NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The struggling parks where Kenya’s largest elephant and rhino populations live will get trucks, communication equipment and better roads in a $1.25 million anti-poaching program unveiled Thursday.
“The challenges are huge and they need help,” said Elizabeth Wamba of the U.S.-based International Fund for Animal Welfare, which is funding the program.
The vehicles, communication equipment and road improvements are key elements in anti-poaching operations, as are education programs that also will be funded in the project for the Tsavo region.
Tsavo – an 8,320-square-mile ecosystem slightly smaller than New Jersey – accounts for 52 percent of the protected area in this East African nation.
It lacks vehicles, passable roads, communication equipment and staff for operations against poachers seeking rhino horns and elephant tusks for use in folk medicine and high-priced ornaments and jewelry, Wamba said.
Tsavo is divided into Tsavo East and Tsavo West National Parks. Tsavo East is the largest of Kenya’s 24 national parks. The 57-year-old park has 106 rangers to patrol its 4,535 square miles. Tsavo West National Park, covering some 3,784 square miles, has 196 rangers.
“Bandits, bushmeat hunters and human-wildlife conflict pose a serious threat to biodiversity within this ecosystem. To manage these threats, we need rangers, fuel, aircraft and field-worthy vehicles for effective patrols and anti-poaching operations,” said Daniel Ndonye, chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Services’ board of trustees.
“Let us therefore spare no effort or resource to maintain these two areas as a safe sanctuary for our wildlife,” Vice President Moody Awori said at a news conference launching the project at the Kenya Wildlife Service Headquarters in Nairobi.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare funded a similar $1.25 million program over the last five years to restore Kenya’s Meru National Park.
Poachers and bandits operated freely throughout Kenya in the 1980s. The government abolished the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department in 1989 and created the Kenya Wildlife Service as an autonomous organization that is allowed quicker and more independent decision-making. Poaching has subsided, helped by a 1989 global ban on the ivory trade that has seen prices drop.
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