There has been renewed poaching in the Tsavo area of Kenya, where over the past few days 7 elephant overall were killed for their tusks. On the heels of that is the worst poaching case, where on the Ol Jogi Conservancy on the Laikipia Plains in Central Kenya, two rhinos were killed for their horns. This is a repeat case on Ol Jogi where last year a ranger was killed in a gunfight with poachers in June and where 4 rhinos were poached in one single night a month later in July.
Kenya Wildlife Service is struggling to make financial ends meet and find enough resources to add manpower and new equipment to its team. This latest case seems to confirm that the organization is not able to prevent such cases as with the elephant a few days ago and now the two rhinos.
“I know it is not legal, but a shoot-to-kill policy would be a good start to give those criminals a dose of their own medicine,” said one regular Nairobi-based source who passed on the bad news. He then continued: “There has been a lull for several months in poaching, and it is of absolute importance that the government, KWS [Kenya Wildlife Service], and the conservancies redouble security efforts. It is also high time that the conservancies are allowed to fly drones to monitor in real time what is going on, especially at night. Infrared sensors show movement of people and security teams can be deployed to ambush poachers and deal decisively with them. But with all the other trouble we have in Kenya we cannot afford to be seen abroad as a country where our rhinos and elephant are literally mowed down at will. Much of our business is wildlife based, and without wildlife why would people come for safari?”
Another source, however, described government bodies as utterly complacent, reminding this correspondent that commitments were made last year to strengthen surveillance, monitoring, intelligence gathering, and response tactics only to have within the space of 9 months a further 2 rhinos killed at the same location. Not long afterwards, the usual threat tactics were employed by government talking of auditing the conservancies and pulling licenses if not found to work within guidelines and regulations, a threat rejected by most of the conservancies talked to at the time as baseless. Ultimately the topic seemed to have returned to the bottom drawers of the bureaucrats who came up with the idea.
At the time of going to press no comments were received from official sources, and much of Kenya is to this moment unaware of the incident with the mainstream media yet to write about it.
WHAT TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS ARTICLE:
- This is a repeat case on Ol Jogi where last year a ranger was killed in a gunfight with poachers in June and where 4 rhinos were poached in one single night a month later in July.
- At the time of going to press no comments were received from official sources, and much of Kenya is to this moment unaware of the incident with the mainstream media yet to write about it.
- Not long afterwards, the usual threat tactics were employed by government talking of auditing the conservancies and pulling licenses if not found to work within guidelines and regulations, a threat rejected by most of the conservancies talked to at the time as baseless.
