After spending millions of shillings in 90 days, a key task force on wildlife conservation bombards Kenyans with a report that is thin in research, abundant in speculation, and cloudy in recommendation
Nehemiah Rotich is a former chief of the troubled Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). He was there 1999-2002, having replaced his mentor Richard Erskine Frere Leakey, the man who founded the institution and modeled it along his own image and thinking. So, when Dr Rotich was named to chair a taskforce on wildlife, there were grumbles – perhaps because his tenure at the KWS is hardly blameless, and cannot isolate itself from the problems currently bedeviling this wildlife custodian. But the objections never went beyond KWS’s walls; the media, as usual, hardly did some digging up on Rotich, Leakey’s protégé, and his past liaison with the body he had been tasked to investigate. Wasn’t Rotich not part of the KWS past, and perhaps its present rot too?
When he released the much-awaited report aptly titled, Lifting the Siege: Securing Kenya’s Wildlife, the media as well as conservations, failed to dissect it. MPs may lack the expertise analytical skills but they easily isolated conjecture. No wonder, they trashed it, dampening renewed effort by the government to give Kenya’s wildlife conservation sector the requisite road map to the future. “You are not giving us tangible information to move this process ahead yet Parliament had given you the appropriate legislation and funds. What you are telling us is general information. We are back to square one without figures,” said Amina Abdalla, the chairperson, National Assembly’s Environment Committee. The report has no figures about the population of the different wildlife species that occupy Kenya, neither does it give a clear indication of the level of poaching. It talks about “saddening wave of poaching of wildlife” yet it doesn’t mention the kingpins, the amount of ivory recovered. It doesn’t reveal the areas (sanctuaries) mots hit by poaching.
“There was need to get credible information and find lessons to inform Kenya’s choices on how to secure its wildlife for present and future generations,” the report says in its initial pages, yet, as one delves into it, it appears hollow and skinny. It plays to the narrative that Kenya is losing its heritage but hardly presents empirical evidence to back up this thinking. It’s a long prose of accusations levelled at the wildlife custodian, KWS. One would expect such a report to show the trend of poaching, or decline, of Kenya’s heritage over a given time. The taskforce report is all about conjecture, full of fleeting recommendations.
“Not so much thought went to it. It’s a lazy document that hardly adds to the knowledge that the public has,” says a member of the parliamentary committee that trashed the report. “Soon, someone will have to do another thorough study.” The 13-member Rotich team missed an apportunity to come up with clear, conscience recommendations that can be effectively implemented. The taskforce was set up against the backdrop of heightened poaching of elephants and rhinos in parts of the country. The subsequent report, 100 pages, appears to play to the narrative that poaching is so deep that it should be declared a national disaster. No wonder, the taskforce’s key backer, Principal Secretary (Environment and wildlife) Richard Lesiyampe, appears to trash the report too – when he told MPs that claims about acute poaching were perpetrated by non-governmental organisations with intent to woo foreign funding.
Implicitly, poaching wasn’t as bad as it was being portrayed in the media. “Declaring it (poaching) a national disaster would not be in the best interest of Kenya considering the message we will be sending to tourists who visit Kenya,” Dr Lesiyampe said. “Yes there are a few gaps but we are doing our best to fight it,” he owned up to a largely receptive committee
Email your news TIPS to Editor@nairobilawmonthly.com, and to advertise with us, call +254715061658 anytime of the day
