If we were to go by the recent wildlife-related news headlines, we
might easily conclude that Kenya's fabled wildlife resource is being
rapidly depleted. And from this it would be tempting to extrapolate that
very soon we will read of the death of the last rhino or the last
elephant living in the wild. As it happens, nothing could be further
from the truth. Kenya's wildlife populations may have suffered a
catastrophic decline over the past 30 years or so: but that was more or
less inevitable, given the steep rise in our human population, leading
to a widespread human-wildlife conflict, which the wild animals were
bound to lose. We are now pretty close to stablising these wildlife
populations.
And although it is quite common to see the nation's wildlife written
about in grandiose poetic terms ("our priceless heritage" etc.) if you
want to understand what is happening to Kenya's wildlife populations,
you have to abandon poetry and consider the issues in a cold, dry light.
Game parks have to be seen as an "alternative land use" to small scale
farming or ranching; the wild animals must be seen as a "natural
resource"; and the whole setup of wild animals and panoramic landscapes
have to be considered as "environmental assets".
Without such a perspective, it is impossible to have a serious
discussion on the science and the economics underlying the existence of
Kenya's wildlife and game parks. Now in Kenya, the continued survival of
our wildlife is threatened by three factors, none of which yield to
easy solutions: First is the rapid human population increase. It is true
that our current average is about four children for every adult woman
(down from seven children per woman just two decades). But, for a
country in which most people are still reliant on small-scale
agriculture for their income, we are still too many people living on too
little land.
The second threat is the general poverty of the rural population. And
given that it is these rural places that the game parks and wildlife
conservancies are to be found, it is actually quite amazing that the
levels of poaching are not higher than they presently are. Why would a
poor man, whose family has a pretty good chance of going hungry on any
given night, restrain himself from killing an antelope which would be,
effectively, a week's supply of free meat? And why would not a group of
villagers, if approached by a middle-man, not seek to bring down an
elephant if they knew that this animal's tusks would fetch them more
money than their small farms can make them in a year? Read more: allafrica.com
