Kenyan Farmers Want Land Open to Hunters

Zebras roam Andrew Enniskillen's Mundui ranch, Monday, Feb. 12, 2007 on the shore of lake Naivasha in Kenya. Enniskillen, a Kenyan, combined land rehabilitation, wildlife conservation and commercial cattle breeding on his ranch. He says the wildlife corridor he provides to a nearby national park is losing him money and the resulting boom in the zebra population is destroying his ranch. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo) (Karel Prinsloo - AP)

NAIVASHA, Kenya -- For the farmers of Kenya, life is a constant contest for grass and water between their herds and the wild animals that share the land. Now they are waging a new struggle, this time against the international animal welfare lobby. Pleading poverty, the farmers want to open their land to wealthy fee-paying hunters. The advocacy groups are firmly opposed.

The standoff has made Kenya the latest and perhaps most dramatic arena for the international debate over hunting and its role in financing conservation.

A million tourists a year spend more than $580 million to see and photograph lions, elephants, gazelle and other wildlife on this East African country's savannas. But the revenue isn't enough to protect the animals.

Only 8 percent of land in Kenya, a country twice the size of Nevada, is set aside for wildlife. The rest is privately or communally owned and studies show that most of Kenya's wild animals live there.

By some estimates, wildlife numbers have dropped 60 percent since the mid-1970s and continue to plummet, because of human encroachment and illegal hunting for food.

Landowners say they can only go on maintaining animal sanctuaries if they can sell hunting rights. No one is suggesting killing endangered species, or hunting in existing protected areas. Only common animals on private land would be hunted, in a controlled way that would sustain their numbers, advocates say.

"The losses we are getting from livestock predation, or even medical bills for people who have been injured by elephants, buffaloes and even lions, is quite high," said Yusuf Ole Petenya, secretary of the Shompole Community Trust, a tribal foundation in animal-rich southern Kenya.

The trust opened a luxury wildlife lodge to help lift Petenya's Maasai clan out of poverty, but "it's not working," he said, because the cost of conservation outstrips the profits from tourism.

Kenya has bad health care, low education levels and a government that barely functions outside of the capital, Nairobi. There is no money to buy land or pay people to protect wildlife. Kenya banned sport hunting in 1977, but allowed limited hunting to cull animals and harvest game meat until 2003, when animal rights groups managed to shut it down.

Now the Kenyan government has reopened the debate over hunting by setting up an advisory group to thrash out the pros and cons. In favor are hunting groups such as Safari Club International; opposed are the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Born Free, Action Aid and others.

James Isiche, the East Africa director for IFAW, said his organization seeks a blanket ban on what it calls "consumptive use of wildlife."

"I don't think bringing back hunting ... will enhance wildlife management," said Isiche, a Kenyan. "If you look at wildlife from the point of view that wildlife can bring in money, you begin to get into trouble."