Legal battle looms over KWS plan to expand conservancy

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and a pastoral community in Ijara, Garissa County, are headed for a legal showdown over the government’s plan to expand an animal conservancy that hosts endangered species of a rare antelope known as Hirola and the white giraffe.

Two community representatives have moved to court seeking orders to stop the Ministry of Lands from allowing the Northern Rangeland Trust to take over community land to expand the Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy.

The pastoral community that lives in Hara, Korisa and Kotile locations of Masalai ward in Ijara is claiming the government has failed to protect their land from acquisition for private use under ‘false pretence’ of ecosystem conservation.

Led by Mr Abdulahi Ali Abdi and Mr Adbikadir Ibrahim Shurie, the community wants to be compensated for the land acquisition as well as for the death of two rare white giraffes at the conservancy.

Decent burial for giraffes

“The community must be furnished with and given access to the remains of the two extremely rare white giraffes so as to conduct a decent burial according to the customs and traditions of the community,” reads the petition filed at the High Court in Nairobi.

Through lawyer George Kithi, the petitioners argue that they face the threat of being displaced by the continued encroachment and illegal appropriation of public land by Northern Rangeland Trust.

“The petitioners are aggrieved by the illegal poaching of a rare wildlife, two white giraffes, which faces extinction as only one remains alive. They practice nomadic culture and live in harmony with wildlife,” Mr Kithi says.