Rangers playing marbles as jumbos die

By Ibrahim Ndamwe

There are disturbing reports that ivory poachers are back. They are waging a stealth war this time, shooting down jumbos with poisoned arrows and not the loud, rusty guns that game rangers are accustomed to. From Tsavo to the dustbowls of Amboseli and the perennially lawless Northern Kenya, the grapevine has it that tusk-less elephant carcasses are literally popping up everywhere each week.

Granted KWS is not awash in tourism dollars as was the case in 2007 when the organisation was always in the news, not for dealing with poachers and initiating creative conservation programmes, but for branding every little bush in their asset inventory. But curiously, even as jumbos, ironically their brand totem or logo, fall to poachers, the paramilitary fellows are busy pursuing ‘ISO’ certification like a cooking fat processing company.

More perplexing is that instead of those hardened men chasing poachers all over the bush and keeping our elephants safe, they are spending time whining and exchanging nasty anonymous emails with their bosses. Who is sleeping with whom; who is employing and promoting tribesmen; which tribe is eating most and a host of other mind-boggling things that any self-respecting hyena would consider irrelevant to conservation.

But what should cause Kenyans grave concern are whispers that KWS rangers are on a go-slow of sorts, that instead of patrolling the parks, they just sit under trees and play marbles. Their alleged grouse is that they don’t receive risk and hardship allowances like other disciplined forces yet they work in even riskier and more challenging environments.

Their concerns, if true, have merit, of course. But they and their managers must not forget that their contract with the Kenyan people is to protect our elephants, not to sleep on the job and insult each through anonymous emails. This sort of mischief is what led to the formation of KWS in the first place.