Burn it for only elephants should wear ivory

Three things are occurring at almost the same time, thereby making for a great confluence. First, the Tenth Parliament has resumed sittings after recess and several crucial Bills are lined up for discussion. Among these is one seeking to revise the Wildlife Act and protect wildlife migratory routes to minimise human-wildlife conflict.

Second, 4,967kg of ivory will be torched today at the Kenya Wildlife Service’s Manyani Field Training School are part of a 6.5-tonne cache impounded from poachers and game traffickers. Third is the human exodus to the Maasai Mara Game Reserve to witness the Eighth Wonder of the World as over half a million wildebeest and thousands of zebra hooves try to avoid crocodile jaws and hungry big cats to reach the Serengeti.

The Mara-bound tourist-laden vans signal bountiful times for hotel and lodge operators and local communities. The higher the number, the better the season.

That is why various stakeholders are keen to keep the game parks clean, uncrowded and the number of animals at sustainable levels. The Bill coming before the National Assembly is one such intervention as animals get to co-exist with humans by having exclusive use of their own corridors. 

Retraining and empowering wildlife rangers to battle increasingly sophisticated poaching methods. The painstaking stalking and eventual capture of ivory and other wild animal trophies is usually met with great jubilation.

Safari tourism

Destruction of such bloodstained bounty that is planned to take place today under the Lusaka Governing Council and UN Convention on International trade in Endangered Species deals a body blow to trophy traffickers.

This newspaper abhors the rape and plunder of Kenya’s natural resources as well as environmental degradation. That MPs are ready to pass laws tightening the Wildlife Act and Government publicly declaring poaching criminal and impoverishing the heritage of future generations, will attract our support.

Without wildlife, safari tourism will collapse and with it thousands of livelihoods.