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It is notoriously difficult to get precisenumbers on the populations of Kenyasremaining wildlife. We emphasise remain-ing because, while the numbers may bedisputed, the general trend of rapid declineis universally acknowledged.

But the rate of that decline is not easyto measure, in part because we are dealingwith populations living in wilderness areas,and still in large enough numbers to makeit impossible to count each and every one:statistical models for arriving at scientificestimates have to be used.

The most widely accepted estimateshowever, are as follows for some of the keyspecies:

-In the 1960s, Kenya had about 20,000rhinos, but now has just about 1,000 ofthem left.

- Kenya had about 150,000 elephantsin the 1970s, and now has about 30,000elephants. This in itself being an improve-ment, as the elephant populations had atone point fallen to less than 20,000 in the1980s.

- There were more than 20,000 lions inKenya back in the 1970s, but there are onlyabout 2,000 of them left now.

We should also note here that despitethese numbers reflecting a seemingly irre-versible decline in animal populations beingvery bad news indeed for the country, atleast we have some kind of baseline toconduct our assessments.

Greater wildlife populationsTwo neighbouring countries, which inall probability have even greater wildlifepopulations within their borders are SouthSudan and DRC Congo. A good numberof those tusks which are shipped out incontainers from the Mombasa port andsometimes detected in time, and thusconfiscated are the result of elephantmassacres in the DRC.

And South Sudan has a large populationof wild animals in its Sud Wetlands and ingame parks close to its border with DRCCongo and Ethiopia, and even has a migra-tion of some 1.3 million antelopes withinits borders which is every bit as dramaticas the annual wildebeest migration of theMara-Serengeti plains.

But given that South Sudan has onlyrecently started to recover from decadesof civil war; and DRC Congo with itsendemic violence is yet very far from start-ing on the path to a lasting peace, theseare not the countries which we shouldseek to compare Kenya with, when tryingto assess loss of wildlife populations, andwhat can be done to reverse this decline.

A better comparison would be withNamibia, a country which is largely desertand semi-desert, much like most ofKenyas land where most of our remainingwildlife lives.

What is Namibia doing right?From the early 1980s to the present

time, Namibias elephant population hasrisen from about 5,000 to more than10,000. Its rhino population has risen from750 in 2002, to more than 1,500 at thepresent time, and the total wildlife popu-lation is now estimated to be 3.5 millionheads.

While Kenyas wildlife populations are in

steep decline, those in Namibia are growingexponentially, despite both nations facingmuch the same challenges in terms of thehuge demand for rhino horn and elephanttusks in China and elsewhere in the FarEast, which has made these trophiesinfinitely more valuable than they were adecade ago.

The question we then have to consideris, what is Namibia doing right? And isthere any aspect of Namibias wildlife poli-cies, which we would do well to adopt herein Kenya?

Admittedly, Namibia is a far richercountry than Kenya, and is a middle-in-come nation, with its per capita GDP stand-ing at $5,668 compared to Kenyas $800.

But then, you have to consider that bothNamibia and Kenya have roughly 50 per

cent of their populations living in poverty.So although Namibia only has a popula-tion of about 2.2 million people, there areplenty of poor people there, who wouldface much the same temptations thatKenyan villagers face, once they realise justhow much money they can make if theyturn their hands to assisting the gangs ofprofessional poachers.

So where does the difference lie, thatmakes Namibias wildlife populationsincrease while Kenya continues to losewildlife at an insupportable rate?

Biggest reason for wildlife deathsWell, you may already be aware that

Kenya has a wildlife policy that does notallow any form of consumptive utilisationor trade in wildlife products. Indeed, Itseems to be the right thing to do consider-ing the massive loss of wildlife in Kenyaover the last few decades.

While the architects of the currentpolicy would have you believe that, bymaking wildlife valueless and criminalised,this will, in and of itself, stop poor ruralpeople across the country from killing wild-

life on their land.The problem with this idea is that it

assumes that wildlife is only being killedfor a product (horn, ivory, etc) when in factby far the biggest reason for it to be killedis to clear it away for land use changeas well as retribution for wildlife damageon alternative land uses...any bush meatthat results from this is by catch and isconsumed locally - if it is not commerciallytransacted it falls into the legal grey area ofwhat exactly constitutes a trophy.

It is for example quite normal for theKWS to allow local people to take homemeat from animals shot on problem animal

control. In a protein-poor country suchas Kenya, is it really reasonable to denythat bush meat is a staple of millions ofpeoples diet?

It may be a surprise to learn that thecost of having wildlife (to the landown-ers) can be as high as 60 per cent in lostproductivity from agriculture and domesticlivestock because of direct competition,disease and damage by wildlife - leavealone human injury and death.

Since the law of the land makes surethat wildlife and its products cannot beowned and commercially traded, landown-ers have no choice but to remove it to

IV weekendSTAR October 26/27 2013Lessons from Namibia wherewildlife policy actually works

DECLINING NUMBERS: Kenya had about 150,000 elephants in the 1970s, and now hasabout 30,000 elephants. This in itself being an improvement, as the elephant popula-tions had at one point fallen to less than 20,000 in the 1980s.

FEWER AND FEWER: There were more than 20,000 lions in Kenya back in the 1970s,but there are only about 2,000 of them left now.

CALVIN COTTAR & WYCLIFFE MUGACalvin Cottar operates a tented camp in the Olderkesi Conservancy

adjacent to the Maasai Mara. Wycliffe Muga is the Weekend Star editor.

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allow agriculture and domestic livestock tosucceed as their primary resource base.

Also in these laws is a clause thatmakes it legal for any landowner to kill anywild animal on their land if it is a threat tohuman life and livelihood, as long as theKWS are informed after the fact, and asong as no commercial trade in any prod-ucts occurred.... Is it possible to draft amore perfect policy to eliminate wildlife?

Inevitable eliminationUnless the wildlife policy makes it

possible for wildlife itself to become theprimary resource base for landowners,wildlife will inevitably be eliminated. Indeed,should things continue as they are, thegovernment will be politically forced to

not only order removal of wildlife popula-tions by the army (particularly elephant,the most destructive of all the wildlife), butpossibly even order de-gazetting of someof our larger protected areas to provideand for settlement and farming. Examplesof population removal by governmentsabound throughout Africa and the worldthe elephant removal in Akagera Park in

Rwanda in the 1960s).Under both the current and new just

approved by Cabinet wildlife policy, Kenyaswildlife prospects are exceedingly bleak.ndeed, if current trends continue, we facehaving virtually no wildlife remaining onprivate and communal land within as littleas 20 years, and wildlife numbers withinparks and reserves will inevitably continueto fall as well.

What seems to be missing in theKenya wildlife debate and which is theroot cause of our massive wildlife lossand continued impoverishment of ruralKenyans is that there is no legal mecha-nism to make wildlife a primary resourcebase for rural people.

Considering that the liberalised wildlifendustry is potentially worth US $500million to US $800 million per year, thefact that it is being denied to the poorestsegment of our society living in the driestpart of our country is to me the biggestpolicy failure in the history of the country,and possibly criminally negligent on thepart of our previous governments andpolicy makers. Millions of our most needypeople could benefit from such an industry.

We do, however, have hope that the newnational and local governments will seethe futility of continuing to bear the politi-cal costs of wildlife damage around thecountry, and will also see the impossibilityof avoiding the negative publicity from thenternational community and donors forthe downward spiral of wildlife loss in thecountry...having acknowledged this futility,

they should begin the process of liberalis-ing the ownership of wildlife so that land-owners can take up more responsibility forwildlife conservation through tourism andsustainable utilisation.

So how important could this liberalisedwildlife industry be for Kenyan landown-ers?

Firstly, land values would jump; landwhere the Big Five species exist will be farmore valuable than where there are onlydik dik and goats.

Secondly, a liberalised industry willencourage a culture of live capture andtranslocation of wildlife as landownersattempt to improve value of their land, andit would provide a destination for excessanimals being removed where they are not

wanted.Thirdly, landowners where tourism is

not viable or present (70 per cent of thecountry) will have far more revenue gener-ation options for their own survival thanthey have presently.

Fourthly, the liberalised wildlife industryrelies on the fact that commercialisationof wildlife is no different in principle fromthe existing commercialisation of domesticcattle and goats, but capitalises on thesuperior physical attributes of wildlife tolive in its natural African environment (forinstance, antelope and gazelle are disease-resistant and virtually never need to drinkwater), as well as having extremely highabstract values that are literally hundredsof times more valuable than pure meatvalues as compared to domestic livestock.

No longer does one have to domesticateor farm animals to get their full revenueearning or biological potential wildnessand wilderness being the new value.

Conspicuously successfulReturning to the example of Namibia,

we note that the keystone of their wildlifeconservation policy which has been soconspicuously successful, boils down to

just three key policy initiatives:1. Landowners have ownership of wildlife

on their land.2. Landowners can use wildlife in all

possible ways to earn sustainable revenueinto the future which include sustainableoff-take for tourist hunting quotas, as wellas for meat and hide production.

3. These activities all require marketsfor wildlife products, strong regulations,enforcement of rational laws, and mostimportantly, trust by the governmentthat the rural people can and will protectKenyas wildlife heritage. All these policiesare well within our reach here in Kenya,provided there is political will to implementthese changes.

weekendSTAR October 26/27 2013 V

MOST AT RISK: In the 1960s, Kenya had about 20,000 rhinos, but now has just about1,000 of them left.

Not many years back, a young boy inKitui county, suffering from extremehunger pains, fed on a dead dog. He

died. In Kenya, dogs are not food. Wedont eat dogs. It is unheard of. I supposethe boy just wanted something in hisstomach. I recognise that there are partsof the world that dogs are consumed,but anyone doing that from Kitui and Ipresume anywhere in Kenya would bedealt with as a diabolical person. So theKenyan government has its work cut outfor it and needs to reassess its priorities.

Kenya has been independent fromBritain for 50 years and still cannot feedall of its people. How many years of self-government does a country need to beable to feed its people? Every year someKenyan officials come up with ingeniousstatements to comfort the people. Everyso often we are treated with statementssuch as the government is to declarea national emergency over the foodcrisis that has made at least 10 millionKenyans food insecure. Nonethelessreports of hundreds of families turninginto scavengers in dumping sites ashunger bites continue; stories of Kenyanscrushing old bones and boiling themfor a meal; families eating chicken feedbecause food is dear.

But since these statements dontseem to provide the food security, Kenyais setting itself into a new frontier infarming. Now and then you read Kenyaedges closer to GM foods. So the routeto food security is through GM crops. Theplan is to do this in 2014?

What are GM crops? We know a seedis a plant folded up. Within that seed isthe coded instructions of how the plant isto unfold with its unique characteristics.

This predetermining code that gives aplant its uniqueness is what is called theplants DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Allorganisms have a DNA which containsthe information to build and maintain anorganisms cells and pass genetic traits tooffsprings; in the DNA cells are the geneswhich in humans determines our genetictraits like hair colour, number of fingers,blood type etc. All organisms have manygenes corresponding their many traits.

Through the science of geneticengineering scientists produce geneticallymodified organisms. Genetic engineeringchanges the inherited characteristics ofan organism in a predetermined way byaltering its genetic material.

In the mid 1970s, scientists discoveredthat they could transfer genes from the

DNA of one species to another. Plants,animals and other organisms could nowbe equipped with genes they couldnever acquire naturally and exhibit t raitsnot previously found in their species oreven in their kingdom. For example, afish can mate with a fish and a tomatowith a tomato. But there is no way a fishcan mate with a tomato. Using geneticengineering, however, fish genes can beinserted into a tomato and vice versa.

Taking the example further, think of thefish, flounder; this fish has characteristicsthat enable it to survive at the bottom of

the deepest ocean and live below freezingtemperatures. For a tomato farmer wholives under the threat of potential winterfreeze in various territories around theworld, these are desirable characteristics,if only they could be found in a tomato.Thats where the scientist comes in,to insert this gene of the flounder intothe tomato and produce a tomato thatwill endure freeze, call the product fishtomato if you will. But in the grocerystore, you may never know that thetomato has been genetically alteredbecause it will look like other tomatoesand in countries like America since theydo not label genetically modified foods intheir stores, you will never know what youare eating.

Relevant to Kenya genetic engineeringin GM foods introduces in plants genesthat protect the crop by decreasing theimpact of insects on the crops as well asmaking the plant resistant to herbicidesused to control weeds. You will wantto remember what an herbicide is andwhat an insecticide is because these areinserted into the plant genetic code; theinsecticide and the anti-weed controlformulation permeates each and everycell of the crop courtesy of genetic. Theprotection against pests and resistanceto herbicide application must work to besuccessful in increasing yield per acre byreducing loses due to pests and weeds;when an insect bites into any part of theplant, that bite becomes the last bite inlife of that insect.

The corporations producing GM foodsay that they are safe to eat, that theyproduce higher yields, have consistentand reliable yields, are better thancompeting options and go a long way intosolving world hunger. Hundreds of millionsof dollars have been spent by biotechcompanies to convince the world thatGM crops are needed to feed the world.The campaign is targeted to create theimpression that opposing the technologyis morally wrong.

Kenya, are we jumping from the fryingpan into GMO?

Fr fryin pan fhuner int gmos

JOHN MWANDIA

comments on topical issues

There is no way a fsh can mate with

a tomato. Using genetic engineering,

however, fsh genes can be inserted

into a tomato and vice versa.