Bushmeat in Kenya

Category: Bushmeat kenya | Date: Feb 25 2009 | By: bushmeateastafrica

Exactly four years ago, The Nation published this heartrending story on bushmeat poaching in Tsavo West NP. Four years down the line, the number of organizations working there has decreased but the snares, the poachers and bushmeat consumers have increased! My sources on the ground informed me that a dik dik carcass goes for Ksh. 150 and a kilo of giraffe goes for Ksh. 50 in the local market - run by a very well established network of illegal traders. Are we getting complacent?

Meanwhile, farming communities living in the lower areas of Jipe cannot successfully harvest their crops due to the perennial problem of crop raiding by elephants. Most of them have abadoned crop farming all together! Can you guess where they get their food and income?

Bushmeat: Cruel world of trade in bushmeat

Source: The Nation (Nairobi), 23 February 2005

We smelt her before we found her, a six-month old cheetah cub practically garrotted by the rusty wire snare. The leader of the de-snaring team run by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) working with Kenya Wildlife Service and funded by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) pulled her dusty, inert body out of the cunningly hidden trap from where she had innocently walked into and become ensnared.

That day the cheetah wasn’t the only victim of the escalating but completely illegal bushmeat trade - it is considered by leading conservationists not only unsustainable, but on the verge of being a national disaster. In the Tsavo park, the de-snaring team came across three giraffes, or rather, their remains. The poachers had harvested their ill-got gains on-site and fled the scene.

Working together with KWS who provide back-up in the form of armed patrols/rangers, the de-snaring teams comprise dedicated, well-trained professionals. There are six teams operating in and along the borders of Tsavo East and West, who seek out and dismantle numerous snares as well as an alarming number of wildlife corpses on a daily basis.

In the Tsavo West National Park, poachers have set thousands of illegal snares that indiscriminately kill everything, including the cheetah we came across. Some 151 snares were dismantled in the eastern border of the park (near Maktau Gate) in December alone, a conservative figure due to the late rains. The peak culling period is the dry season between June and October when people and wildlife are struggling for survival.

Particularly depressing are some of the tactics used. As we walked, we came across fencelines a metre or more high built from cut branches, and especially thorn bush that extended for miles. Craftily hidden within the thick web of branches are steel wire snares. Wildlife is then chased into the barrier, often by dogs, and in their attempt to escape, the animals are caught up in the traps set in the crude structures.

What is surprising is that poachers operate - and are discovered - miles inside national park boundaries. They come under the cover of darkness, blinding dik-dik with torches and then simply cutting their hamstrings with a scythe or bludgeoning their spinal chords so that the helpless creatures cannot run away. Donkeys pulling cartloads of carcasses have been found deep within the parks, especially the neglected corners such as Maktau, where there are few roads and hardly any visitors.

The poachers themselves are not always from poor communities, struggling to make a living. The bushmeat trade has become an increasingly commercial market and those involved include businessmen, opportunists and even shifta. They employ traditional hunters good at tracking - and money has upped the ante. A giraffe can sell for Sh10, 000, while a zebra sells at Sh2, 500, so traditional hunters are no longer killing wildlife just to supplement their own diet with extra protein, but poaching and selling game meat for profit.

Carcasses and selected cuts are available fresh in practically every village in Kenya - mostly in seedy kumi-kumi joints. But as the rapacious trade becomes ever more commercial, the meat is turning up in towns and cities, disguised as ng’ombe [beef] and mbuzi [goat meat], filleted and presented as choice cuts.

Hunting was banned in 1978, and wildlife is officially protected under the Wildlife Act. But Punishments handed down by current judiciary practice are exceedingly lenient. Six months is a typical sentence and sometimes the poachers are even acquitted. This is a real blow to the morale of the KWS rangers/de-snaring teams working to apprehend poachers, because they are the ones who witness the slaughter on a daily basis and put their lives at risk in the process.

On the other side of the border, the Tanzanian Government takes poaching seriously and the punishment is imprisonment for 15-20 years. So it is no wonder that we now have an influx of poachers from Tanzania helping themselves to Kenya’s natural resources.

The combined efforts of KWS and the DSWT-funded teams save 3,000 animals each year on average from prolonged and agonising death. The de-snaring teams run educational projects in communities targeting school-children.

Unless something is done, the wildlife is going to be decimated. It is estimated that in just one area of Tsavo Park there are ten groups of poachers working 15 days of the month killing numerous animals on each mission. The levels of animals being poached has become so serious an issue that unless it is challenged, it will create problems in the delicate balance of the ecosystem.

Ms Winnie Kiiru of BornFree says. “We as Kenyans will have to take a critical look at our value system with regard to the conservation of our wildlife. The notion that we have abundant resources and that we can continue to harvest with impunity is false. We have to address rural poverty to ease the dependence on wildlife meat for subsistence. Poaching for commercial purposes must be stopped through consistent and effective policing and law enforcement. Consumers of wildlife meat must also be made aware of the dangers of eating meat that has not been inspected.”

Technorati : Bushmeat, Conservation, Poaching, Tsavo, snares

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Category: findings | Date: Feb 24 2009 | By: bushmeateastafrica

Public release date: 20-Feb-2009
Contact: Tom Cohen
Conservation International

In a startling result, a new study published by the scientific journal Conservation Biology found that more than 80 percent of the world’s major armed conflicts from 1950-2000 occurred in regions identified as the most biologically diverse and threatened places on Earth.

Titled “Warfare in Biodiversity Hotspots,” the study by leading international conservation scientists compared major conflict zones with the Earth’s 34 biodiversity hotspots identified by Conservation International (CI). The hotspots are considered top conservation priorities because they contain the entire populations of more than half of all plant species and at least 42 percent of all vertebrates, and are highly threatened.

“This astounding conclusion - that the richest storehouses of life on Earth are also the regions of the most human conflict - tells us that these areas are essential for both biodiversity conservation and human well-being,” said Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation International (CI) and an author of the study. Read more >>

Technorati : Biodiversity, CI, Conservation, human beings

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Category: findings | Date: Feb 13 2009 | By: bushmeateastafrica

As the hunger continues to bite in Kenya, many poor people are turning to what is locally available to feed themselves and their families. However, in a bizarre twist of fate, the prevailing drought has resulted in the drying of Yala swamp on the shores of L. Victoria, depriving the semi-aquatic Sitatunga out of its marshy habitat and making it extremely vulnerable to poaching. According to the residents, “We can’t die of hunger when we have a lot of food provided by God in this swamp.”

The Sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekei) is a specialized semi-aquatic antelope adapted to living in swampy or permanently marshy wetland in African tropics. Though Sitatunga is widely distributed in the tropics, nowhere is population its high. It has a patchy and discontinuous distribution due to its specialized habitat requirements. The ever increasing disturbance, fragmentation and even destruction of potential habitats in many parts of Sitatunga geographic range, present concern for the continued survival of the many of these isolated and often small populations.

In Kenya, the western region is the eastern most range of the species in Africa. Due to the high anthropogenic pressure on wetlands in the country, the antelope has continuously suffered loss of the habitat and illegal hunting, bringing its population down to the verge of regional extinction, Sitatunga is now restricted to the Wetlands of L. Victoria, Nzoia basin, Nandi wetlands and Lewa Wildlife Conservancy where it was introduced.

An article by The Standard Newspaper yesterday reported that residents of Siaya’s Yala Swamp ” Driven by hunger, … have invaded the complex wetland and are now killing the rare sitatunga and waterbuck” The report says that up to four animals are killed daily and sold in the makeshift market. Going by the findings of the last national survey (2003) on the species population distribution in Kenya, it will not take long to completely wipe out this locally endangered species in Kenya. The study, (carried out by Iregi Mwenja, then a KWS deputy Warden for Saiwa Swamp National Park) found that only a few hundred Sitatungas are remaining in small pockets of isolated population that are all facing threats of local extinction.

During the time I was studying the species’ population distribution between, 2002-2004, I found most of the small isolated natural wetlands where these Sitatunga were surviving to be under immense anthropogenic pressure due to demand for land for agriculture, human settlement and infrastructure development.

The Yala story is playing in all other wetlands aound western Kenya where the antelope occurs and it is only a matter of time before is wiped out in all its habitats outside the protected areas ( Saiwa and Lewa) in Kenya as my findings (published in the ‘Swara’) five years ago suggests.

To read this article click on the images below;

Iregi Mwenja is a USFWS MENTOR Fellow on Bushmeat in eastern Africa

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Category: Bushmeat kenya | Date: Feb 04 2009 | By: bushmeateastafrica

I have written severally in this blog warning meat consumers against the health hazard posed by consumption (knowingly or unknowlingly) of bushmeat . This is because, in Nairobi, butchers have been selling bushmeat disguised as beef to earn higher profits since bushmeat is cheap (in most cases half the price of beef when they buyfrom their suppliers). Unsuspecting Nairobians are exposing themselves to great health risks by buying the popular “nyama choma” on popular roasting markets like Burma and Kenyatta and even from their local butchers.

To avoid the danger of catching ebola, anthrax, monkey pox, HIV ..yes HIV, marburg fever etc, avoid buying ready-made meat, minced meat and any suspicious looking pieces hidden under the counter or any reddish (blood) pieces particularly those that are boneless. Insist on getting all your meat from those parts hanging prominently on the display. It would be very difficult to kill and transport a whole carcass clean without injuries. After all, game meat is clearly different from livestock meat and no one need to be an expert to tell. Just obey your gut feeling and avoid that suspicious looking lean meat! This will keep you safe from many zoonotic diseases, some of which we don’t know anything about, while at the same time discouraging the thriving illegal trade in bushmeat, which is threatening to decimate our world famous wildlife heritage. Don’t forget, if they can sell to you bushmeat disguising it as beef, what will stop them from selling donkeys (remember), dogs etc.

Below is the latest incident at Burma market where several incidents have been reported before;

Bushmeat in Gabon. People here eat anything from Insect to elephants, including snails and Lizards.

A local poacher putting bushmeat in a sack. To avoid detection during transportation, poachers ferry bushmeat in water jerry cans, charcoal bags etc. Hygiene is never a priority.

Capitals News, 3rd February

A Nairobi businesswoman at a popular meat eating Market downtown Nairobi was arrested with 74 kg of bush meat morning of Saturday.

Kenya Wildlife Service investigators seized the suspect who had hidden the bush meat under a butchery counter and was mixing it with inspected meat on display to sell to unsuspecting buyers.

Another suspect is on the run after escaping from the dragnet. A man who incited the public against the KWS officials was arrested and is being held at Shauri Moyo police station.

Trade in such meat not only drives poaching but also poses a great health risk to the public.

Un inspected meat is likely to transmit such as anthrax and ebola.

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