Residents live in fear as baboons invade quiet Nakuru suburb

By Michael Njuguna       

Nakuru, Kenya: Cathy Mueni arrived home carrying her shopping in a polythene bag and placed it on a table in the living room before proceeding to the bathroom.

As she closed the bathroom door behind her, Mueni was startled by the screams of several women who had come face to face with three ferocious male baboons that were dashing out of Mueni’s front door.

Mueni was shocked when she got to her living room. . . not only had her shopping vanished, the baboons had scaled over the nearby  electric perimeter fence which separates Lake View Estate from Lake Nakuru National Park.

Distraught, Mueni and her neighbours watched helplessly as the baboons shared her shopping, chomping the carrots, oranges and   pineapples. One of the male baboons was still licking a packet of yoghurt after gulping the contents, while another playfully poured powder soap onto the grass after realising it was inedible—a charming scene to outsiders but a headache for residents.

A troop of baboons at the Lake Nakuru National Park has developed an insatiable appetite for food purchased from nearby shops and a make a beeline for estates neighbouring the national park. When women are returning from a nearby shop, they are robbed of   bread, milk and other foodstuff,” says Michael Gikara, who lives in Lake View Estate,

“My wife cannot shop for bread in the morning for fear of the baboons,” he adds. The    baboons lie in wait near the fence and pounce on shoppers on their way home, says Gikara, amazed at their intelligence.

When they enter the house, the baboons head straight to the kitchen or store and carry all foodstuffs they can lay their paws on. “They also raid chicken dens and steal chicks and eggs,” said Gikara

A fruit vendor who mostly sold bananas was forced to relocate because her kiosk was frequently raided—sometimes the entire stock from the Nakuru wholesale market was plundered.

Nakuru County Community Wildlife Officer Warden Zainabu Ali admits that there are frequent conflicts between the baboons and residents of Lake View Estate but Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) is dealing with the problem.

“It is true that the baboons have developed a taste for food that families stock but people are to blame for this problem,” she says.

The warden complains that   although there are numerous signboards that warn against feeding baboons, monkeys and other wild animals, some of those who visit the spacious corridor between the park’s main gate and the gate near Lake View Estate feed the baboons when KWS staff cannot see them.

To compound the problem, some Lake View Estate residents dump their waste near the fence, attracting the baboons that forage for anything edible.

The park is ringed with two fences, a solar-powered electric one to stop wildlife from crossing over into the residential estates and a chain-link fence to keep people away from the electric fence.

However, thieves   have vandalised huge portions of the 74-kilometre long chain-link fence that was intended to protect children from touching the live wires,” says Ali.

The KWS had also reinforced the 10-strand electric wire fence and formed a fence patrol unit comprising rangers who use motorbikes to monitor the baboons around the park and nearby homes.

Residents  say even though rangers on motorcycles  now patrol the area, the ingenious primates  are still too clever for rangers   and make frequent raids to the estate when they were least expected.

Lake View Estate resident John Njoroge says the clever baboons have studied the fence and know which wires are live or neutral, and thus can avoid electrocution.

The fence is not useful in some areas—the gullies opened up by floods allow the baboons to creep under the fence thus avoiding the electric fence altogether.  Even though they are aware of the problem, KWS seems helpless as complaints about animals mount.

The Lake Nakuru   National Park Integrated Management Plan document for 2001 stated thus in regard to the baboon problem. “The Olive Baboon has skills to cross both the electric and chain–link fences,”   and adds   that in areas where the park shares a border with farms, the baboons still managed to access farms and steal maize and other food crops.

Farms in  Kiambogo, Kongasis and Kiambogo hills have been targeted. Crops in Mauche and Mau Narok have also not been spared.

One Lake View resident got a guard dog to keep the baboons off his compound but    got a rude shock when two angry baboons entered his compound, attacked his dog  before retreating into the safety of the park.

The   dog was still yelping with pain hours after the baboons had retreated to the park.

“No dog in this estate has the courage to face the baboons; they now flee when they see baboons,” said Ali.

Baboons are not the only intruders—they have been joined by Vervet monkeys that often snatch loaves of bread and other foodstuff from children. There has been progress in limiting such attacks though; buffaloes from the Delamere Estate had posed a major problem in Elmentaita and Kiambogo Hills while smaller animals such as porcupines, the eland and wild pigs often raided farms near forests. Livestock were a common prey for   lions and leopards.

Hyenas, civets, genets, wild cats, mongoose and snakes also preyed on domestic animals. This is not quite infrequent.

Some of the predators   get out of the park though burrows, culverts or from areas   where the fence has been vandalised.

“Most carnivores in the park have previous livestock predation history (they prey on domestic animals) and have tendency to continue the habit,” says the report.

Ali believes human-wildlife conflicts in Nakuru County has declined even though occasionally, animals find their way out of the park.

“Sometimes we receive a report about a python having escaped from the park and we quickly move to the area where it was sighted and we capture it,” she says.

Farmers in the area, particularly where livestock predation is often reported, are given telephone numbers of key KWS staff who they could call immediately a wild animal is reported to have strayed from the park.

“We work 24 hours, seven days a week and we are able to respond as quickly as possible when such reports are received,” she says.

She recalls a case in which a lion had strayed from the park and wandered off to a school where it was spotted the following morning. The big cat was captured before it caused harm to students.

The KWS has also stationed rangers in areas such as Olenguruone, more than 70 kilometres from Nakuru town, so that they can deal with emergencies in times of wildlife-human conflicts.

Ali, who was in KWS’s Education Department before she was moved to the Community Wildlife Division, said communities bordering the park are aware of the need to protect wildlife—Ali is glad that not a single animal has been killed.

“The baboons will go back to feed in their natural habitat once people stop feeding them. It is as simple as that,” she said.