Public Backs Noted Paleontologist Leakey : Rivalries Over Wildlife Poaching Grip Kenya

This is what happened after Richard E. Leakey, world-renowned paleontologist, author and conservationist, head of the Kenya National Museums for 20 years, decided to speak out on the issue of wildlife poaching in the country’s national parks:

Leakey’s reputation as a scientist and museum administrator was harshly attacked in the local press. The government reorganized the museum board behind his back, prompting him to submit his resignation.

Despite being a native Kenyan and a citizen, whose younger brother serves in the Kenyan Parliament and as deputy tourism minister, Leakey was derided by one government minister as a “cheeky white” who felt that black Africans could not manage their own affairs.

But in the fullness of time, Leakey’s reputation and career have recovered. Soon after his resignation, a public uproar forced the government to restore the old museum board, and he withdrew his resignation. More recently, Leakey became head of the Department of Wildlife Conservation and Management, succeeding one of his critics.

For all of that, his experiences underscore one thing: wildlife conservation in Kenya is sensitive business.

Conservation Rivalries

Few events have laid open the rivalries between conservationists and bureaucrats--and among the conservationists themselves--as a scandal here over poaching and Leakey’s outspokenness on the subject.

How Kenya undertakes to protect its valued wildlife has long been a tender issue, because there is little any developing country can do to combat a gang of determined poachers. Many people here feel that the only solution is to “privatize” wildlife preserves, by establishing quasi-private companies to run existing preserves or otherwise placing them in private hands that can afford to safeguard their perimeters.

But Kenyan officials are particularly sensitive to criticism, partly because they fear the impact that negative publicity might have on the country’s significant tourist trade. “After all, most of us want to remain in the country,” remarked one leading local zoologist, who was reluctant to discuss the issue.

With a multiplicity of international and local wildlife clubs and funds and societies representing a variety of interests and philosophies, Kenyan conservationists, like keepers of the flame anywhere, often spend as much time sorting out their own differences as they do fighting a common foe.

“Oh, yes,” says Imre Loefler, a local surgeon and prominent conservationist, “there are enormous disagreements in the conservation community. This community has various traits and prejudices. At one extreme is the most bigoted right wing--strictly anti-humans--and at the other are those only interested in a few species. They’re generally employed in the tourist industry.”

In few other places, moreover, are the conflicts between the needs of wildlife protection and those of the human population so sharply etched as in Kenya.

Wildlife is Kenya’s greatest tourist draw, and tourism its third-largest foreign exchange earner: The 700,000 visitors expected this year will leave behind well over $350 million in foreign currency. With coffee and tea prices locked in a long slump, tourism may be Kenya’s only growth industry.

Competing With Humans

Yet Kenya’s elephants, rhinos, lions and antelope occupy land that comes at an increasing premium and for which they must compete ever more aggressively with the country’s human population, which is growing faster than that of any other nation.

In Narok, a farm district next to Masai Mara National Park, one of Kenya’s most popular game reserves, a herd of elephants not long ago invaded a plantation of bananas and vegetables; in their haste to reach the food, they trampled a woman to death. In Tana River district, which includes part of Tsavo East Game Reserve, 88 people have been killed by animals since 1980, according to the Department of Tourism and Wildlife.

“With growing population pressures, one has to show the politicians that setting aside preserves is economically productive, whether that involves tourism, hunting or exploitation” such as harvesting ivory, Loefler says. “You can’t tell people anymore that we’re just going to do this for sentimental reasons.”

Adding to the underlying tension is a racial element: The wildlife conservation community here largely comprises white expatriate Europeans and Americans, some of whom may not be fully sensitive to the competing interests of a poor and developing land.

What set all this tinder aflame was an apparent surge of poaching late last year in Kenya’s national parks. Tourists began returning from safaris in the parks, not with tales of bongo on the hoof and lions at repose yawning in the grass and trees, but of mountains of elephant carcasses, with trunks and tusks ghoulishly lopped off.

Reports reached Nairobi of poaching gangs armed with automatic weapons engaging park rangers in lengthy shoot-outs. In November, Perez Olindo, Leakey’s predecessor as director of Wildlife and Conservation Management, detailed the six-month war’s casualties: six game rangers killed, nine wounded.

In the longer term, Olindo said, poaching had reduced Kenya’s elephant population in 13 years from 140,000 to 22,000. Other unofficial estimates placed the elephant population as low as 16,000.

It was into this ferment that Leakey jumped with both feet last fall. Just after Tourism and Wildlife Minister George Muhoho called a news conference to pledge a redoubled government anti-poaching effort, Leakey called his own conference as chairman of the East African Wildlife Society.

Calling poaching “a growing national crisis” and “economic sabotage,” he labeled the government’s approach toward wildlife protection “lip service” and charged that high officials of the wildlife department itself were participating in poaching. The remarks by Leakey, one of the few Kenyans of his stature to speak out, brought the poaching issue to the forefront of national and international attention.

The elder son of the late Louis Leakey, whose work at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania was critical in the study of early man, Leakey has made many important discoveries himself. His directorship of the national museums is widely regarded as having given those institutions a preeminent position in study of prehistory.

Family’s Prominent Role

Finally, there could be few white families who have played as prominent a role as natives and citizens in Kenya’s post-independence period as have the Leakeys.

Muhoho at first replied with what Kenya’s leading newspaper, the Daily Nation, later disapprovingly termed a “contentious response”: He called Leakey a “cheeky white.”

Yet, it was not only Kenyan officials who felt Leakey had shot from the hip.

“There’s no question whatsoever that he was doing a bit of grandstanding,” said David Western, chairman of the governing council of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya.

In any event, the wildlife rangers temporarily recovered some of their morale. The government staffed the parks with a detachment of its paramilitary General Services Unit,

Mounds of Carcasses

Nevertheless, in succeeding months, it has become clear that the tide of poaching in the national parks, particularly of elephants, has not appreciably been stemmed. Mounds of carcasses still appear, and public concern over the situation has not abated.

Leakey’s outburst may finally have borne its most important fruit last month when he got a chance to take full charge of correcting the ills he has complained about. The government appointed him to replace Olindo as the man directly responsible for protecting Kenya’s wildlife.