisis as worst drought in 40 years kills wildlife
Man stands next to a giraffe carcass. Drought has seen deaths of many wild animals. PHOTO/Courtesy.

As the World Marks World Wildlife Day, Kenya’s wild animals have nothing to celebrate as their numbers deplete due to the ongoing drought crisis among other challenges.

Thousands of animals have died due to lack of water and pastures within and around the parks, forcing them to either invade human space or migrate with both options posing risks of poaching.

Drought is a major impact of the climate change crisis which experts predict will worsen if adaptation and mitigation measures are not urgently implemented.

Justus Nyamu, the Executive Director at Elephant Neighbours Center says many wild animals have died since the onset of drought in mid 2022.

Though not official, he says between January and July 2022, close to 117 elephants died due to scarcity of water and pastures.

Nyamu says it is possible that the number of wildlife animals dying from drought is higher than what has been reported.

“The situation worsened in August to September but improved in December when it rained but we are currently where we were late last year and if it does not rain in the next few weeks, we will be recording major losses which is a major setback in wildlife conservation,” Nyamu says.

Nyamu says one of the most affected areas is Amboseli National park which is in Kajiado county as it has not experienced any rains for the last few years.

Moses Kisimir, the conservancy manager at Kikesen River Conservancy says, aside from death caused by lack of water and pasture within the park, there has been immigration of wildlife from the zoned areas to the communities as well as to the neighboring countries.

He says animals like elephants have turned to local communities around parks and conservancies in search of water and pastures.

“When they leave the park, they destroy properties and plants. Cases of human-wildlife conflict have gone so high since the onset of drought, “he says.

He says the competition of resources between human and wildlife is expected to go higher if the expected rains fail once again, meaning an increase of rejection of the wildlife by the communities.

He adds that strain relations have further been fueled by lack or delayed compensation by Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) whenever a wildlife animal kills a local or destroys a property.

Kisimir says timely compensation would have enabled communities to allow the animals to benefit from their resources such as water from their boreholes.

Water for animals

At the moment, Kisimir says locals who have boreholes have really helped them sustain the animals by providing water for the animals while some have allowed wildlife to graze in their ranches.

Also, some of the animals especially giraffes are moving to Tanzania where pasture and water is still available in plenty.

“We had 27 giraffes at Kikesen conservancy but we are currently remaining with 11. Most animals are moving to where they can graze which is better than having them die here,” he adds.

Tourism CS Penina Malonza while speaking on Citizen TV says one major issue that has contributed to scarce resources within the parks is due to sustained invasion of livestock animals into the parks.

Malonza says increased numbers of cows then depleted pasture that was meant for wildlife.

“Grazers like zebras, gazelles among others are the most affected since there is no longer grass available. But now even browsers like giraffes are feeling the hit since the trees which they feed on have also dried up,” she says.

She says elephants are mostly affected since they consume a lot and now since the pasture is not available, they are prone to die from hunger.

The CS says as a short-term solution, the ministry is transporting water to the parks and filling the dried-up dams and other water points used by the animals.

The ministry is also buying hay grass and distributing it in parks to allow animal feed within the parks.

“For long term, we are planning on drilling boreholes and water pans which will help harvest water during the rainy season and feed the water zones within the parks,” she says.

Also, communities with idle lands can also take this as an economic opportunity where they can grow grass and then sell it to the government during needy times,“she adds.

In line with this year’s theme “Partnership to wildlife conservation”, stakeholders say the main partnership should be engaging communities who over the time have perceived wildlife as pests.

Nyamu says most of the revenue collected within the parks does not benefit the communities around them which is the main reason for the perception that wildlife animals are for tourists.

“The first partners should be the communities, they are the ones to protect the parks from livestock invasions, they are the ones to protect animals from poaching and during this drought season, in some areas, the communities are providing wildlife with water from their boreholes. This is what partnership can do and where focus should be,” Nyamu says.

The conservationist says Kenya needs to change its conservation model to incentive conservation where even the locals see the importance of having wildlife around their areas.

This means educating the communities on other benefits of wildlife aside from tourism which most locals perceive as an activity for foreigners only.

Kisimir says it is time KWS puts its acts together on how they manage human-wildlife conflicts which has derailed any possible relations between humans and wildlife.

“KWS have a bad reputation of how they respond to such conflicts but they are very fast when the animals are affected hence the tag that the animals belong to them and not the community, “he says.

According to the experienced conservationist, one way of bringing in the community is creating awareness as well as fastening the process of compensation for either loss of life or property caused by the wildlife animals.

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