Posted on 05/14/2018 4:15:23 PM PDT by Simon Green
Kenya will fast-track laws to make wildlife poaching a capital offense as part of the country's bid to conserve flora and fauna, a senior government official said late Thursday.
Najib Balala, the Minister for Tourism and Wildlife, said that once the laws are enacted, the offenders of the wildlife crimes will face the death penalty in accordance with the laws of the land.
"We have in place the Wildlife Conservation Act that was enacted in 2013 and which fetches offenders a life sentence or a fine of 200,000 U.S. dollars. However, this has not been deterrence enough to curb poaching, hence the proposed stiffer sentence," Balala remarked during the official launch of the northern white rhino commemorative stamps at Ol Pejeta Conservancy located in Laikipia County on the slopes of Mount Kenya.
The initiative to issue a set of stamps to celebrate the northern white rhino was instigated by the Postal Corporation of Kenya in honor of "Sudan", the remaining male northern white rhino that died on March 19 after suffering from age-related health issues and from a series of infections.
Richard Vigne, the CEO of Ol Pejeta Conservancy that was home to Sudan, said the tragic story of the northern rhino will be captured forever as a signal to the world. He added that whilst Kenya remains a global leader in conservation, there are nonetheless many species across the planet that face a similar plight.
Vigne said that once Sudan's condition worsened significantly and he was unable to stand up, and obviously suffered a great deal, the decision to euthanize the mammoth was made by his veterinary team. This left Najin and Fatu as the two remaining northern white rhinos on the planet.
"Despite the extremely low numbers remaining, Ol Pejeta and Kenya Wildlife Service are working closely with the scientific community to try to recover this species from imminent extinction," Vigne noted, adding that the only way this can be done is through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The conservationist said that because scientific practice has never ever been done in rhinos before, it will require the removal of eggs from the ovaries of the two remaining females to be fertilized using semen stored from males over the last few years to create viable mature embryos for storage in liquid nitrogen.
Once this has been achieved, a technique to reintroduce the embryos into surrogate southern female, because the two are infertile, with the aim of achieving pure bred northern white pregnancies.
"This effort will cost a huge amount of money, but is a noble effort to reverse at least one of the wrongs that mankind has wreaked upon other species that inhabit this planet with us," Vigne stated.
Patrick Omondi, the Director of Research in the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, said plans were underway to build a wildlife conservation museum that will feature wildlife icons, adding that the remains of Sudan will be displayed in a national conservation museum.
They need the animals for their hunts....where they make BIG bucks.
Poaching. Not wildlife killing.
And it actually has been for some time. Somalis cross the border and poach in the national parks. If they are caught they are often shot on the spot by the Kenyan Park Police.
I'm all in favor of it. Hopefully those offenders on death row won't sit in a Kenyan prison for 20 years and scores of appeals to a supreme court...........and that their sentences be swiftly carried out.
The poachers are often heavily armed Somali mohammedans who also are prone to commit murder, rape and other mayhem on any civilian that crosses their path then vanish back across the border.
This tends to make the tourists uneasy about coming so it has to be dealt with.
Way too harsh. Equates the killing of animals with the killing of people. Violates Biblical standards.
Big game hunting has been illegal in Kenya since 1976. You may be thinking of Tanzania.
I saw the story posted at Democratic Underground, and the typical reaction there was "I'm against the death penalty under any circumstances, but I'll make an exception in this case!"
Unfortunately, socialist governments--and the Unites States--resort to extreme means, including execution of poachers, in their unsuccessful attempts to preserve wild animals.
Incentives need to be reversed from penalizing to rewarding, and that will not happen when the government owns all the land native wildlife live on. Public land is nobody's land and gets no respect, and neither do its occupants.
In contrast to the failed Kenyan prohibition policy, Namibia and South Africa seem to be doing much better in preserving their white rhino population by making wild animals assets rather than liabilities to landowners.
If you'd like to know more, read this paper at PERC: The War on Wildlife Trade.
I went to Kenya in 2003 and I agree with you. The Kenya Wildlife Service takes poaching very seriously. Seemed like every newspaper I read had a story about a shootout with poachers, they only changed the date and location.
If they're running low on Somalis I know where there's a whole boatload of them.
Having done a fair amount of traveling in East Africa I know just how important tourism is to the economies of countries like Kenya,Tanzania and Botswana.
They're shooting the poachers to save their national economy...not as punishment for killing the animals.
I cant quite decide if somalis or palisimians win the award for earths biggest scum bags
I don’t know of any country where all land is private, and how would that ever work for widely roaming species of beasts? Oh that was my elephant, Chuck, but now that it’s on your parcel it’s yours....
Guarding the beasts on public land is often the only practical way to go. It’s hard to do it against humans with a fatalistic philosophy however. A Trumpesque wall may be needed. If it’s hard enough to get poachers in and carcasses out, the practice will end.
If they want a deterrence they could feed poachers to the lions and hyenas.
How many of them even get caught? That’s a most important factor. Fatalistic people are less daunted by severity, more daunted by certainty.
Electronically tagging as much poaching-prone game as possible could increase the likelihood of catching a poacher.
Poaching is sickening and it is destroying species. This is what the stupid left mixes up when it comes to hunting.
In fact if you want to start a fight tell a Kenyan his mother was Somali. They have been having to deal with them for a thousand years.
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