News Round Up: Lion Poisoned
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 05:09PM We've been a bit quiet on this issue because it happened on the other side of the Mara. WildlifeDirect did a good job on reporting on the incident, and have used it as part of their campaign to have furadan banned and taken off the shelves in Kenya.
Ole Letura posted about the poisoning and mentioned the need for hoteliers in the Mara to invest in and involve the Maasai in the management of their land.
And Paul Kirui also posted about the lion poisoning and discusses the increase in cattle grazing inside the reserve, which is raising the human-wildlife conflict in the area.
We should also mention the need to stop illegal grazing inside the reserve. This, I should imagine, would reduce the human-wildlife conflict quite a bit. However, if I was a man with a lot of cows that needed grass I would still take the risk of a predator attack and keep bringing my cows in to graze. Why? Because grass is short outside of the reserve - over grazing - and inside no one's going to stop me.
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Reader Comments (1)
to stop further conflict, this offender must be punished and educated at the same time. we all know the area is facing extreme drought. therefore, cows have nothing to eat outside of the reserve. and having too many cows/goats leads to over grazing. maybe the government or some conservation groups should convince the owners to sell some of their starving grazers. and the government or kws should some how locate some good land where grass is still plenty for these hungry domestic animals. and if the owners did their job of protecting or guarding their cows, lions would not have had any chance to eat one in the first place. i do know lions in kenya behave more like feral cats ( scare of humans ).