Environment : A QUESTION OF SURVIVAL : The death of a man trampled by an elephant from a Kenyan preserve has fueled debate : over animal rights. It is not an easy issue for the caretakers of the endangered species.

Nearly deaf, Jeremiah Kilango couldn’t hear the herd of elephants encircling him while he tended cattle deep in the African bush. Neighbors tried to warn him, but Kilango, absorbed in his flock, didn’t notice their frantic gestures.

As his fellow villagers watched helplessly, the 50-year-old was trampled to death by a two-ton bull elephant less than a quarter-mile from his home. Wildlife officials believe the elephants were on their way to a watering hole when they encountered him; it’s unclear why their leader attacked.

But the incident last month on the outskirts of Tsavo East National Park offered a grisly look at the flip side of the conservation coin.

According to Kenyan wildlife officials, three to four people are killed every year in the Tsavo park by bands of elephants who wander away from the gigantic game preserve and wreak havoc on neighboring villages. Although exact statistics are hard to come by, local officials believe such attacks are becoming more common.

Besides killing and injuring people, elephants have squashed and devoured millions of dollars worth of crops vital to the survival of thousands of subsistence farmers.

“It’s a question of who gets to eat the maize--the elephant or the man,” said Peter Ndwiga, a member of Parliament who has introduced an amendment that would require the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife to set aside 25% of its revenue to compensate farmers for their losses. He said more than $3 million is owed to farmers in outstanding damage claims.

The issue is a sensitive one for the caretakers of the country’s endangered species.

Kenya’s biggest money-maker is its tourism industry, which generated about $212 million in 1991 (the latest figures available), surpassing revenue from the country’s coffee and tea exports, according to the government’s central bureau of statistics in Nairobi. It is an industry that relies on the presence of elephants, rhinos, lions and other exotic animals to lure foreign visitors to Kenya’s lucrative game parks.

In a highly publicized crackdown, Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi has declared war on poachers who slaughter elephants and rhinos for their tusks and horns. More than 110,000 elephants were killed over the last 20 years, according to official estimates. Rangers have been ordered to shoot poachers on sight, sparking a bloody conflict that has resulted in casualties on both sides.

The elephants also have powerful friends abroad. The animal preservation movement is funded largely by wealthy American and European environmentalists who donate millions of dollars for the protection of wildlife species poached to near-extinction.

Yet many times, these same protected animals inflict very real losses upon the human communities whose survival also depends upon dwindling supplies of land, water and other natural resources. As the human population increases, so do the conflicts between people and animals.

Needless to say, a peasant farmer’s opinion of elephants is far different from that of a foreign tourist on safari.

“For Americans, watching elephants is fun because they don’t suffer any losses,” said Kiraitu Murungi, a member of Parliament, “but when you are a villager and you hear there’s an elephant, the first thing you do is go and grab a spear.”

Confrontations often occur when farmers attempt to chase the elephants away from their fields. Sometimes the animals, who are hungry, fight back. To make matters worse, elephants have been poached to such an extent that many have become hostile toward humans.

Elephants, of course, are not the only culprits. Wild pigs, buffalo, baboons, porcupines and birds also help themselves to crops.

But it is the elephants who have provoked the greatest outcry.

“People are actually being placed under curfew by these big animals,” said Boy Juma Boy, chief whip in Parliament whose district includes the Shimba Hills wildlife refuge in southeastern Kenya. “We’re not saying eliminate them but let them be placed where they belong so people can live comfortably.”

One recent evening, he said, a herd of elephants invaded an elementary school where the children were taking part in extracurricular activities. The elephants were apparently attracted by the smell of water from an outdoor well on the school grounds.

“All of a sudden, these huge animals started coming into the school,” Boy said. “Fortunately, it was still a bit light, and a few students saw them and started shouting. Some villagers who were passing by managed to scare them off.”

The situation at the 52-square-mile park is similar to that at Tsavo and other game preserves. A heavily traveled road runs smack through the park. Villagers who must use it complain that they are frequently confronted by wild animals.

Gibran Mwangolo, a 26-year-old public works employee, said he and his neighbors live in constant fear of elephants. He lives in Ikanga, a tiny village that borders Tsavo.

On a recent afternoon, at the clearing where his neighbor Kilango was killed in June, Mwangolo talked of his own close encounters with wild elephants. Nearby, mounds of dung as big as cantaloupes marked the trail of a passing herd--a common sight.

“I was coming home from work the other day when I met up with one of them on the main road,” he said. “I had to walk (detour) about three miles to avoid him and wound up sleeping outside all night because I was afraid to go home.”

Still others have had their sole means of support destroyed by rogue elephants--a year’s harvest laid waste by ravenous beasts.

Critics of government conservation policies accuse officials of turning a blind eye to the plight of small farmers in their fervor to protect animal life. Despite millions of dollars earned from tourism, they point out, the law requires the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife to pay only $375 to family members of a person killed by a wild animal. People who are injured receive substantially less.

Ministry officials insist they are sympathetic to the farmers’ predicament. Because of widespread fraud by corrupt government officials and farmers who inflated their losses, authorities discontinued an earlier program to compensate farmers for crop losses, according to spokesman John Mulu. Now, officials said, they plan to set up local tribunals to verify claims and make sure the money gets to the right people.

Wildlife officials also said they will use grants from international donors to erect electric fences around game preserves and strengthen security to keep the animals at bay. But by all accounts, they face a daunting task.

Take Tsavo, one of the oldest game preserves in Kenya--a seemingly endless expanse of burnt-orange soil and desert scrub, split into east-west administrative districts, that encompasses an 8,000-square-mile area roughly the size of Israel. It is difficult to tell where the park ends and human communities begin. In areas that at first appear deserted, small pockets of villagers live in clusters of dwellings fashioned out of mud, brick and rusty metal.

Kenya Wildlife Services officer Philip Mwakio and his team of 20 rangers are charged with keeping the peace in this vast territory that is home to an estimated 7,000 elephants. But with no physical barriers separating the park from communities, the rangers must rely on noisemaking devices and non-lethal bullets to frighten the elephants away from inhabited areas.

Mwakio believes that even though it is financially impossible to fence off the entire park, some barrier would be better than none at all. “It would cut down on the amount of area that we have to cover,” he said.

But Mwakio says it is not enough to merely keep the animals from getting out.

He believes it is equally crucial to the conservation effort to put some of the revenue from tourism back into the local villages. To that end, he said, his agency has built water pipelines and set up a variety of community service programs in the Tsavo area.

“Buying the support of these people is the best way to preserve the wildlife,” Mwakio said. “If they turn against the animals, it doesn’t matter how much money you pump in here, they’re going to disappear.”