Poaching in Kenya now made difficult by New bill

President Uhuru Kenyatta

HE the President Hon Uhuru Kenyatta has signed into law the Wildlife Conservation & Management Bill, making it the law of the land with immediate effect.

This is the best gift to nature lovers in Kenya and beyond as New Year beckons.

For years had the country’s conservationists demanded that harsher penalties be imposed as often poachers, when nabbed, were released on bond or bail almost immediately as they faced minimal fines and often short prison terms, which led to a sharp increase in poaching across the country with hundreds of elephants and dozens of rhino killed.

Kenya still has a significant wildlife resource but over 60% of that resource resides outside the protected areas. Typically the management of that wildlife has been the responsibility of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).  However the 2010 Constitution has changed that responsibility in that it recognizes Public, Private and Community land as distinct entities falling under different management responsibilities. Many species do not stay in protected areas and venture into human-inhabited areas thus leading to human-wildlife conflict, and poaching.

KWS is doing all in its power to reduce poaching incidents to its bare minimum. The menace to the past weak wildlife laws where wildlife related crimes were treated in the court of law as a misdemeanor and a lesser crime now remain in the past. Under the new bill, wildlife-related crimes will now be considered as an economic crime which will carry stiffer penalties of up to five years in jail, a million shillings plus fine or both.

Now, under the new law, poachers, their financiers and the traders will face substantially higher fines, confiscation of property and long prison terms, but most extensively will those nabbed at airports, in possession of blood ivory or other prohibited wildlife items, face fines of not less than a million Kenya Shillings and prison terms of not less than five years. Many smugglers have been caught over the past years mostly at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Consequently any magistrate who now fails to impose both fines and custodial sentences must be dragged before the disciplinary committees and investigated for possible links with poaching syndicates.