Thirty years is a long time in the history of threatened wildlife populations in Africa 鈥� in Kenya especially so. Since 1977, the country has lost between 60 and 70 per cent of its large wild animals. We know this because 1977 was the year the Kenya Rangeland Ecological Monitoring Unit (KREMU) began to keep track of the numbers and distribution of livestock and wildlife throughout the 500,000 square kilometres of the country鈥檚 arid and semi-arid rangelands. By the mid-1990s it was clear that many species were in trouble, and the decline has continued unchecked.
1977 is significant for another reason: it was the year sport hunting and all other ways of utilising wildlife for profit, such as ranching, were banned. Many Kenyan politicians are well aware that the two are probably linked, and they want to give landowners greater opportunities to make money from wildlife populations on their land as a way of giving them an incentive to preserve them. Yet their efforts to introduce legislation to allow this are being obstructed 鈥� not so much by local interests as by well-funded foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These bodies oppose the hunting of animals under any conditions and are doing all they can to prevent the legal changes in Kenya that could make it possible.
The two immediate reasons for the dramatic decline in animal numbers are destruction of habitat and uncontrolled poaching. The economic driving force behind both these is the fact that for most landowners the returns available from agriculture greatly exceed those from livestock, so it pays them to plough up the rangelands. Everything is loaded against landowners making money from wildlife. The tourism cartels ensure that most revenue goes to the service side of the industry, while the ban on the consumption of wildlife for profit restricts any opportunities they might have to exploit the 450,000 square kilometres of rangeland that tourists don鈥檛 visit.
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鈥淏anning the consumption of wildlife for profit limits landowners鈥� opportunities in areas tourists don鈥檛 visit鈥�
If Kenya wishes to maintain significant wildlife populations outside its protected areas, then it has to ensure that landowners can gain an income from wildlife that is competitive with what they can earn from agriculture and livestock. There are several immediate ways to do this: divert a greater proportion of tourism revenues to landowners and engage them more directly in the industry; increase the number of areas visited by tourists; and ensure landowners are properly compensated when livestock is killed by wildlife. Two substantial legislative changes are also required. First, wildlife user rights, and perhaps even ownership rights, need to be devolved from the state to landowners so that they can treat wildlife as a marketable commodity. Second, restrictions on income-generating opportunities need to be relaxed to permit activities such as ranching, the sale of live wild animals, the culling of locally abundant populations, the marketing of trophies, and the most valuable of all 鈥� sport hunting.
The first attempts to improve the wildlife situation were made by a group of concerned Kenyan members of parliament, whose efforts resulted in December 2004 in the passing of an important amendment to Kenya鈥檚 Wildlife Act. Among other things, this sought to give landowners more participation in the running of the Kenya Wildlife Service. It went through all the required parliamentary procedures and was properly voted for by parliamentarians, yet Kenya鈥檚 president refused to sign it into law. This followed some misleading lobbying at the highest levels by representatives of two anti-hunting American NGOs: the Humane Society, which wrongly claimed that the new bill would 鈥渓ead to hunting in every national park within six months鈥�, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
More recently, the government instituted a national review of wildlife policy, which includes a nationwide public consultation exercise. Yet once again IFAW and other foreign groups have managed to disrupt the process. They have, for example, encouraged people to demonstrate and lobby on their behalf at the public debates, which as a result are often reduced to shouting matches about the reintroduction of sport hunting.
What IFAW appears to care about most is that sport hunting and other 鈥渃onsumptive鈥� uses of wildlife are not reintroduced, apparently regardless of whether this leads to further losses of wildlife and to the perpetuation of rural poverty. Groups such as IFAW are entitled to their opinions, but this does not justify them subverting the democratic process to further their aims. IFAW represents at most a million members, mainly in North America and Europe. Why should they rather than Kenya鈥檚 elected parliamentarians determine Kenyan policy? If they succeed in derailing the wildlife policy review, the decline in the country鈥檚 wildlife will carry inexorably on. That would hardly be a victory for conservation.
