‘It’s not a job I wanted, or that I relished, or that I’m grateful for, but I will do it’

Conservationist Richard Leakey left the Kenya Wildlife Service 15 years ago. Recently appointed to chair the Service’s management board, he has gone back to the institution he helped transform, only to find that it has grown bigger, more complicated and, perhaps, a little bit lax.

Our special correspondent, Kari Mutu, sought his views on the good old times, the appointment by President Uhuru Kenyatta that he least expected, the brain drain at KWS, Tanzania’s planned road through the world-famous Serengeti, and Kenya’s tourism diplomacy

DN2: How does it feel to be back at the Kenya Wildlife Service?

Leakey: It’s not how I left it, it’s changed. It’s gotten a lot bigger, (has) a lot more people. Most of the people that I recruited and trained have retired or changed... the country’s changed. The state of wildlife in Kenya is not good.

How bad is it?

I don’t know. I do know, though, that if you go to the parks, you see very few animals. The reasons for that may be bush-meat poaching, maybe encroachment.

There’s not a park in Kenya at the moment that isn’t plagued by cattle and sheep and goats. The Maasai Mara doesn’t come under KWS and they’re taking about 20,000 head of cattle every night to graze there.

People are very expectant of getting benefits from wildlife, but wildlife isn’t a resource that you can share. It’s a very fragile asset that you’ve got to manage on a large national scale.

And I think the politics that have come from devolution and county governments make the management of national entities such as KWS much more challenging.

I think the bottom line is that these challenges have been there for five, 10 years, foreseen by some of us 15 years ago. Nothing’s been done to prepare, to inform the public expectations, and the resources are just not in place at the county level to do any of these things. And so if we’re going to make it work again as a national entity, we’re very late.

Too late, you think?

I don’t think it’s too late. It may be too late for some places but there’s a complete disregard for long-term planning in this country, and the desire of every part of government to do its own thing, irrespective of other priorities.

The railway through Tsavo National Park... it wasn’t, in my judgment, strictly necessary to take the route they took. They want to put a road through various places.

They’ve taken all the geo-thermal power to Hells Gate (National Park) with very little sensitivity to the environment, and it’s a mess.

It needn’t be a mess. You can have development if everybody is on the same page. But this hand is pulling this way, and this hand is pulling that way. So, as a chairman, it’s very vexing, very taxing to know just what I can do.

But, quite clearly, the organisation needs to be overhauled, partly because a lot of the employees are poorly trained for the modern world. A lot of them have been there a long time and are not in step with the expectations of the younger generation, the county generations.

So as the chair you can only try and build a team and then we see what it does. It’s not a job I wanted, it’s not a job I relished, it’s not a job I’m grateful for.

What convinced you to take it?

The way it was put to me was that…

By the President?

Yes. I may be one of the few people who can pull it together, based on my past experience, not just in wildlife, but in international contacts and politics as well, and I guess I felt that we all owe something to this country.

I’ve given some things in my life and I guess there’s room to give a little more.

What are your top three goals as the chairman of the KWS Board?

I’d like to re-instill, one, a sense that KWS doesn’t own the wildlife, but protects the wildlife for the people — not the government, but the people of Kenya. Two, I’d like to instill a culture of integrity and public service.

Third, I’d like to see the value of wildlife, parks, nature, and genetic diversity valued, not just for tourism, but also as an asset of our people. Your generation has seen it, and three generations after you should still see it and enjoy it. And unless we do something about it, it won’t be there.

Is wildlife the property of the Government or the people of Kenya?

Well, it depends on how you look at the government. As I understand the Constitution, Kenya is an amalgamation of different people who elect a government to do the work that they need to have done to remain a united, prosperous group of people.

And the assets, whether it’s land or water or air, or animals in the land or water, are theoretically the property of the people of this country.

In some cases you could extend it and say they are part of the assets of the world. But the government is just a form of management. It doesn’t have any assets of its own because we appoint the government.

I think we’ve got this idea that government has tremendous ownership rights and power. But we shouldn’t think of it that way.

We should think of it as a privilege to serve the interests of the nation as a whole. It may be in the interest of the people doing it at the moment, but is it going to help the country in 100 years time, looking back? This where I think we are making a mistake — it’s now, not tomorrow.

Why is wildlife poaching so difficult to tackle, to control?

I think the answer is two-fold. Products such as ivory trinkets have become enormously valuable again because of the markets in China, Vietnam and Thailand.

Forty years ago when we stopped ivory poaching, these markets were not there. They were poor people. So instead of hundreds of thousands, you now have tens of millions of people who’ve got money to buy (the trinkets).

So because there’s a market, there’s a value. And because there’s a limited supply, the value is quite high. You can’t control it because of corruption, which is at the root of all this.

I think that a very, very significant proportion — I don’t know the numbers, but well over 70 per cent — of wildlife crime is committed either by, or in cooperation with, wildlife authorities.

In Asia or in Africa?

Everywhere. There’s so much money. Here, if you want to poach an elephant and you pay the ranger some money, he’ll leave you to it. If you get caught and are taken to court, you’ll pay the system and you’ll get free and the ivory is returned to you.

So it’s corruption that’s at the bottom of all this.

And how can that corruption be tackled, in your opinion?

It’s hard to know how you tackle corruption on a national basis, but I think in an institutional basis, you cannot only preach zero tolerance, but practise it as well.

If you find somebody’s done wrong, even though you know they have a family and school-going children and they’ll be destroyed by firing them, you must fire them for the good of the nation.

You’ve got to recognise that those individuals in society who are hell bent on selfish gain at the expense of the people must be punished.

How can we engage China on this issue of ivory?

To me, the Chinese people are among some of the most intelligent in the world. They’ve got an innate ability to understand things. What they’ve done in China from the days of (Chairman) Mao to where they are now, is unbelievable. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it. I was there when Mao was in power, the Cultural Revolution days.

And if you can only let them know more about what ivory is doing to an elephant, if they know the connection, I think it will stop.

I think the Chinese government is very willing to be recognised as a responsible super-power player, and I don’t believe it will indefinitely delay tightening up on domestic trade and ivory imports.

In fact, they have announced that they will, over the next five years, greatly reduce domestic trade within China of ivory, and this will have an impact on international trade. I’m not anti-Chinese at all. They should be the solution, not the problem.

How can we make wildlife valuable to ordinary people here?

The current law is archaic and didn’t take us any further forward in the last 15 years in terms of that issue of ownership.

Wildlife belongs to the people and we should enjoy it. I think we’ve got to make our recreation areas and national parks and public spaces much more citizen-friendly.

I think there’s got to be a deliberate effort, as there was in the 1970s, to bring the young people in school into contact with the enjoyment of nature. There’s so much more we could do. But we run our children ragged in school with passing exams and with things that have absolutely no value to their citizen status later. And we should change, move forward, and start putting thoughts into actions.

Some people argue that instead of burning ivory we should sell the stockpiles to fund wildlife conservation. What are your thoughts on this?

I’ve dealt with this for many years and I think the answer has to be that you want to make the point that ivory is worthless if it is not on the elephant; so if you sell (the stockpiles of recovered ivory) you’re enhancing its value. And if you destroy it people say, well what’s all the fuss about?

When we burnt ivory for the first time in Kenya, which I was responsible for, the price was about $300 (about Sh30,000) a kilo.

When we destroyed 10 tonnes with (former President) Moi, many people asked me the question that you’ve asked me.

But the event was so dramatic and so shocking that it was seen all over the world. We linked that to additional publicity campaigns and international action on treaties and within three months the price of ivory dropped to about $10 (Sh1,000) per kilo.

And it didn’t go up for 15 years because people thought that ivory was worthless and shouldn’t be used. Now the generation has rolled over and it’s gained in value. So I would be very loath to ever see any monetary value placed on elephant tusks stockpiles.

How many elephants do we have in Kenya?

The figures that have been touted by the KWS are between 20,000 and 25,0000. I’m hoping that KWS will conduct a full national inventory before the end of the year.

The poaching of elephant and ivory is serious, but after last year it’s stabilised. In other African countries it’s very bad.

Tanzania has lost 30,000 elephants in the last three years, while parts of West Africa have lost most of their herds. Kenya is losing elephants, but not at a level that suggests that they are endangered. But it could escalate, it could go either way.

Rhino is not as lucky. The (current) KWS figures... I have some hesitation using them. I would like to see a new inventory done independently. And we should make it public.

KWS is criticised for lack of transparency and openness.

It’s become very secretive. My intention as chairman is to work with whoever becomes the director later this year to really once again make it a people-friendly place, to use the public and the public’s goodwill to do a lot of our work for us.

The controversial highway across Serengeti in Tanzania was stopped but there are fears that Tanzania might resume the project.

I think there’s a real danger that a future Tanzanian government will respond to economic, commercial and public pressure to connect the northern waters of Lake Victoria in Tanzania with the Indian Ocean.

It would be a road-rail link, plus probably a pipeline corridor. It’s inevitable.

But there are other solutions and they’ve been tried in other countries, where you put the transport link above the ground.

It needn’t be ugly, it can be quite attractive. It is costly, but not prohibitive. And, to preserve that eco-system, I think it would be invaluable. I think there would be a lot of international assistance for doing that job properly. I’m not quite sure why so few people are pushing for this to be done.

Do you think it is because Tanzania is not pushing?

I think that the Tanzanian Government is like any government, it’s sort of thinking of now and not tomorrow.

But I think there may be an opportunity in the coming years with the younger people coming into government with better education, better awareness, better responsibility.

But I would say that, irrespective of Tanzania’s position in the short-term, there should be a Kenyan position, because if the Serengeti were cut we would lose most of the value of the Maasai Mara, which employs a huge number of people and is our principle tourist attraction.

I often feel that our foreign policy should be more aggressive when it comes to our national interest in terms of tourism.

We cannot afford to lose the Serengeti-Mara eco-system, and the road would kill it.

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