He said were it not for the directive by KWS, the residents would kill all the elephants interfering with their livelihood. “Maasais are not afraid, if it’s not for the government, we would have killed those elephants.”
A KWS officer who requested anonymity admitted that a group of elephants had strayed from the Amboseli National Park and were roaming in villages in Kajiado County.
“Yes we are aware there is a herd of elephants in those areas. There are a lot of mitigation measures happening. Kajiado officers have been patrolling the area.” He said.
According to founder and the Executive Director for Elephant Neighbours Centre, Jim Nyamu, invasion by elephants in communities is inevitable due to struggle for water, pasture and protection.
In his view, KWS should look for long term solutions of reduce the human-elephant conflict by establishing conservancies and engaging communities to benefit from them.
In April this year, KWS removed about ten elephants and transported them to the Aberdare and Amboseli parks.
“Should we keep on removing these elephants? The reason why they are coming closer to people is because there is what it takes for them to survive. The only way is to identify how to live with them. Removing one elephant is very expensive. We cannot keep on transporting these animals.”
“We have to look on how we can contain them. We have to address this from the point of education to show the communities that the elephants belong to them and they have to look for ways of living with them. We have now the natural resources and benefits sharing and they will benefit from elephants and other animals.”
The residents now say they have lost their patience and are planning a demonstration on Saturday to ask KWS to salvage the situation before they agree to protect themselves using ‘whatever means’.
According to them, they are not reaping any benefits but instead, they are a terrorised community that has been drenched into fear and destruction left by the 13 elephants.
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