Kaziado, Kenya (Applications) – This year, a girl named Peace Mwende was attacked and killed by a lion, less than a kilometre from where I live. The news has shocked me. She was 14 years old and the same age as my youngest daughter. And the lioness that caused it may have been one of the animals we see almost every week in our neighborhood.
Our children are growing up in parts of the area. Nairobi A place where lions can roam freely. We see them when we take our kids to school. We lost our pets and livestock. A nearby WhatsApp group shares warnings when a big cat approaches and features surveillance camera footage of a lion hunting a family pet.
This is a conservation woes for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), whose mission is to protect wildlife, especially endangered species, while also protecting the safety of people who share the space with the wildlife. KWS estimates that “just over 2,000 lions remain in Kenya.
“During the rainy season, changes in patterns of tall grass and herbivore make it difficult for carnivorous animals to hunt,” KWS wrote in a reel of a baby lion rescue video posted on social media in July. The baby in the video was spotted starving to death in the park, causing public backlash. KWS added: “We are feeding the pride who lives in the park every day and feeding interventions to ensure that they can recover and resume natural hunting.”
Nairobi National Park is adjacent to the city’s north and has long relied on vast Southern grazing lands to migrate wildlife to other protected areas. As these regions are rapidly transforming into residential and industrial development, the Kenya National Wildlife Service has announced nearly $5 billion plans to create habitat for migratory birds. corridor Between Nairobi and the southern reserve. There is also a non-governmental effort to pay landowners adjacent to Nairobi National Park a small annual fee to prevent the property from being fenced to prevent wildlife invasion.
But is that enough?
Avoid sudden movements
What is missing is increasing awareness of how to act around predators, especially among urban communities where there is an increasing number of opportunities to contact predators.
My kids have never learned this at school. They were closest to the lions in 2020, when we took advantage of the post-COVID reservation slump to show them the lions. Masai Mara National Reserve. An incredibly knowledgeable local guide took us through the Southern Reserve on a completely open safari vehicle surrounded by rushing wildebeests.
On one outing, our guide stopped the car as three hunting lioness passed by. The first one strode past us ignoring us. The second seemed to be about to pass by the back of the car, but was distracted by the sparkle of the seatbelt buckle, which my daughter was playing with. The lio stopped, stared at me, before swaying towards us. She stretched her head towards my child, smelling the buckle before taking it between her teeth. My daughter sat stiffly, probably ten inches from the lion’s head, but the lion suddenly looked impossibly big.
“Stay still,” the guide muttered in a whisper. “Don’t move, don’t make a sound.”
The curious lioness plunged under the car and proceeded.
That day we learned lessons about predator behavior through a holiday experience that Kenyans can barely afford. He may have saved the life of his wife who recently encountered a lioness in the garden. As we were trying to see what our dog was barking at, she found a lioness under the bushes that were less than 10 yards away. Only my head could be seen.
“No sudden movements,” she muttered to herself, remembering our guide. “Don’t make a sound,” she slowly walked backwards towards the house, getting close enough to the front door, and ran out and telling us everything about what had happened to us.
A different kind of front line
I have covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Gaza and Syria and have regularly undergone hostile environmental training to stay as safe as possible. I decided to build a house in nature.
But here I realized I was on the front line of another kind.
In December 2019, a man named Simon Kipkirui headed out to Tuara, a small village across the river. He decided to walk home at night, contrary to his friend’s advice. He never succeeded. He lived on our property. He helped us build our home and plant many of the trees that form the native forests that are now surrounding our home.
I called his brother and the group headed out to follow in his footsteps. there is nothing. Two more days passed, when his younger brother, Daniel Rono, discovered a bag of corn flour laying down in the wilderness between his house and Tuara. He looked into it.
“I reached for the corn flour and saw Simon’s head, away from my body. I reached for my head and saw my feet inside my hands and rubber boots,” recalls Daniel. Surprised, he called me. We were pushed back by a snarl of warning as we began our gruesome mission to find Simon’s body. It was a male lion still guarding its prey.
At this point, Simon had been missing for two and a half days. When we found him, no one knows whether the lion that was with him was the cause of his death. The infamous cannibal lion killing humans has been shot dead to avoid a recurrence, and KWS claims he shot the lioness who killed Peace Mwende on the night of the attack.
nevertheless Human and Wildlife conflict Lions have been around since humans existed, but predator attacks can increase as lion habitats in Kenya shrink and hunting opportunities decrease. This will only bring destruction to Nairobi’s world-famous national park, some already hoping to be transformed into a residential development.
I mourn Simon, just like my friends and colleagues who died while on duty in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. Despite the horrors of that day in 2019, every time I witness the lion I still feel filled with joy and surprise. We hope that solutions have been found to keep both people and lion populations safe, and that this incredible wilderness that makes Nairobi a unique capital will survive for the joy and surprise of many others.
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Khalid Kaziha, assistant news director at Associated Press in Nairobi, has been covering Africa since 1998.
