The Kenya Wildlife Service says the number of animals killed by poachers in recent years have reduced which means that the problem of poaching is under control. KWS Director William Kibet Kiprono said that their statistics show a decline in poaching since 2012 and there trend is totally different to what some lobby groups have been portraying to the world depicting a very bad image.
It is true that Kenya is doing far better basing on the most recent census which shows an increase in wildlife numbers, compared to other nations like Uganda or South Africa who had to deploy their military forces to fight poachers in their different national parks.
Kiprono then asked all conservation groups that are using alarming phrases when talking about poaching in Kenya because that depicts a poaching crisis in Kenya. That in the long run might hurt the country’s tourism industry and yet it’s sometimes done to attract donor funds.
There were 116 elephants and 26 rhinos slaughtered by poachers by the end of the year 2013-2014 and yet by the end of 2012-2013, Kenya had lost 384 elephants and 30 rhinos while in 2011-2012, some 289 elephants and 29 rhinos were killed.
There is this lobby group Kenyans United against Poaching (KUAPO) that has gathered 20,000 signatures on a petition asking President Uhuru Kenyatta to declare poaching a national disaster and the petition is now before the parliamentary committee on environment and natural resources, this came after two Kenyan newspapers dismissed KWS claims that poaching is under control as false at the beginning of the month and so are pressuring the government to declare a national disaster. This however, will not be good for tourism business especially if Kenya is trying to win back some of its markets like USA and Europe.
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