Uhuru to meet with US Interior Secretary on Wildlife Trafficking

President Uhuru Kenyatta will next Monday hold bilateral talks with visiting US Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell on wildlife conservation. The President’s spokesperson Manoah Esipisu said this is a follow-up to President Barack Obama’s pledge to support wildlife conservation in Africa.

One of the subjects of discussion during the high-profile meet is strategies Kenya has used to deal with the menace. Kenya has made giant leaps in curbing the menace, with poaching going down by 80 per cent. One of the measures is the heavy penalties for poachers under the Wildlife Management and Conservation Act 2013.

Others include having increased the number of rangers by over 1,000 between 2013 to 2015, higher seizures at the Mombasa Port and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport due to improved surveillance and inter-agency operations including Interpol. Others strategies are continued training of the judiciary on enforcement and collaboration with the Office of the Director Public Prosecutions and a commissioned Forensic and Genetics Laboratory at the Kenya Wildlife Service headquarters. The senior US official will also tour other parts of the country.

“In addition to the meetings with ministers and NGOs, I’ll be visiting  Mombasa. Mombasa is one of the most critical locations where wildlife products are transited. So we’ll be looking at demonstrations of anti-trafficking measures,” Jewell says in the US government’s website.