Over the years, Kenya has been losing its precious flora and fauna, as human-wildlife conflict takes its toll on natural resources.
Today, modern human settlements and farms characterise game reserves that used to teem with hundreds of wild animal at the turn of the new millennium. What happened to the helpless prey and predators is anyone’s guess.
And that is why ongoing reports on ensuing human-wildlife conflict are unwelcome.
In a country where tourism has perennially topped the charts as a foreign exchange earner, and where wildlife has been a priceless portion of our national heritage, the vow by Maasai warriors in parts of the country threatening to execute any lion that pounces on their livestock paint a gloom picture.
Their warnings should be treated with utter seriousness as the morans have unreservedly been making good their threats, killing at least seven lions in the past 10 days. This is regardless of the fact that the number of lions in the country has acutely dropped over the years, with majority of the surviving ones being those in protected areas.
The warning now is a wake-up call to Kenya Wildlife Service to review its animal management interventions to avert these needless deaths.
KWS must employ advanced means of tracking and controlling the movement of the wild cats to ensure they do not provoke the local communities.
Basic interventions such as fencing of parks and translocation of lions should also be readily adopted if at all they would help save these endangered beasts.
